SWWIM sustains and celebrates women poets by connecting creatives across generations and by curating a living archive of contemporary poetry, while solidifying Miami as a nexus for the literary arts.

Pantoum with Lines from Virginia Woolf's Diary

 

Truth is, one can’t write about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes.

Why have I so little control?

One wants to finish sentences.

To go adventuring on the streams of other people’s lives.

 

Why have I so little control?

This is the normal feeling, I think.

To go adventuring on the streams of other people’s lives.

I take a census of happy people, and unhappy.

 

This is the normal feeling, I think.

Happiness is a little string onto which things will attach. 

I take a census of happy people, and unhappy. 

How Vita’s inkpot flowered on her table.

 

Happiness is a little string onto which things will attach.

How can I express the darkness?

How Vita’s inkpot flowered on her table?

Shall I remember any of this?

 

How can I express the darkness?

At this moment, all we wish is to escape seeing.

Shall I remember any of this?

I am repeating things.

 

At this moment, all we wish is to escape seeing.

The world swinging round again, bringing its greens and blues.

I am repeating things.

My pen protests. This writing is nonsense, it says.

 

The world swinging round again, bringing its greens and blues.

Time flaps on the mast—my own phrase.

My pen protests. This writing is nonsense, it says.

But what little I can get down with my pen.

 

Time flaps on the mast—my own phrase.

Winter has set in. Draw the curtains, light the fire, and so to work.

But what little I can get down with my pen.

I am giving up the hope of being well dressed.

 

Winter has set in. Draw the curtains, light the fire, and so to work.

Truth is, one can’t write about the soul. Looked at, it vanishes.

I am giving up the hope of being well dressed. 

One wants to finish sentences.

Source: The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume 3. 1925-1930. Edited by Anne Olivier Bell

 

Angela Narciso Torres’s poetry collection, Blood Orange, won the Willow Books Literature Award. Recent work appears in Nimrod, Spoon River Poetry Review, Jet Fuel Review, and Water~Stone Review. A graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA Program, Angela has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she serves as a poetry editor for RHINO and a reader for New England Review. See www.angelanarcisotorres.com.

Paisley

Catholicism on the Ground