Quotes from Eric Pankey

Edge of Things" I wait at the twilit edge of things, A dry spell spilling over into drought, The slippages of shadow silting in, The interchange of dusk to duskier, The half-dark turning half-again as dark. There: night enough to call it a good night. I wait for the resurrection, but wake to morning: Mist lifting off the river. Ladders in the orchard trees although the picking's done.

At the threshold of the divine, how to know But indirectly, to hear the static as Pattern, to hear the rough-edged white noise as song— Wait, not as song—but to intuit the songbird, Within the thorn thicket, safe, hidden there. Every moment is not a time for song or singing. — Eric Pankey, from "Ash," Crow-Work (Milkweed Editions, 2015)

When I say poetry changed the way I see the world I mean it taught me to be attentive, to be curious, to be empathic, to understand both the power and danger of language itself." —Eric Pankey on "What Poetry Changes