Reviews
Read for the first time on the beaches of Mexico. Felt something.
hm. i expected more from this honestly, saw a recommendation and set high expectations for it, sad to say i'm disappointed. the writing is really good i must say! the idea is also interesting, but i found it underwhelming for the most part, blunt language didn't really help. some good quotes though.
four stars because i’m always a sucker for unconventional prose coming from poets.
i like how the book was structured, which i guess is it’s strongest point. this Guardian review said it best: “The fragments are arranged neither chronologically nor thematically, but according to a poetic, bittersweet logic of their own.”
it’s that internal logic that is also a practice of humility as a reader. i think that as a reader, we’re trained to dissect and spread the material out in order to understand it, taking it piece by piece, part by part, and lay each segment on the table to craft our own story about it. like we’re csi doctors in a lab coat conducting an autopsy or a vulture assessing the best parts of the carcass. but you can only do that when you have familiarity or knowledge of the structure. how can you cleanly slice through bones if you know the skeleton diba? so here, where the skeleton of the book is unknown to us, it’s practically a rollercoaster ride, a challenge to just hold on, accept, and experience. it’s especially fun seeing how there’ll be moments of mirrored experiences in the book.
tl;dr: parang you don’t know how it works but you do know what it’s about. good luck replicating it (this is a challenge not to).
Writing is good but overall seems self-indulgent and dissonant, not worth the hype imo
there’s something incredibly blunt and sharp about the way maggie nelson writes, how she weaves each story over and under, again and again. i dont know if i like it but i know i was intrigued enough to hope for a definitive, clear-cut ending, for the sake of the voice, despite knowing there will be none. i think what i like most about her writing is the way she interprets and finds nuance in the mundane but also in the profound. in the book, she uses texts from other authors and paintings from artists, to describe loneliness, desire, grief etc etc. but she also uses anecdotes from her quadraparalytic friend to describe it and come to the same conclusion. what i dont like about her writing is more of MY skill issue than anything else; she’s incredibly verbose, and i read these at night.
"Does the world look bluer from blue eyes?"
as a blue-eyed person, i wish that was the case; maybe then reading this wouldn’t feel like rummaging through a vulgarly giant pile of impossibly washed-out blue-tinted trinkets by the sea shore to me. but this speck of dust is golden:
"Loneliness is solitude with a problem. Can blue solve the problem, or can it at least keep me company within it?—No, not exactly. It cannot love me that way; it has no arms. But sometimes I do feel its presence to be a sort of wink—Here you are again, it says, and so am I."
green has arms, i know the softness of its embrace
imagine loving a color so much you write a book about it. this is so beautiful; beautiful prose and beautiful insights. unique exploration on personal experiences (love, lost, suffering, lust, etc). very philosophical and moving. “for to wish to forget how much you loved someone—and then, to actually forget—can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart.” “Is to be in love with blue, then, to be in love with a disturbance? Or is the love itself the disturbance? And what kind of madness is it anyway, to be in love with something constitutionally incapable of loving you back?”
Tentang warna biru dan merasa biru? Kinda felt like what you mumble when you're absentmindedly looking onto nothing. Dreamy lyrical prose-poems with a string-thin substance.
maggie nelson wrote this book for ME
poignant, lyrical, and despairing
quite literally changed my life. now i can't remember the life i was living prior to reading this. i will be going back to this at different points in time
3.5
“I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.” whoever the prince of blue is kind of an asshole.
i have no words truly
Disappointing read right after “The Argonauts.” Makes me like her writing less. Tired and obtuse in that breakup way. I probably would have loved it at the right time in my life. As it is? Meh.
I love this book
“I want you to know, if you ever read this, there was a time when I would rather have had you by my side than any one of these words; I would rather have had you by my side than all the blue in the world.”
pinnacle of artmaking as research . i will definitely come back to this book in the future
personal library, bought from books are magic brooklyn heights
enjoyed the trivial facts but it used unnecessary and unnaturally swanky words i started disliking all shades of blue by the end of it
Wonderfully written book. Maggie Nelson's writing is so poetic and soothing, it's taking reading experience to the next level. The sentences are beautiful by themselves. It's another work by this author that I've read, it's more unconventional than previous one, though maintains similarly high level of work. Interesting point from a future clinician's perspective: "But why bother with diagnoses at all, if a diagnosis is but a restatement of the problem" "we sometimes weep in front of a mirror not to inflame self-pity, but because we want to feel witnessed in our despair." Wonderful poetics: "for to wish to forget how much you loved someone -- and then, to actually forget -- can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart."
to be honest i expected much but was a bit disappointed. i liked nelson’s writing a lot (some passages were very impressive) and the concept was interesting, but also a little underwhelming ? still, very good ! i found this book original, just not that mind-blowing (especially because the structure was quite shaky, in my opinion).
Prachtig. Favoriet.
i will probably be rereading this every 4 months until the end of time
A gorgeous meditation.
Highlights
Try, if you can, not to talk as if color emanated from a single physical phenomenon. Keep in mind the effects of all the various surfaces, volumes, light sources, films, expanses, degrees of solidity, solubility, temperature, elasticity, on color. Think of an object’s capacity to emit, reflect, absorb, transmit, or scatter light; think of “the operation of light on a feather”. Ask yourself, what is the colour of a puddle? Is your blue sofa still blue when you stumble past it on your way to the kitchen for water in the middle of the night? Is it still blue if you don’t get up, and no one enters the room to see it? Fifteen days after we are born, we begin to discriminate between colors. For the rest of our lives, barring blunted or blinded sight, we find ourselves face-to-face with all these phenomena at once, and we call the whole shimmering mess “color”. You might even say that it is the business of the eye to make colored forms out of what is essentially shimmering. This is how we “get around” in the world. Some might also call it the source of our suffering.
Why blue? People ask me this question often. I never know how to respond. We don’t get to choose what or whom we love
36. Goethe describes blue as a lively color, but one devoid of gladness. “It may be said to disturb rather than enliven.” Is to be in love with blue, then, to be in love with a disturbance? Or is the love itself the disturbance? And what kind of madness is it anyway, to be in love with something constitutionally incapable of loving you back?
Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to come up with a spiritual lesson that demands becoming a quadriparalytic. The tepid “there must be a reason for it” notion sometimes floated by religious or quasi-religious acquaintances or bystanders, is, to her, another form of violence. She has no time for it. She is too busy asking, in this changed form, what makes a livable life, and how she can live it.
199. For to wish to forget how much you loved someone—and then, to actually forget—can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart. I have heard that this pain can be converted, as it were, by accepting “the fundamental impermanence of all things.” This acceptance bewilders me: sometimes it seems an act of will; at others, of surrender. Often I feel myself to be rocking between them (seasickness).
In the years since, I have sometimes found myself wondering if the same principle applies in other realms—if seeing a particularly astonishing shade of blue, for example, or letting a particularly potent person inside you, could alter you irrevocably, just to have seen or felt it. In which case, how does one know when, or how, to refuse?
“what kind of madness is it anyway, to be in love with something constitutionally incapable of loving you back?”
She says (kindly) that she thinks we sometimes weep in front of a mirror not to inflame self-pity, but because we want to feel witnessed in our despair. (Can a reflection be a witness? Can one pass oneself the sponge wet with vinegar from a reed?)
You might want to reach out and disturb the pile of pigment, for example, first staining your fingers with it, then staining the world. You might want to dilute it and swim in it…But still you wouldn't be accessing the blue of it. Not exactly.
27. But why bother with diagnoses at all, if a diagnosis is but a restatement of the problem?
mostly i have felt myself becoming a servant of sadness. i am still looking for the beauty in that.
6) The half-circle of blinding turquoise ocean is this love's primal scene. That this blue exists makes my life a remarkable one, just to have seen it. To have seen such beautiful things. To find oneself placed in their midst. Choiceless. I returned there yesterday and stood again upon the mountain.