Bluets
Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color . . .
A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists.
Maggie Nelson is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, including Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007). She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts.
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Community Reviews
this book has a lot of beautiful moments, and i like the philosophical questions she presents about our personal perceptions, god and worship (not necessarily in a religious way), and what makes life worth living. itâs an interesting concept, and the passion seeps through. the ratio of references to actual writing made it feel more like a tumblr post than an original work at times, though i believe this was published early enough that tumblr may not have even existed yet.
the most boring parts to me were actually about the love and heartbreak. the liberal use of the word fuck felt like she was trying to be edgy rather than feeling more authentic. and her writing about lost love was some of the least interesting and poetic.
rating: 3 stars
category: prose poetry
the most boring parts to me were actually about the love and heartbreak. the liberal use of the word fuck felt like she was trying to be edgy rather than feeling more authentic. and her writing about lost love was some of the least interesting and poetic.
rating: 3 stars
category: prose poetry
Part treatise, part love letter, part cry for help, this short novella/long poem would be better suited as an off-broadway interpretive dance accompanied by a monk plucking a sitar in a corner somewhere. I do hope that she gets over the "Prince of Blue". Sounds like he really threw her through the ringer, which I can relate to and totally understand the resulting journal entries that are oh so tempting to share on open mic night at your local hipster café. But I find public self-flagellation a tad gauche. This journal was not my cup of tea, but surely it's someone's. Someone into modern art and Steve Jobs sweaters, maybe.
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