The Marginalian
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Search results for “Grief”

How to Bear Your Suffering: The Young Poet Anne Reeve Aldrich’s Extraordinary Letter to Emily Dickinson
How to Bear Your Suffering: The Young Poet Anne Reeve Aldrich’s Extraordinary Letter to Emily Dickinson

“It is only through the gates of suffering, either mental or physical, that we can pass into that tender sympathy with the griefs of all of mankind which it ought to be the ideal of every soul to attain.”

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Nick Cave on Songwriting, Truth, and the Mystery of the Unconscious
Nick Cave on Songwriting, Truth, and the Mystery of the Unconscious

“Metaphor can create a merciful sense of distance from the cruel idea, or the unspeakable truth, and allow it to exist within us as a kind of poetic radiance, as a work of art.”

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The Third Thing: Poet Donald Hall on the Secret to Lasting Love
The Third Thing: Poet Donald Hall on the Secret to Lasting Love

“Third things are essential to marriages, objects or practices or habits or arts or institutions or games or human beings that provide a site of joint rapture or contentment.”

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A Penguin’s Antidote to Abandonment
A Penguin’s Antidote to Abandonment

How to sail in the icy sea of uncertainty without sinking.

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The Solace of Open Spaces
The Solace of Open Spaces

“There is nothing in nature that can’t be taken as a sign of both mortality and invigoration… Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.”

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The Soul, the Universe, and the Vastness of Music: Composer Caroline Shaw Brings Whitman and Tennyson to Life in the Spirit of the Golden Record
The Soul, the Universe, and the Vastness of Music: Composer Caroline Shaw Brings Whitman and Tennyson to Life in the Spirit of the Golden Record

“Let your soul stand cool and composed before a million universes.”

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What We Keep in Loss: William Blake’s Stirring Letter to a Bereaved Father
What We Keep in Loss: William Blake’s Stirring Letter to a Bereaved Father

“Our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part.”

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What Makes Great Art: The Single Most Important Element in Creative Work
What Makes Great Art: The Single Most Important Element in Creative Work

“Art is a miracle, superior to the laws.”

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July 3, 1947: The Young Jack Kerouac Coins “Beat” While Grieving His Father
July 3, 1947: The Young Jack Kerouac Coins “Beat” While Grieving His Father

“My conscience of life and eternity is not a mistake, or a loneliness, or a foolishness — but a warm dear love of our poor predicament.”

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The Power of the Bittersweet: Susan Cain on Longing as the Fulcrum of Creativity
The Power of the Bittersweet: Susan Cain on Longing as the Fulcrum of Creativity

In search of the most transcendent solution to “the problem of being alive in a deeply flawed yet stubbornly beautiful world.”

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