exile

1. E: What's a foreigner?
M: It's someone who comes from somewhere else.
E: You're a foreigner! You come from Connecticut!

2. "Until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves." --Adrienne Rich

3. Drastically paraphrased from HG Gadamer and J Risser: Living language is transformative. Poetry can create a "hold upon nearness" because it is always turning back to language, that mother tongue that mediates between the familiar and the foreign. Because the poet is always leaving in search of understanding, she is always "exiled from self-understanding." One who has no roots is always wandering, and one who wanders is errant, astray. HGG says we can't understand unless we're errant. Derrida said maybe it is only foreigners who are guileless enough to ask the real questions.

4. John Logan: "Poetry is an anonymous reaching out."

5.
"...Everything is as I left it.
Dinner simmers on the stove.
Glass bowls wait to be filled
with gold broth. Springs of parsley
on the cutting board.
I want to smell this rich soup, the air
around me going dark, as stars press
their simple shapes into the sky.
I want to stay on the back porch
while the world tilts
toward sleep, until what I love
misses me, and calls me in."

--from Dorianne Laux's "On the Back Porch"