71 Quotes by Mary Szybist

I return to tracingthe line. It's not unlike the wayI trace myself back to myselfafter returning from spaces that haveno place in me. Not unlike the wayI trace over moments with you when youare no one I recognize.

It's not what he was promised.The land looks strange, unearthly strangeand unforgivable.

Everything he remembers is there,but then, he can't remember.

Nothing stays long enough to know.

I have always been attracted to apostrophe, perhaps because of its resemblance to prayer. A voice reaches out to something beyond itself that cannot answer it. I find that moving in part because it enacts what is true of all address and communication on some level - it cannot fully be heard, understood, or answered.

Form is endlessly interesting to me, and I love poetry as a formal enterprise.

I think that a good deal of poetry and art gives us some sense of access to another's voice, perception, texture of thought, imagination. Sometimes it gives us better access to the strangeness in ourselves.

I was thinking recently about the popularity of TV shows about people shopping for houses. I wonder if part of their appeal is the chance to vicariously imagine our lives playing out in a variety of spaces. We have a sense that the shape and style of our dwellings affects the shapes of the lives that unfold within them.

Writing poems is a chance to construct spaces that I want to imaginatively inhabit.