I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up on the idea that the experience of literature offers a kind of wisdom that cannot be discovered elsewhere; that there is profundity in the verbal encounter itself, never mind what further profundities that author has to offer; and that for a host of reasons the bound book is the ideal vehicle for the written word.
Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensificatio… - Sven Birkerts
Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensificatio…
- Sven Birkerts
Every place, once unique, itself, is strangely shot through with radiations from every other place. ‘There’ was then; ‘here’ is now. - Sven Birkerts
Every place, once unique, itself, is strangely shot through with radiations from every other place. ‘There’ was then; ‘here’ is now.
If anything has changed about my reading over the years, it is that I value the state a book puts me in more that I value the specific contents. - Sven Birkerts
If anything has changed about my reading over the years, it is that I value the state a book puts me in more that I value the specific contents.
Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for… - Sven Birkerts
Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for…
Language is the soul’s ozone layer and we thin it at our peril. - Sven Birkerts
Language is the soul’s ozone layer and we thin it at our peril.
A poem is a construction of inner space. Language is to inner space as light is to material space. - Sven Birkerts
A poem is a construction of inner space. Language is to inner space as light is to material space.
What reading does, ultimately, is keep alive the dangerous and exhilarating idea that life is not a sequence of lived moments, but a destiny. - Sven Birkerts
What reading does, ultimately, is keep alive the dangerous and exhilarating idea that life is not a sequence of lived moments, but a destiny.
I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up … - Sven Birkerts
I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up …
I read books to read myself. - Sven Birkerts
I read books to read myself.
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