Rachel Kulik

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all.” —Søren Kierkegaard

What are your left-hand pages—the pages you avoid, rescind, or altogether abandon? What nascent knowledge exists there? What would it mean to etch these pages into some kind of existence? What does it mean to turn and return to an idea and what accumulates in the act of turning?

The thing is, I really like saying yes. I like new things, projects, plans, getting people together and doing something, trying something, even when it’s corny or stupid. I am not good at saying no. And I do not get along with people who say no. When you die, and it really could be this afternoon, under the same bus wheels I’ll stick my head if... See more

The point isn’t to dissociate or detach yourself from desires—it’s the opposite. It’s to attach yourself to a goal so firmly that distractions no longer matter. It’s to care about one thing so adamantly that noise is no longer distracting. Focus is the crucible of becoming.

Some good creative advice from the Bhagavad Gita : “It is better to do your own duty / badly than to perfectly do / another’s....”

Poetry, rather than reason or logic, seems to follow more closely the unregulated movement of a wandering mind.

Modern and contemporary poetry, certainly from Gertrude Stein on, embraced this kind of linguistic fracture, that centers less on a singular meaning than a multiplicity of connections.

Like a dream, a poem is an other-space where imagination is unbound. Like a question, a poem supposes uncertainty. Some dreams, and perhaps some poems, inspire us to act. In Muse & Drudge , I wrote, “I dream a world / and then what.”

Harryette Mullen: Dreams, poems, and questions are opportunities to look for meaning. I wanted to begin this book with questions rather than declarations.