Everywhere I go, I find a poet has been there before me. — Sigmund Freud

(And, in my case, they’ve said it better and much faster!)

The avenue at seven is lit like a steel pit.
Still streets, a fire in the sky, bus slow.
Ah, temptress, for that extra sly iamb!
I wanted you so, then, I wanted you.

— from Sleeping Sister by Susan Wheeler  (that last line—chills!)

There’s something magical about poetry and I want a little of that sprinkled onto me when I write

I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound—

if I can remember any of the damn things.

—the incomparable Dorothy Parker

Another fave: 

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. 

Clearly, a woman who understood the three-chapter rule!

Much madness is divinest sense

To a discerning eye;

Much sense the starkest madness

— Emily Dickinson

Although I love her poetry, I actually love her letters more. If you ever get a chance to read a collection of them, it’s totally worth it—a peek inside the mind of one of the greatest poets—how can you pass that up?

That one thing in Life I’m meant to do?—well, I have to finish this first.

— James Richardson, By the Numbers

I read this and got so sad because don’t we all think that way? And then I realized that is exactly why it’s so brilliant. If James Richardson ever writes a novel, I would probably swoon. 

Yes, I said swoon. And I stand by it!

Good news, no blood disorders/diseases. Bad news, no positive markers for pernicious anemia, but the doctor said that can happen sometimes. So, monthly B-12 shots, and back to him in three months to see if my RBC count is still low and my red blood cells are still not being produced fast enough and are too large when they are. (If everything is cleared up at the three month mark, it’s pernicious anemia and that’s well enough, I can handle a shot a month no problem!) 

It took a long time for me to realize this, but if you work as hard as you can until you are only holding on by sheer force of will, you will break. And it won’t be a clean break. It’ll be a nasty one that leaves you in pieces and when you knit yourself back together again you’ll realize that everything you did wasn’t worth it because in all that work? You forgot to actually LIVE.

But blood makes noise
It’s a ringing in my ear
Blood makes noise
And I can’t really hear you
In the thickening of fear

— from Blood Makes Noise by Suzanne Vega

So I’ll speak ill of the dead. A was crooked,
planting the small left finger of the raccoon in the upholstery
before he sold the car. B made certain to point out Celia’s
bewildered look before her pink slip came in the flimsy institution,
In the videos of C, a jejune overwhelmed the cast. 

D built dollhouses. Even Lonnie down at Shell
found him less of a man for it, the night they went off to see the stock
cars break. I wanted E’s hair, but in the end it was no more. F
refused alms, pulling the man up by his shirt in the street, and 
G sought rewards. Marybeth said H fondled her for sport.

Now you, I, Smokey, hell
bent on a village version of Club 21, embarrassed by out attentions.
Mistrust it was. Dig me a chamber of preparedness.

— Susan Wheeler, Alphabet’s End 

Wheeler’s poetry goes way, way over my head, but I found this poem and loads of amazing lines or even just phrases in her collection, Assorted Poems, that made me go “Wow!” 

And that, for me, is what makes reading poetry so worthwhile. I can see why so many novelists whose writing I find sublime either started as poets or continue to be. Maybe I’ll learn by osmosis. 

And when I stand 
in the receiving line
like Jackie Kennedy
without the pillbox hat,
if Jackie were fat 
and had taken enough Klonopin
to still an ox,

and you whisper
I think of you
every day,
don’t finish with
because I’ve been going 
to Weight Watchers
on Tuesdays and wonder 
if you want to go too.

— Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno, Slamming Open the Door

Slamming Open the Door is a great collection of poems dealing with the pain that comes with losing a child. This is one of my favorites because it’s so raw—not just in Bonanno’s grief, but in her absolutely fury at the comment.

Also, it really is something you should never say to anyone after something terrible happens. And especially not at a funeral.