Quotes from Anna Kamienska

This morning I suddenly catch myself: I'm not there, I'm so lost in thought, I don't know what's going on around me. Can you think yourself to death?

My poems are more my silence than my speech. Just as music is a kind of quiet. Sounds are needed only to unveil the various layers of silence.

Tell me what's the difference

I don't write poetry when I wish, I write when I can't, when my larynx is flooded and my throat is shut.

Tell me what's the difference between hope and waiting because my heart doesn't know It constantly cuts itself on the glass of waiting It constantly gets lost in the fog of hope

Tell me what's the difference between hope and waiting because my heart doesn't know It constantly cuts itself on the glass of waiting It constantly gets lost in the fog of hope

I write in order to comprehend, not to express myself.

Where your pain is, there your heart lies also.

I've learned to value failed conversations, missed connections, confusions. What remains is what's unsaid, what's underneath. Understanding on another level of being.

I don't write poetry when I wish, I write when I can't, when my larynx is flooded and my throat is shut.

I returned to confirm there can be no return.

My poems are more my silence than my speech. Just as music is a kind of quiet. Sounds are needed only to unveil the various layers of silence.

Letters of the condemned. Last words scratched on a cell's wall. To write like that.

No home anymore. Nowhere to return. My house is a ruin, a cemetery. You may yearn for the grave, but just try living there.

The way a source strains toward the light, toward the air. Its laboring work, its effort, its black passageways like despair. That's the way a poet looks for words. With muscles, gestures.

Poetry is a presentiment of the truth.

I am that which lies beyond time. Like a melody, which sounds completely only after the last note is played.

Poetry is a presentiment of the truth.

We cling to words like drowning men to straws. But still we drown, we drown.