The openness and broadsweeping inquiry here as well as the deep-down dives make this a satisfyingly multidimensional piece that has given me courage to ask. I love how you posit a metaphorical archaeology here, where manifestos, maybes and more give us clues to what we have held on to, what we might want to let go and transform, and what could become or is in a state of becoming. They are inquiries of quality not quantity, very antithetical to Western linear, either-or thinking and it's freeing for my overly white American brain that overlays a heart that yearns to find a more human way to live and love. Thank you from the bottom of that heart for offering a bridge (love that bridge metaphor!) to new ways of exploring and reflecting. On manifestos, one that allows for flexibility and inquiry is tantalizing. I AM ALWAYS QUESTIONING IN MY SEARCH FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING AND OPEN-HEARTED CONNECTION WITH HUMANITY AND THE WORLD AROUND ME. Trying that on for size. And heading over to Kofi.
But I’ve also been assembling another lineage—one that includes poets of colour, poets who make language stutter and burn and pray.
This makes me want to know what would be born if you made a free-form, time-limited, stream of consciousness list of poets who make language "stutter and burn and pray". Because, basically, I want to know who makes this list, and I would follow your recommendations to the ends of the earth (or at least the internet).
The Rilke "live the questions" quote ( I will butcher if I attempt to quote and will lose the thread of this comment in 87 open tabs if I go to search for it, so will trust you know it) has stayed with me thorughout most of my adult life as a comfort and a guide. In all of my searches for wisdom and meaning, in all of my wrestling with decisions, I have found being with the questions (or hell, even learning to identify what the right questions are) to be far more instructive than fighting ot find the answers (slippery and eluisve as they often are).
Thank you again for writing a piec of my heart, I am profoundly grateful to have stumbled across your words.
Thank you for reading so closely. Off the top of my head, I love the works of Aracelis Girmay, Carl Phillips, Hanif Abdurraqib...There are many more, but these poets remind me that language doesn’t need to behave in order to matter. It can splinter, sing, break open mid-sentence and still hold the weight of a whole life.
Yes, yes, yes to Rilke. I am particularly fond of a line from one of his poems: "No feeling is final." Isn’t that what questions allow, too? The ability to remain in motion. To soften around the edges of what we don’t yet know. To not mistake a passing ache for permanence, or a moment of clarity for a conclusion.
It feels like such a gift to sit in the space you open with your questions - and the space you invite me to open with questions of my own. Plus your writing is just gorgeous. Thank you!
So much to love here and ponder. I was struck by your opening, the moral compass that guides your writing:
How does my writing make space for what is unspoken?
Where does my grief live in my work? Where does my joy live?
How do I create a rhythm that feels true to the way I think, feel, and remember?
These questions have become my compass, more reliable than any answer I've ever been given about how to write, what to write, or why writing matters.
It could have been written by me, although I've never put it in those exact words. But for me writing is exploration and discovery. I look for what's missing, absent, unspoken, unknown, unexplored. Grief and joy are part of that. Rhythm too. Finding balance and beauty in the written word. Memory too and its fallibility.
My life experience as a straight, white woman born to working class parents in the suburbs of America is so different from yours. But being a woman--somehow that experience unites me with or at least opens to doors to understanding and identifying with the sense of being/feeling other/outside/lesser, of having a secret inner life that probably wouldn't be understood by most people, but feeling the need to speak my truth even while I question it.
I sometimes wonder if any of us can truly know or understand anyone, given it's so hard to truly know and understand ourselves. And yet so many of us (creatives?) are drawn to do so nonetheless. Your exploration/questioning of these very things resonates with me and helps to broaden my own horizons of understanding. So I thank you for that.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. I’m struck by how you’ve described writing as a process of exploration and discovery—that’s exactly how it feels for me, too. Not a path toward certainty, but toward honesty, rhythm, intuition, and presence. A way of asking aloud: What am I really carrying? What haven’t I let myself say yet?
Your reflections on the shared experience of womanhood—that deep inner life, that sense of being slightly off-axis from what the world expects—ring so true. I think it’s in those invisible places that we often find one another, even across wildly different lives. And yes, the not-knowing, the questioning, the reaching toward understanding—maybe that’s what writing is, at its core. A gesture of connection, even when (especially when) we know it can never be complete.
The openness and broadsweeping inquiry here as well as the deep-down dives make this a satisfyingly multidimensional piece that has given me courage to ask. I love how you posit a metaphorical archaeology here, where manifestos, maybes and more give us clues to what we have held on to, what we might want to let go and transform, and what could become or is in a state of becoming. They are inquiries of quality not quantity, very antithetical to Western linear, either-or thinking and it's freeing for my overly white American brain that overlays a heart that yearns to find a more human way to live and love. Thank you from the bottom of that heart for offering a bridge (love that bridge metaphor!) to new ways of exploring and reflecting. On manifestos, one that allows for flexibility and inquiry is tantalizing. I AM ALWAYS QUESTIONING IN MY SEARCH FOR GREATER UNDERSTANDING AND OPEN-HEARTED CONNECTION WITH HUMANITY AND THE WORLD AROUND ME. Trying that on for size. And heading over to Kofi.
Thank you so much for this. It made me think how we are brushing away dust and memory, sifting through layers of belief, survival, inherited language.
This whole post is awesome. Thank you.
Thank you for reading!
But I’ve also been assembling another lineage—one that includes poets of colour, poets who make language stutter and burn and pray.
This makes me want to know what would be born if you made a free-form, time-limited, stream of consciousness list of poets who make language "stutter and burn and pray". Because, basically, I want to know who makes this list, and I would follow your recommendations to the ends of the earth (or at least the internet).
The Rilke "live the questions" quote ( I will butcher if I attempt to quote and will lose the thread of this comment in 87 open tabs if I go to search for it, so will trust you know it) has stayed with me thorughout most of my adult life as a comfort and a guide. In all of my searches for wisdom and meaning, in all of my wrestling with decisions, I have found being with the questions (or hell, even learning to identify what the right questions are) to be far more instructive than fighting ot find the answers (slippery and eluisve as they often are).
Thank you again for writing a piec of my heart, I am profoundly grateful to have stumbled across your words.
Thank you for reading so closely. Off the top of my head, I love the works of Aracelis Girmay, Carl Phillips, Hanif Abdurraqib...There are many more, but these poets remind me that language doesn’t need to behave in order to matter. It can splinter, sing, break open mid-sentence and still hold the weight of a whole life.
Yes, yes, yes to Rilke. I am particularly fond of a line from one of his poems: "No feeling is final." Isn’t that what questions allow, too? The ability to remain in motion. To soften around the edges of what we don’t yet know. To not mistake a passing ache for permanence, or a moment of clarity for a conclusion.
Thank you again for finding your way here.
Now i cannot wait to dig in more.
“language doesn’t need to behave in order to matter. It can splinter, sing, break open mid-sentence and still hold the weight of a whole life.”
Ugh. please do add yourself to that list. Fuck, that’s a sentance.
It feels like such a gift to sit in the space you open with your questions - and the space you invite me to open with questions of my own. Plus your writing is just gorgeous. Thank you!
Thank you for reading with your full self. I appreciate you being here.
So much to love here and ponder. I was struck by your opening, the moral compass that guides your writing:
How does my writing make space for what is unspoken?
Where does my grief live in my work? Where does my joy live?
How do I create a rhythm that feels true to the way I think, feel, and remember?
These questions have become my compass, more reliable than any answer I've ever been given about how to write, what to write, or why writing matters.
It could have been written by me, although I've never put it in those exact words. But for me writing is exploration and discovery. I look for what's missing, absent, unspoken, unknown, unexplored. Grief and joy are part of that. Rhythm too. Finding balance and beauty in the written word. Memory too and its fallibility.
My life experience as a straight, white woman born to working class parents in the suburbs of America is so different from yours. But being a woman--somehow that experience unites me with or at least opens to doors to understanding and identifying with the sense of being/feeling other/outside/lesser, of having a secret inner life that probably wouldn't be understood by most people, but feeling the need to speak my truth even while I question it.
I sometimes wonder if any of us can truly know or understand anyone, given it's so hard to truly know and understand ourselves. And yet so many of us (creatives?) are drawn to do so nonetheless. Your exploration/questioning of these very things resonates with me and helps to broaden my own horizons of understanding. So I thank you for that.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. I’m struck by how you’ve described writing as a process of exploration and discovery—that’s exactly how it feels for me, too. Not a path toward certainty, but toward honesty, rhythm, intuition, and presence. A way of asking aloud: What am I really carrying? What haven’t I let myself say yet?
Your reflections on the shared experience of womanhood—that deep inner life, that sense of being slightly off-axis from what the world expects—ring so true. I think it’s in those invisible places that we often find one another, even across wildly different lives. And yes, the not-knowing, the questioning, the reaching toward understanding—maybe that’s what writing is, at its core. A gesture of connection, even when (especially when) we know it can never be complete.
Thanks,
Hiram Larew
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiram-larew-4031b411/recent-activity/all/
Thank you as always for being here and for reading.