“Because most people are not sufficiently employed in themselves, they run about loose, hungering for employment, and satisfy themselves in various supererogatory occupations. The easiest of these occupations, which have all to do with making things already made, is the making of people: it is called the art of friendship.”
Laura Riding“Take hands.There is no love now.But there are hands.There is no joining now,But a joining has beenOf the fastening of fingersAnd their opening.More than the clasp even, the kissSpeaks loneliness,How we dwell apart,And how love triumphs in this.”
Laura Riding Jackson, The Poems of Laura Riding: A Newly Revised Edition of the 1938/1980 Collection“The end of poetry is not to create a physical condition which shall give pleasure to the mind... The end of poetry is not an after-effect, not a pleasurable memory of itself, but an immediate, constant and even unpleasant insistence upon itself.”
Laura Riding“To a poet the mere making of a poem can seem to solve the problem of truth, but only a problem of art is solved in poetry.”
Laura Riding“Because most people are not sufficiently employed in themselves, they run about loose, hungering for employment, and satisfy themselves in various supererogatory occupations. The easiest of these occupations, which have all to do with making things already made, is the making of people: it is called the art of friendship.”
Laura Riding