The Book Of Nightmares Quotes

“And yet perhaps this is the reason you cry,
this the nightmare you wake screaming from:
being forever
in the pre-trembling of a house that falls.”
― Galway Kinnell, The Book Of Nightmares: A Landmark Visionary Poem in Ten Parts and American Poetry Masterpiece

“I have no one to turn to because God is my enemy. He gave me lust and joy and cut off my hands. My brain is smothered with his blood. I asked why I should love this body I fear. He said, 'It is so lordly, it can never be shaped again--dear, shining casket. Have you never been so proud of a thing you wanted it for your prey?”
― Galway Kinnell, The Book Of Nightmares: A Landmark Visionary Poem in Ten Parts and American Poetry Masterpiece

“poor fool,
poor forked branch
of applewood, you will feel all your bones break
over the holy waters you will never drink.”
― Galway Kinnell, The Book Of Nightmares: A Landmark Visionary Poem in Ten Parts and American Poetry Masterpiece

“When I sleepwalk
into your room, and pick you up,
and hold you up in the moonlight, you cling to me hard,
as if clinging could save us. I think
you think
I will never die, I think I exude
to you the permanence of smoke or stars,
even as
my broken arms heal themselves around you.”
― Galway Kinnell, The Book Of Nightmares: A Landmark Visionary Poem in Ten Parts and American Poetry Masterpiece