Elizabeth Alexander Quotes & Sayings

Soon the two children will walk down Edgehill Road from the bus stop like burros under their knapsacks, — Elizabeth Alexander

The basket of remembrance has three sides; one is open, can it tilt and spill out? — Elizabeth Alexander

Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry
is where we are ourselves,
(though Sterling Brown said
"Every 'I' is a dramatic 'I'")
digging in the clam flats
for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.
Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)
is not all love, love, love
and I'm sorry the dog died.
Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,
and are we not of interest to each other? — Elizabeth Alexander

Friendship in marriage is its own thing: friendship in a cup of tea, or a glass of wine, or a cappuccino every Sunday morning. Friendship in buying undershirts and underpants. Friendship in picking up a prescription or rescuing the towed car. Friendship in waiting for the phone call after the mammogram. Friendship in toast buttered just so. Friendship in shoveling the snow. I am the one you want to tell. You are the one I want to tell. — Elizabeth Alexander

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp
praise song for walking forward in that light. — Elizabeth Alexander

There will always be children and there will always be old people. We spend most of our lives somewhere in between. When we produce the children, we get to be royalty for a short while
the world pulls out its chair for the pregnant woman
but soon we are once again worker bees, tending the little ones. — Elizabeth Alexander

They shared an unshakeable belief in beauty, in overflow, in everythingness, the bursting, indelible beauty in a world where there is so much suffering and wounding and pain. — Elizabeth Alexander

Using the voice is a physical act, one that first announces the existence of the body of residence and then trumpets its arrival in a public space. — Elizabeth Alexander

The story seems to begin with catastrophe but in fact began earlier and is not a tragedy but rather a love story. Perhaps tragedies are only tragedies in the presence of love, which confers meaning to loss. Loss is not felt in the absence of love. — Elizabeth Alexander

My mother-in-law's last night on earth, a fox crossed our path in Branford, Connecticut, as we left the hospice. We knew somehow that it was her, as I now know the ravenous hawk came to take Ficre. Do I believe that? Yes, I do. Poetic logic is my logic. I do not believe she was a fox. But I believe the fox was a harbinger. I believe that it was a strange enough occurrence that it should be heeded. Zememesh Berhe, the quick, red fox, soon passed from this life to the next. — Elizabeth Alexander

It's a fact: black people in this country die more easily, at all ages, across genders. Look at how young black men die, and how middle-aged black men drop dead, and how black women are ravaged by HIV/AIDS. The numbers graft to poverty but they also graph to stresses known and invisible. How did we come here, after all? Not with upturned chins and bright eyes but rather in chains, across a chasm. But what did we do? We built a nation, and we built its art. — Elizabeth Alexander

Now I know my capacity for awe
is infinite: this thirst is permanent,
the well bottomless, my good fortune vast. — Elizabeth Alexander

Henry Ford believed the soul of a person is located in their last breath and so captured the last breath of his best friend Thomas Edison in a test tube and kept it evermore. It is on display at the Henry Ford Museum outside Detroit, like Galileo's finger in the church of Santa Croce, but Edison's last breath is an invisible relic. — Elizabeth Alexander

In all marriages there is struggle and ours was no different in that regard. But we always came to the other shore, dusted off, and said, There you are, my love. — Elizabeth Alexander

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,
overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way
to get from here to there. — Elizabeth Alexander

I been in sorrow's kitchen and done licked out all the pots. Nobody knows the trouble I seen. Steal away to Jesus. I ain't got long to stay here. — Elizabeth Alexander

Art replaces the light that is lost when the day fades, the moment passes, the evanescent extraordinary makes its quicksilver. Art tries to capture that which we know leaves us, as we move in and out of each other's lives, as we all must eventually leave this earth. Great artists know that shadow, work always against the dying light, but always knowing that the day brings new light and that the ocean which washes away all traces on the sand leaves us a new canvas with each wave. — Elizabeth Alexander

I have not yet learned to use our television DVR. One of the points of marriage is that you split labor. In the olden days that meant one hunted and one gathered; now it means one knows where the tea-towels are kept and the other knows how to program the DVR, for why should we both have to know? — Elizabeth Alexander

In the absence of organized religion, faith abounds, in the form of song and art and food and strong arms. — Elizabeth Alexander

It happened; it is part of who we are; it is our beauty and our terror. We must be gleaners from what life has set before us. — Elizabeth Alexander

Half of the things are as they seem. The other half, who knows. This has always been true. — Elizabeth Alexander

Now I know for sure the soul is an evanescent thing and the body is its temporary container, because I saw it. I saw the body with the soul in it, I saw the body with the soul leaving, and I saw the body with the soul gone. — Elizabeth Alexander

The days are long but the years are short," some say, about the early years of child rearing — Elizabeth Alexander

every shut eye ain't asleep, every goodbye ain't gone. — Elizabeth Alexander

Everything was told! Then we could begin something new. — Elizabeth Alexander

Each of us made it possible for the other. We got something done. Each believed in the other unsurpassingly. — Elizabeth Alexander