Astonishments Quotes

“I write in order to comprehend, not to express myself.”
― Anna Kamienska, Astonishments: Selected Poems

“I don’t write poetry when I wish, I write when I can’t, when my larynx is flooded and my throat is shut.”
― Anna Kamienska, Astonishments: Selected Poems

“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.”
― Anna Kamienska, Astonishments: Selected Poems

“Lack of Faith"

Yes,
even when I don’t believe—
there is a place in me
inaccessible to unbelief,
a patch of wild grace,
a stubborn preserve,
impenetrable,
pain untouched by the sleeping body,
music that builds its nest in silence.”
― Anna Kamieńska, Astonishments: Selected Poems

“I have hands full of this radiance. It flows through my fingers. It doesn't diminish.”
― Anna Kamieńska, Astonishments: Selected Poems

“To write incorporeal poems, almost without words. To approximate the impossible, where art disappears and the Word becomes.”
― Anna Kamieńska, Astonishments: Selected Poems

“A Path in the Woods from a New Name"

I don’t trust the truth of memories
because what leaves us
departs forever
There’s only one current of this sacred river
but I still want to remain faithful
to my first astonishments
to recognize as wisdom the child’s wonder
and to carry in myself until the end a path
in the woods of my childhood
dappled with patches of sunlight”
― Anna Kamieńska, Astonishments: Selected Poems

“The immense light. A state of inner emergency and waiting...This luminosity does not negate reason or any rational sense. It simply exists. A kind of poetic sensibility open to the world. To everything--grand and small.”
― Anna Kamieńska, Astonishments: Selected Poems

“Yes,
even when I don’t believe—
there is a place in me
inaccessible to unbelief,
a patch of wild grace,
a stubborn preserve,
impenetrable,
pain untouched by the sleeping body,
music that builds its nest in silence.

— Anna Kamienska, “Lack of Faith,” Astonishments: Selected Poems of Anna Kamienska. Paraclete Press (MA); First Edition edition July 1, 2007) Originally published 2007.”
― Anna Kamieńska, Astonishments: Selected Poems