Not Waving but Drowning

Drowning men, it is said, cling to wisps of straw.
-Fyodor Dostoevsky
 
Image: Arthur Siegel, Study of Negative/Positive Profiles, c.1937
Title: Stevie Smith

Something ineffable about the past

  Above all...I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.
   -Anselm Kiefer
 
Image: Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Box of Visions, 1938
Title: Susan Sontag

We live submerged

    Words carry oceans on their small backs.
 
    -Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water
 
Image: Graciela Iturbide, Eyes to Fly With?, Coyoacan, Mexico, 1991
Title: Evangelista Torricelli