EPIGRAPHS
Epigraphs have always fascinated me. A writer nods to another writer, acknowledging lineage. A writer tries to give the flavor or essence — or perhaps the source — of a piece of writing. Or maybe she just can't resist sharing a great quote. Here are epigraphs I've used for books, poems, etc.
EPIGRAPHS TO BOOKS: To The Bright Logic of Wilma Schuh: There's a blaze of light In every word It doesn't matter which you heard The holy or the broken Hallelujah —Leonard Cohen, "Halleluja" Beneath the story of cause and consequence Another story is pointing another way. —Carl Dennis, "Not the End" To End into Opening: six sestinas and their humble companion poems: It never ends, this dire need to know, This need to see a diagram unfold In silent angles, drawing in the sand, This need to see a diagram achieve Self-organizing equilibrium Among the mica flakes and granite-crumbs, This need to fill the universe with sand, And all in play, with everything in play… —Gjertrud Schnackenberg To Return to a Meadow: Nothing could stifle my inner certainty that a shining point exists where all lines intersect. —Czeslaw Milosz Often I am permitted to return to a meadow as if it were a given property of the mind that certain bounds hold against chaos, that is a place of first permission, everlasting omen of what is. —Robert Duncan To All the Difference: poems of unconventional motherhood: How else can one write but of those things which one doesn't know, or knows badly? —Gilles Deleuze ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Epigraph to the Preface of All the Difference: poems of unconventional motherhood: "The nearest, inmost things are the most arduous to seize." —Richard Sieburth, writing on Friedrich Hölderlin's Hymns and Fragments ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ EPIGRAPHS TO POEMS IN ECHOES AND LINKS: To "Assignment: Ekphrasis" Full fathom five thy father lies; Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea change Into something rich and strange. —Ariel, Shakespeare's The Tempest To "Theater of Cruelty" April is the cruelest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow, feeding A little life with dried tubers. —T. S. Eliot To "Ginny" If someone were to fall into intimate slumber, and slept deeply with Things--: how easily he would come to a different day, out of the mutual depth. --Rainer Maria Rilke To "Recognition: Work of the Lovers" And turn towards my chamber, caught In the cold snows of a dream. —William Butler Yeats To "On Curved Earth" Clarity in the sense of transparence I don't mean that much can be explained. Clarity in the sense of silence. —George Oppen To "In the Late Afternoon, September" The ghosts swarm. They speak as one person. Each loves you. Each has left something undone. —Rae Armantrout Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean. —Alfred, Lord Tennyson To "Just Home in Bed" The people who sleep with their socks on, day is over to them, adoring and abandoned. —Arielle Greenberg To "Dark Myth Left Empty" Here was, prepared against his death, the dark myth he left empty. —Rainer Maria Rilke To "Dry" Strictly speaking, God does not love anyone. —Baruch Spinoza To "Grinding the Lens" Each creature must himself, you were sure, grind the lens through which he perceives the world. —Frank Bidart To "Out of the Violin" "What seems so far from you is most your own." —Rainer Maria Rilke To "For All My Cherished Suicides" I forgive you everything and there is nothing to forgive. —Gertrude Stein To "Time and Again" We come too late for the gods and too early for Being. —Martin Heidegger To "Blades Cutting Upward through Density toward Sky" "What we like determines what we are..." —John Ruskin To "The Work" ...this werk asketh a ful greet restfulnes... —Cloud of Unknowing To "Meditation Opposing Flight" The point of the nail is applied to the very center of the soul and its head is the whole of necessity throughout all space and time. —Simone Weil at the nail's point the hammer-blow undiminished —George Oppen |