“We only want to forget the forked lightning.”

Condensing the desire to escape a painful and disruptive past into a vivid image · Memoir, End to Torment

• Imagery
• Memory
• Suffering

“The years were immaterial. He liked my light summer dresses. Ezra was not consciously a love-image. But he lurked there, hid there, under the years.”

Reflecting on how an early attachment can remain hidden beneath decades of later experience · Memoir, End to Torment

• Love
• Memory
• Time

“No, my poetry was not dead but it was built on or around the crater of an extinct volcano.”

Describing creativity surviving around the remains of profound emotional upheaval · Memoir, End to Torment

• Creativity
• Memory
• Poetry

“Memory is the mother, begetter of all drama, idea, music, science or song.”

Presenting memory as the source from which creative and intellectual life emerges · Essay, Notes on Thought and Vision

• Art
• Creativity
• Memory

“Maybe the loss of Ezra left a vacuum; anyway, Frances filled it like a blue flame.”

A vivid recollection of how one intense relationship followed another · Memoir, End to Torment

• Loss
• Love
• Memory