Daphne Gottlieb Quotes & Sayings

Someone Should Write Me a Love Poem but I'm Stuck Doing It Myself — Daphne Gottlieb

Poetry is a lousy form of activism; it doesn't really change much. And maybe we can point to one or two historical times when a poem has started a revolution or a rebellion or an uprising, but it doesn't happen that often, and if you put the number of poems next to the number of political acts, it would be pretty slim. — Daphne Gottlieb

I'm entranced by the idea of reading the culture back to itself, because I'm conscious that we as people and also as a culture are myth-making machines. So I'm interested in a resistance to that: What we can bend, what we can break. — Daphne Gottlieb

Fuck yr heroes, I'm saving myself. — Daphne Gottlieb

In a field. With the moon.
And the dark. And the dirt.
With your mouth. And just one word:
god god god. — Daphne Gottlieb

I think that I have less conviction than ever that poetry matters - that poetry changes or saves anything or anyone. But, in fact, that's tremendously freeing. If it doesn't matter much, the stakes are lower and you can't really fail. It's insurrection. It's a tiny alphabet revolution. A secret. A psalm. — Daphne Gottlieb

I go in and out of season. I won't write for months, and then all of a sudden, I'll write like I've got a fever. — Daphne Gottlieb

I was 14 and madly in love for the first time. He was 21. He made me suddenly, unaccustomedly beautiful with his kisses and mix tapes. During the year of elation and longing, he never mentioned that he had a girlfriend who lived across the street. — Daphne Gottlieb

I go through periods of not writing. Until there's something I can't find in the world that I need, so I write. — Daphne Gottlieb

Hypothesis: To burn and not consume.
Hypothesis: To consume and not extinguish. — Daphne Gottlieb

The frightening truth about desire
it's on but
i don't know
whether i want
to be
her, fuck her
or borrow
her clothes. — Daphne Gottlieb

Come back so i can say yes this time do it again now that i know what to call what you did
this time i'll be ready i like it rough now and i'm done with romance i never met another man who loved me so much at first sight he had to hurt me to do it — Daphne Gottlieb

That's point of writing: building what you need, right? — Daphne Gottlieb

There is nothing going on. I took nothing you wanted. You can't have it back. — Daphne Gottlieb

All the black leather
she needs

is the E-Z boy recliner
where her love is parked

with one of his hands wrapped around a remote,
the other, a bottle of beer.

She's right. It's kinky.
The way he doesn't look away

from the TV,
as her head bobs

in his lap
like a fisherman's float

on a nature program,
hectic

with the pace
his breath sets.

His crotch swells
under her mouth's

prowess. He's such
a sweetheart

he waits
until the

commercials
to come. — Daphne Gottlieb

I'm not a girl anymore, I'm a woman and my heart beats like prizefighter's fists, and I have not stopped yet, I will not stop. — Daphne Gottlieb

As she bends for a Kleenex in the dark, I am thinking of other girls: the girl I loved who fell in love with a lion
she lost her head over it
we just necked a lot; of the girl who fell in love with the tightrope, got addicted to getting high wired and nothing else was enough; all the beautiful, damaged women who have come through my life and I wonder what would have happened if I'd met them sooner, what they were like before they were so badly wounded. All this time I thought I'd been kissing, but maybe I'm always doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, kissing dead girls in hopes that the heart will start again. Where there's breath, I've heard, there's hope. — Daphne Gottlieb

The thing about superheroes is that they don't have problems, right? A feminist hooker superhero wouldn't have to worry about assault, or pregnancy, or poverty, or disease, or eating and shelter, or police. In order to make her a superhero, you have to divorce her of the very context that makes her story possible. You have to gloss over the trauma. — Daphne Gottlieb

I write to make sense of things that don't make sense to me. — Daphne Gottlieb

I think that hope is the act of continuing in the face of the truth. — Daphne Gottlieb

You can take this mouth this wound you want but you can't kiss and make it better. — Daphne Gottlieb