Out of Place Quotes

“The thing is to sift out
the important sounds, little syllables and vowels that bring
hints of their lost words, and not to mistake the fossil for
the life, or the kiss for the love, not to mistake the fragment
for the sentence.”
― Richard Jackson, Out of Place

“What escapes you, never leaves you. Everything is
a journey of trust. You have to have the kind of faith
the flame has for the candle, that the bird has for its wings.
Otherwise, our words have no destinations.
Otherwise, our words are snakes that swallow our souls.

—Richard Jackson, from “Isaac’s Consent,” Out of Place: Poems (Ashland Poetry Press, 2014)”
― Richard Jackson, Out of Place

“Light staggers through the trees.
Every moment is filled with other moments.”
― Richard Jackson, Out of Place

“We come from a place that has always
been inside us. Our words migrate helplessly. The world reflects
only itself. Which is why we have to create our own memories.”
― Richard Jackson, Out of Place

“This afternoon a flock of doves
settled on my porch. Their silence took the shape
of all I ever wanted to say. Today, the miracle
we want aches inside the trees. Why believe
anything except what is unbelievable?
[…] Now the leaves
turn into messages that are simply impossible to read.
The roots turn into roads as they break through
the surface. How can I even know what I mean?
Beneath the hem of night the rain falls asleep
on the grass. We have to turn into each other.
One heart inside the other’s heart. One love. One word.
Inside us, our shadows will walk into water,
the water will walk into the sky. Blind. Faithful.
Inside us the music turns into a flock of birds.
Theirs is a song whose promise we must believe
the way the moon believes the earth, the fire believes
the wood, that is, for no reason, for no reason at all.”
― Richard Jackson, Out of Place

“It is not hard to imagine how quickly
we’ll be forgotten. What endures is the idea we can
endure. We hang these stories on a few fragile
branches of memory.
                                           This is where you are
supposed to be addressed with allusions to
the particulars.
                                 We are alive because each of us
owns a word we keep trying to pronounce.
I must go in, the fog is rising, Dickinson said
before being “called home.” You’d think the rain
might mend a bruised heart.  We can’t even complete
the sentences of our lives.

—Richard Jackson, from “Endurance,” Out of Place: Poems (The Ashland Poetry Press, 2014)

 

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― Richard Jackson, Out of Place

“There’s the quivering branch the robin has just left.
Nothing is complete until we can see it. Even the trees
hold their breath. It may seem forever until you arrive.
There’s the prison of my shadow, these words which are
roadblocks, their elliptical emotions, the night’s refusals.

It may mean the dead need us, after all, to say the unsayable,
to hold in our hands a simple rose, to cup the wind, to feel
the endless longing the heart brings back from its inverted
world, a feeling that has no metaphor for what it is.

—Richard Jackson, closing lines to “My Many Disguises,” Out of Place: Poems (Ashland Poetry Press, 2014)”
― Richard Jackson, Out of Place

“This is why I have written you in here, hoping to find a way to change the meanings of these words, to say war but mean peace, death but mean life, hate but mean your love, nothing but everything you could possibly mean to be.

from “Misunderstood”
― Richard Jackson, Out of Place

“It doesn’t take much to blindfold the heart. How easy it is to adjust our eyes to the darkness in our own souls.”
― Richard Jackson, Out of Place

“One time, your heart almost slipped away on a river
barge. Your hands seemed to claw the sky. I’m sorry.
No one else made anything out of those streaked clouds.
The fact that it happened is proof enough for me.”
― Richard Jackson, Out of Place