markson notes

Of the many languages that arose among humankind over the centuries, most never developed a written form.

It’s been estimated that Sappho wrote about 10,000 lines of poetry, but only 600 lines or so remain, many just single words on papyri fragments. Whole scrolls of Sappho’s poetry were lost to the fire that destroyed the library at Alexandria in 48 BCE.

“View du Boulevard du Temple” (1838) by Louis Daguerre is thought to be the first photograph wherein a living person is present. A small dark figure on the street in the early morning appears to be getting his boots polished. The person doing the polishing is obscured by the blur of the motions he was making during the long exposure, and by his lower station in life.

love over

A love poem must have an undercurrent of loss.

went through

Only one thing remained reachable, close and secure amid all losses: language. Yes, language. In spite of everything, it remained secure against loss. But it had to go through its own lack of answers, through terrifying silence, through the thousand darknesses of murderous speech. It went through. It gave me no words for what was happening, but went through it. Went through and could resurface, 'enriched‎’ by it all.

In this language I tried, during those years and the years after, to write poems: in order to speak, to orient myself, to find out where I was, where I was going, to chart my reality.

—Paul Celan, "Edgar Jené and The Dream About The Dream," Collected Prose (Carcanet, 1986), translated by Rosmarie Waldrop

ingathers only to disgorge

The poem is reservoir for anything, for everything, only to become font of life, love and loss.

to lose your notebook

To lose your notebook feels as though a vital organ has been taken from your body.