For two decades, 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. Some poets and writers have their own dedicated pages.

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and it’s okay that no one is left / and no one will be there, around the next switchback / as the windshield is smoking blue. — from “Buck Road”

it is love that draws me again / and again from the word emptiness — from “Practice”

jumping / jesus this is some kind of mutha / fucking fun. — from “I/ Excavation”

Not easy to step away / from the sink by an open window / or the plums darkening beneath / cracked rafters of the tool shed, / to stroll without singing / through the first veins of April, / no need to return. — from “After Juarroz”

Now only the tree beside him has / a shape; and he doesn’t reach for it. Dusk breathes out of / the dogwood, and the odor of horses drifts around him. A gentle and enormous sweetness rising, with no body at all, / out of the dark pasture. — from “Walking Barb Wire”

some lives will not root / in geometry / or hold anything / but the coastal / edges / of rivers and tides — from “Windshake”

This light on your wrist / is always ample and exquisite / for the certain feast you have / dug for and deserved. — from “Under the Badger’s Nose, Late January”

You were always good at dreaming yourself / into abandoned places. — from “Buck Road”

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Source: Iron Fever, by Stephan Torre.