Anne Michaels
Anne Michaels
Anne Michaelsis a Canadian poet and novelist. Michaels is the current poet laureate of Toronto, Canada. She is perhaps best known for her novel Fugitive Pieces which was adapted for film in 2007...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth15 April 1958
CountryCanada
heart thinking blood
Once I was lost in a forest. I was so afraid. My blood pounded in my chest and I knew my heart's strength would soon be exhausted. I saved myself without thinking. I grasped the two syllables closest to me, and replaced my heartbeat with your name.
memories weather tree
Trees for example, carry the memory of rainfal. In their rings we read ancient weather - storms, sunlight and temperatures, the growing seasons of centuries. A forest shares a history which each tree remembers even after it has been felled.
teacher retirement heart
The best teacher lodges an intent not in the mind but in the heart.
strong children past
Even as a child, even as my blood-past was drained from me, I understood that if I were strong enough to accept it, I was being offered a second history.
war stalking contradiction
Though the contradictions of war seem sudden and simultaneous, history stalks before it strikes. Something tolerated soon becomes something good.
children believe grief
There's a moment when love makes you believe in death for the first time. You recognize the one whose loss, even contemplated, you'll carry forever, like a sleeping child. All grief, anyone's grief...is the weight of a sleeping child.
running mistake wine
The spirit in the body is like wine in a glass; when it spills, it seeps into air and earth and light….It’s a mistake to think it’s the small things we control and not the large, it’s the other way around! We can’t stop the small accident, the tiny detail that conspires into fate: the extra moment you run back for something forgotten, a moment that saves you from an accident – or causes one. But we can assert the largest order, the large human values daily, the only order large enough to see.
memories two space
History and memory share events; that is, they share time and space. Every moment is two moments.
instant
History is the gradual instant
giving needs
I see that I must give what I most need.
path depth ascent
It is not a person’s depth you must discover, but their ascent. Find their path from depth to ascent.
psychological hiding share
To share a hiding place, physical or psychological, is as intimate as love.