Beyond the horizon, or even the knowledge, of the cities along the coast, a great, creative impulse is at work--the only thing, af...ter all, that gives this continent meaning and a guarantee of the future. Every Australian ought to climb up here, once in a way, and glimpse the various, manifold life of which he is a part.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We know what the animals do, what are the needs of the beaver, the bear, the salmon, and other creatures, because long ago men mar...ried them and acquired this knowledge from their animal wives. Today the priests say we lie, but we know better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"I'll love you dear, I'll love you Till China and Africa meet,... And the river jumps over the mountain And the salmon sing in the street.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If one had to worry about one's actions in respect of other people's ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or mar...ried to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A child is not a salmon mousse. A child is a temporarily disabled and stunted version of a larger person, whom you will someday kn...ow. Your job is to help them overcome the disabilities associated with their size and inexperience so that they get on with being that larger person.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He took him down below a cramping rafter, And showed him, through a manhole in the floor,... The water in desperate straits like frantic fish, Salmon and sturgeon, lashing with their tails.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I was a young girl salmon fishing with my father in the Straits of Juan de Fuca in Washington State I used to lean out over t...he water and try to look past my own face, past the reflection of the boat, past the sun and darkness, down to where the fish were surely swimming. I made up charm songs and word-hopes to tempt the fish, to cause them to mean biting my hook. I believed they would do it if I asked them well and patiently and with the right hope. I am writing my poems like this. I have used the fabric and the people of my life as the bait.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In frames as large as rooms that face all ways And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,... Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine Perpetually these sharply-pictured groves Of how life should be.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O to break loose, like the chinook salmon jumping and falling back,... nosing up to the impossible stone and bone-crushing waterfall--LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »