For more than a decade, I’ve maintained a list of quotes I like by poets, writers, and thinkers I find interesting. This post is part of that series. All posts in the series are organized alphabetically.

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To name ourselves rather than be named / we must first see ourselves … / So long unmirrored in our true selves / we may have forgotten how we look. — Lorraine O’Grady, epigraph for Bluest Nude: Poems, by Ama Codjoe

You forget / the contours slowly, in / the long second leaving, / neutrality a structure / you learned to glamorize, / the way you have come to / imagine doors as rectangular. — Cindy Juyoung Ok

oh, to be / that tongue / and palate, / those lips / surrounding you, / to be your / consonant / in a field of vowels. — Robert Okaji