Quote of the Day (Conrad Aiken, on Seeking an Elusive Word or Name)

“You know, without my telling you, how sometimes
     A word or name eludes you, and you seek it
     Through running ghosts of shadow,—leaping at it,
     Lying in wait for it to spring upon it,
     Spreading faint snares for it of sense or sound:
     Until, of a sudden, as if in a phantom forest,
     You hear it, see it flash among the branches,
     And scarcely knowing how, suddenly have it.”— American Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, short-story writer, novelist, and critic Conrad Aiken (1889-1973), The House of Dust: A Symphony (1920)