Reads tagged with “language”
Saying the Ineffable: Poetry and the Language of Silence
“The survival of poetry depends on the failure of language.”
The Handle on the Door to a New World: Poet Jane Hirshfield on the Magic and Power of Metaphor, Animated
“A metaphor is language that simultaneously creates and solves its own riddle; within that minute explosion of mind is both expansion and release… It is how the mind instructs itself in a more complex seeing.”
William Godwin on the Advantages of the Multilingual Mind
How the ability to call your idea “by various names, borrowed from various languages,” empowers you to conceive that idea “in a way precise, clear and unconfused.”
The Great 19th-Century Biologist and Anatomist T.H. Huxley on Darwin’s Legacy and What Makes Us Human
In praise of the faculty “making every generation somewhat wiser than its predecessor, — more in accordance with the established order of the universe.”
French Philosopher Maurice Blanchot on Writing, the Dual Power of Language to Reveal and Conceal, and What It Really Means to See
“To see is certainly always to see at a distance, but by allowing distance to give back what it removes from us… To see is to experience the continuous and to celebrate the sun, that is, beyond the sun: the One.”
Nick Cave on Songwriting, the Mystery of the Unconscious, and the Sweet Severity of Truth
“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.”
Audre Lorde on Poetry as an Instrument of Change and Feeling as an Antidote to Fearing
“As they become known to and accepted by us, our feelings and the honest exploration of them become sanctuaries and spawning grounds for the most radical and daring of ideas… a safe-house for that difference so necessary to change.”
How to Punctuate with Style: Lewis Thomas’s Charming Meditation on the Subtleties of Language
“If you want to use a cliché you must take full responsibility for it yourself and not try to fob it off on anon., or on society.”
The Lost Words: An Illustrated Dictionary of Poetic Spells Reclaiming the Language of Nature
From acorn to wren, a vibrant encyclopedia of enchantments reweaving our broken web of belonging with the rest of nature.
ABOUT
CONTACT
SUPPORT
SUBSCRIBE
Newsletter
RSS
CONNECT
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
Tumblr