Quotes from Rachel Zucker

a woman with young children is not a woman but a mammal, salve, croon, water carrier

as I travel the city / hating poetry & my haircut & all the things I do not / want to do

Even if a poem is beautiful and memorable, it's not like an advertising jingle or propaganda, which attempt to convince and control. Poems seek to confuse, disabuse, enlarge understanding, and make people ask questions and think for themselves.

I have no lover, not even my love. I have no other, not even I.

That a dream is not reason to evacuate.

Letter [December to Persephone] Am I the only one to notice the soft layer of haze above snow? You say you see butterflies in the skeleton pelvis, well, what about the larger hand of the clock? Or a cauldron for boiling water? Did you, do you ever stop falling?" I repeat your name a word it almost means nothing Do you remember encyclopedias? I piled up the books so you could reach the table. Now the only way to recall you is the shape of your walking away.

The online tarot reading says she already has everything she needs. So, she gets quiet. When the phone rings she doesn't answer it. She makes a list of the things she thinks she lacks but might require: the ability to draw, a career as a singer . . . The list or the making of the list is unendurable.

In high school my mother advised me to make my last lines into titles. It was very good advice.

One of my greatest anxieties as a mother is head injuries.

My poetry definitely comes out of a female body.

I agree that comedy does a good job - and is often about - stepping over the line - Lenny Bruce, etc. - and that this is important for a lot of poets too. I guess I feel like there has to be depth.

Very little of my time is spent thinking about poetry, except the time I spend in class.

Penises are literally all around me all the time, and have a lot of influence on the world, on my world.

I love food too much - not because I'm fat but because it's so consumptionistic, etc.

I love it when artists talk about process! I love the movie Comedian.

I love narrative and sometimes I feel frustrated with stand-up.

I am only able to be honest. And sometimes my view of the world is pretty dark. But still funny.

Humor is essential to survival. Funny poems are vastly underrated. Very underwritten.