A Writer's Ruminations

"Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings.
Not all things are blest, but the
seeds of all things are blest.
The blessing is in the seed."

— Muriel Rukeyser, from “Elegy in Joy”

"I sincerely hope I’ll never fathom you. You’re mystical, serene, intriguing; you enclose such charm within you. The lustre of your presence bewitches me. I like the unreality of your mind; the whole thing is very splendid and voluptuous and absurd. It is not mere words on paper, Mrs. Nicholson, it is both my mind and heart addressing you."

— Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Vita Sackville-West dated 27 May 1927 (via violentwavesofemotion)

"No black woman writer in this culture can write too much. Indeed, no woman writer can write too much; no woman has ever written enough."

— bell hooks, Remembered Rapture: The Writer at Work (via ungovernablesf)

"The blood jet is poetry,
There is no stopping it."

— Sylvia Plath, from “Kindness”

"I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering
Blue and mystical over the face of the stars."

— Sylvia Plath, from “The Moon and the Yew Tree”

"My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.

They threaten
To let me through to a heaven
Starless and fatherless, a dark water."

— Sylvia Plath, from “Sheep in Fog”

"Winter dawn is the color of metal,
The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves.
All night I have dreamed of destruction, annihilations"

— Sylvia Plath, from “Waking in Winter”

"I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me"

— Sylvia Plath, from “Elm”