“What are their bodies made of, rock or iron to block / your tearing bronze? Stab them! Stab their flesh” – Homer, The Iliad

“Rage—Goddess, sing the rage…” – Homer, ‘The Iliad’

“I am a philosopher of sandwiches, he decided…And for a moment the frailest leaves of life contained him in a widening happiness.” – Anne Carson ‘Autobiography of Red’

“I don’t mean to say this shit was no thing. I lived through / your basic fistfight underwater, a tryst with destruction” – ‘Beowulf’ translated by Maria Dahvana Headley

“Another way in my ever-expanding / list of ways to feel less American. // Which is to say, elegant in the face of / my boorishness.” – Alina Pleskova, “ALIGHT”

“Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is the hero…” – Raymond Chandler, “The Simple Art of Murder”

“How can a century or a heart turn / if nobody asks, Where have all / the Natives gone?” – Natalie Diaz, “Manhattan Is a Lenape Word”

“Know? I know I’m a writer now.” – Sherley Anne Williams, asked “when did you first know you were a writer?” by Claudia Tate

“I want you like that—enough to gnash you / into a silence made from pieces of silver.” – Natalie Diaz, “Toward the Amaranth Gates of War or Love”

“Flushed and ashamed, / the moon, put back / in the wrong sky, left.” – Diannely Antigua, “Strawberry Moon”