“Poetry is what is unsayable. To blurt out what is unsayable is to ignore this fundamental premise.” – Lee Seong-bok, ‘Indeterminate Inflorescence: lectures on poetry’

“How white everything was, from / neighbors to church, to storybooks— / like on cloudy days when / the sky is all glare.” – Han VanderHart, “Partial List of Hauntings”

“Let’s read some poetry!” – Fergie, probably, if AWP had a national anthem portion

“Look, Annie, look—there is no space for anything but dreaming.” – Aimee Bender, “The Rememberer”

“We’ll write a riff, and it’s a sick riff, so it’s guaranteed that the song will be at least interesting to some extent, because you have the sick riff.” – Yvette Young, interviewed

“This is hardly science, but only a fairy tale, a critic wrote, shortly after the book on the earth’s systemic interconnectedness…” – Angela Woodward, ‘Natural Wonders’

“We are all wounded by racism…None of us, black or white, wants to feel the pain that racism has caused. But when you feel it, you’re awake.” – Toi Derricotte, ‘The Black Notebooks’

“…joy is the mostly invisible, the underground union between us, you and me…” – Ross Gay, ‘The Book of Delights’

“The National Anthem vampires at the blood. / I am a uniform. Not brusque. I bray” Gwendolyn Brooks, “Riders To The Blood-Red Wrath”

“If we feel deeply, and we encourage ourselves and others to feel deeply, we will find the germ of our answers to bring about change…” – Audre Lorde, in conversation with Claudia Tate