18 Quotes by Anna Kamienska

Even a painful longing is some form of presence.

Poetry is a presentiment of the truth.

Letters of the condemned. Last words scratched on a cell’s wall. To write like that.

My poems are more my silence than my speech. Just as music is a kind of quiet. Sounds are needed only to unveil the various layers of silence.

Tell me what’s the difference.

I’m moved by everything broken and crippled. Since that’s how we really are.

I don’t write poetry when I wish, I write when I can’t, when my larynx is flooded and my throat is shut.

The way a source strains toward the light, toward the air. Its laboring work, its effort, its black passageways like despair. That’s the way a poet looks for words. With muscles, gestures.

I am that which lies beyond time. Like a melody, which sounds completely only after the last note is played.