Literary Birthday – 26 January – Susan Griffin

Happy Birthday, Susan Griffin, born 26 January 1943.

Quotes

A story is told as much by silence as by speech.
I think artists can go to a level of vision that can often save us from a situation which seems to have no solution whatsoever.
Each time I write, each time the authentic words break through, I am changed. The older order that I was collapses and dies. I lose control. I do not know exactly what words will appear on the page. I follow language. I follow the sound of the words, and I am surprised and transformed by what I record.
Poetry is a good medium for revolutionary hope.
Before a secret is told, one can often feel the weight of it in the atmosphere.
I love that moment in writing when language falls short. There is something more there. A larger body. Even by the failure of words I begin to detect its dimensions. As I work the prose, shift the verbs, look for new adjectives, a different rhythm, syntax, something new begins to come to the surface.
The mind can forget what the body, defined by each breath, subject to the heart beating, does not.

Susan Griffin is an award-winning American poet, writer, essayist, and playwright. She has written nineteen books, including A Chorus of Stones, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.