The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse Quotes

“The entire corpus of Sappho’s work burned with the great Library of Alexandria, so today we know her only through the bits other writers quoted, shadows of Sappho cast on our cave wall. Time marbled silence throughout the texts, and those gaps, those cavities, beg readers to wonder them full, to complete the poet’s circuits of cognition – twenty-six centuries after they were made.”
― Kaveh Akbar, The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine

“As for poets, only the misguided follow them”
― Kaveh Akbar, The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine

“With not even a trace of self-doubt, you can trust the universe completely.”
― Kaveh Akbar, The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine

“Tao Te Ching China Translated by Ursula K. Le Guin Le Guin’s translation of Lao Tzu preserves the original’s crystalline clarity – we meet the language in motion, flowing, elemental, like laughter passing between friends, or water moving over land.”
― Kaveh Akbar, The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine

“yes! radiant lyre speak to me become a voice”
― Kaveh Akbar, The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 110 Poets on the Divine