I take an interest in attitudes of kindness towards that which we find unbearable, particularly regarding ourselves. That the unbearable can become a gift, a material, a something that does not need to be discarded or turned away from, seems significant to me. We need an illogical substance in this turning/task, something I might call “recalcitrant gentleness.” In daring to apply this sort of orientation to our own histories and those of others, we have need of revised forms of realism and representation. We must make writing more prismatic and multisensory, combinatory and irreducible, porous and deep, vibratory and timely, young and old, all at once. The hope is to train an inner ear that isn’t an ear, per se. This is an “ear” that hears paradox.

Lucy Ives, Three Six Five: Prompts, Acts, Divinations