#yanyi

[feral-ballad]

Yanyi, from Dream of the Divided Field: Poems; “The Friend”

[Text ID: “stop fighting, but I am not / fighting. I am noticing / where I don’t exist. / I should leave.”]

[oresti-s]

The Year of Blue Water, Yanyi.

[firstfullmoon]

There is nothing quite as lovely as after the winter solstice, the days getting longer, and the sun of spring wrapping a glove over the room. The room which is sometimes a kitchen, a classroom, a place to sleep. I can’t stop singing praises of this daily peace, this wash of visibility.

Yanyi, from “Lengthening, Rites,” in Dream of the Divided Field

[havingapoemwithyou]

lengthening, rites by Yanyi

[smokefalls]

I wanted to be worth Love’s time but I was not / ready.

Yanyi, "Ambulance! Ambulance!" from Dream of the Divided Field

[kitchen-light]

For me, poetry is an artifact of a sacred experience. It is not the poems that matter. They are maps, crudely drawn, of the deeper thing. And so much of it is beyond, and will forever be beyond. What I love in writing is the attempt: the practice of drawing closer with all of my being.

Yanyi, from “Interview with Yanyi, the 2023 Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize judge”, published in Passages North, March 29, 2023

[litandlifequotes]

What keeps me? Is it devotion or addiction?

"Affirmation" by Yanyi

[mvvocaloidgifs]

【苍穹·墨清弦·章楚楚原创曲】Hysteria【SinghP】

[romanticbroadcast]

What keeps me?

Is it devotion or addiction?

Is it the need for intimacy,

or the proof that I can survive

some kind of violence?

— Yanyi, Dream of the Divided Field

[windblown-wanderlust]

yanyi, the year of blue water

[noodledesk]

That is, the impulse to scrub a sentence is the same one that compels a child to hide a bad grade under the couch. Perhaps you want to hide the parts of you that aren’t talented, that aren’t naturally good—the parts that can’t go from zero to a hundred in three seconds flat. Did your caretakers expect you to be like this, when you were young? Trace the feelings of impatience with yourself. Who told you to hurry up when you weren’t getting it fast enough—enough that it seemed no longer worth it to carry on with the things that weren’t fast? What makes you feel like you’re not fast enough?

Your writing process can reflect the way you treat yourself. What parts of your writing do you wish you could leave behind? The parts that you don’t want to admit live inside you, that may even help your process feel a little freer or enjoyable? You could seem more genius, more desirable to some parties, when you erase everything between the equation and the answer. But every artist has a process. Every person takes a bit of living between their best ideas and what they execute. You don’t have to be exceptional to make exceptional art. You don’t have to be exceptional to be loved—or to love yourself.

[feral-ballad]

Yanyi, from Dream of the Divided Field: Poems; “Paradise, Lost”

[Text ID: “I want to be beautiful/ and a part of this earth.”]

[oresti-s]

The Year of Blue Water, Yanyi.

[estathom]

[havingapoemwithyou]

detail by Yanyi

[smokefalls]

And I have to live with my love. It is almost more painful than the pain itself.

Yanyi, "The Cliff" from Dream of the Divided Field