Duende Quotes

“Like a god, / I believe in nothing.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“There are ways of entering the dream / The way a painter enters a studio: / To spill.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“And it's not the future their eyes see,
But history. It stretches
Like a dry road uphill before them.

They climb it.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“What's heavy
Grounds us to the world.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“Somewhere in every life there is a line.
One side to the other and you are gone.
Not disappeared, but undone.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“If I lean unbuttoned into the blow
Of loss after loss, love tossed
Into the ecstatic void--
It carries me with it farther,
To chords that stretch and bend
Like light through colored glass.
But it races on, toward shadows
Where the world I know
And the world I fear
Threaten to meet.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“The point is, you won't necessarily know
Whether you're living a science fiction reality.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“I am not
What you intend me to be.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“Who can say the word love

When everything--everything--pushes back with the promise
To grind itself to dust?”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“Why

Do we insist our lives are ours?”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“What does living do to any of us?”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“Sometimes this poem tells itself nothing matters,
All's a joke. Relax, it says, everything's
Taken care of.

(A poem can lie.)”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“There is a We in this poem
To which everyone belongs.

As in We the People--
In order to form a more perfect Union--

And: We were objects of much curiosity
To the Indians--

And: The next we present before you
Are things very appalling--

And: We find we are living, suffering, loving,
Dying a story. We had not known otherwise--

We's a huckster, trickster, has pluck.
We will draw you in.”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende

“(A poem can lie.)”
― Tracy K. Smith, Duende