Whereas if you were writing an op-ed piece or an essay, somebody would be asking, "What's your point?" With poetry you can stay in a moment for as long as you want. Poetry is about metaphor, about a thing standing in for something else. It's the thing that opens out to something else. What that something else is changes for readers. So what's on the page - it falls away.
The patience is in the living. Time opens out to you. - Claudia Rankine
The patience is in the living. Time opens out to you.
- Claudia Rankine
Poetry has no investment in anything besides openness. It's not arguing a point. It's creating an environment. - Claudia Rankine
Poetry has no investment in anything besides openness. It's not arguing a point. It's creating an environment.
The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow. - Claudia Rankine
The past is a life sentence, a blunt instrument aimed at tomorrow.
You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you; it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all c… - Claudia Rankine
You can’t put the past behind you. It’s buried in you; it’s turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all c…
The worst injury is feeling you don't belong so much / to you. - Claudia Rankine
The worst injury is feeling you don't belong so much / to you.
When you achieve it fully, you create something that's transparent - that people can move into and through their own experiences. As a writer, I don'… - Claudia Rankine
When you achieve it fully, you create something that's transparent - that people can move into and through their own experiences. As a writer, I don'…
You want to belong, you want to be here. In interactions with others you're constantly waiting to see that they recognize that you're a human being. … - Claudia Rankine
You want to belong, you want to be here. In interactions with others you're constantly waiting to see that they recognize that you're a human being. …
Define loneliness? Yes. It's what we can't do for each other. - Claudia Rankine
Define loneliness? Yes. It's what we can't do for each other.
I want to believe that in any relational moment a person understands that the other person in front of them is just another human being. - Claudia Rankine
I want to believe that in any relational moment a person understands that the other person in front of them is just another human being.
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