Thurs,1st Feb | Feburay Started With Thunderstorms For Me, And Im Not Complaining. It Feels So Weird

I came across this special folio of poets from Gaza published by peripheries (an annual publication by Harvard Divinity School’s Center for the Study of World Religions). It was published in 2021 and edited by Tayseer Abu Odeh and Mosab Abu Toha. You can read the seven poets here.

Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

August 5, 1926 Journals of Anais Nin 1923-1927 [volume 3]

Bianca Stone, from What Is Otherwise Infinite: Poems; “Cutting Odette’s Fingernails”

We do not need to get rid of anger in order to give up hatred.

We do not need to renounce enjoyment in order to give up desire.

We do not need to neglect our safety in order to give up fear.

Cease to indulge the feelings that, while pretending to be necessary, actually destroy the world.

James Baldwin, If Beale Street Could Talk

(I’m the crazy one who thinks that words reach people)

Anne Sexton, from ‘A Self-Portrait in Letters’ ⁠— W. D. Snodgrass, 11th January 1959