Scan barcode
twigdip's review against another edition
4.0
a touching dialogue between two writers. Slightly pretentious at times but beautiful too.
mugren's review against another edition
2.0
There’s a part towards the end that talks about how this book came about, “Max expressed worry that it would read either like a boring scholarly tome or ‘a Lifetime movie story of poor cancer boy and his wise, brilliant, loving mentor ministering to his heart and mind through every mortal peril and petty crisis.’”
That’s exactly how this book reads.
That’s exactly how this book reads.
e_cobbe's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
sad
Content Warnings
Moderate: Cancer and Death
olivianoelani's review against another edition
4.0
4.5-ish stars
first thought is: how are these people even real? how?? the words in this book are insanely (i mean it, it’s insanity) thought-provoking. sarah and max seem like they use every part of their brains, like they’re more aware of their consciousness and therefore enjoy it to its fullest extent. the way they make metaphors and see connections between things no one would think are connected—like a marsh & a commute—is so weird and beautiful and funny and i kept thinking, how do they do that?? i wish i could think like that. i wish i was that awake all the time, always seeing things other people don’t notice.
max’s poetry is definitely special. again, i love the constant unexpected connections—he calls his head a bed on fire, his body a planet, etc. in order to communicate fear, pain, awe, whatever he is feeling. personally, i see poetry as less of a performative practice and more of an introspective one—when i write a poem, it is almost always because i feel something that confuses or intrigues me and i want to understand it better. when i read a max ritvo poem, it doesn’t feel like he’s focused on himself, more like he has himself figured out and he’s trying instead to help us understand what he’s feeling. like he’s aware of every person. it makes him come across as extremely extroverted, which from what sarah said about him having so many friends and so many conversations, is probably true. i think it’s interesting, almost a little impressive, when people who are that social are also poets. this is because being a poet requires being insanely in tune to yourself, emotions, thoughts, and the world that caused those emotions and thoughts. and then you have to transcribe them even though those things are actually not transcribable—so you have to put your feelings into vessels (nouns, verbs) that can represent them. you have to view your body and mind as a universe or something, and everything you feel is a little ecosystem. it has to be kind of tiring sometimes to be so stimulated. that’s why i think max was so impressive—he managed to be focused on himself but also on other people so much that it seems impossible, like he must’ve contained the focus of more than one person.
i found some of the later poems hard to get through. as the book progresses and max gets sicker, his writing turns more corporeal (that’s the only way i can think to describe it). he speaks of what he feels in such physical terms, reading is melancholic and choppy at times. i read some poems several times and got frustrated when i couldn’t understand exactly what they meant. but not all poems are exact. and even though max often turns his feelings into objects, the objects he turns them into feel alive in his description. it’s like a paradox; he is alive, he turns himself into objects, the objects turn alive when he describes them. is that a paradox? i’m not sure. maybe it doesn’t count as one.
whatever i am, it is good at cutting meat.
the trick is: that’s blood.
if you focus your fingers on feeling it,
you cannot mistake yourself for the animal,
who cannot feel; you never cut yourself
if you give your life to the blood you shed.
my skeleton wandered from the house
and out onto the street
if i were alive i’d have told him
i was nothing like what he was feeling—
that the rain felt more like
the shell of a crab
then the way i’d held him.
that it felt more like him.
But I wasn’t alive—
i was the ghost in the bridge
willing the cars to join me...
first thought is: how are these people even real? how?? the words in this book are insanely (i mean it, it’s insanity) thought-provoking. sarah and max seem like they use every part of their brains, like they’re more aware of their consciousness and therefore enjoy it to its fullest extent. the way they make metaphors and see connections between things no one would think are connected—like a marsh & a commute—is so weird and beautiful and funny and i kept thinking, how do they do that?? i wish i could think like that. i wish i was that awake all the time, always seeing things other people don’t notice.
max’s poetry is definitely special. again, i love the constant unexpected connections—he calls his head a bed on fire, his body a planet, etc. in order to communicate fear, pain, awe, whatever he is feeling. personally, i see poetry as less of a performative practice and more of an introspective one—when i write a poem, it is almost always because i feel something that confuses or intrigues me and i want to understand it better. when i read a max ritvo poem, it doesn’t feel like he’s focused on himself, more like he has himself figured out and he’s trying instead to help us understand what he’s feeling. like he’s aware of every person. it makes him come across as extremely extroverted, which from what sarah said about him having so many friends and so many conversations, is probably true. i think it’s interesting, almost a little impressive, when people who are that social are also poets. this is because being a poet requires being insanely in tune to yourself, emotions, thoughts, and the world that caused those emotions and thoughts. and then you have to transcribe them even though those things are actually not transcribable—so you have to put your feelings into vessels (nouns, verbs) that can represent them. you have to view your body and mind as a universe or something, and everything you feel is a little ecosystem. it has to be kind of tiring sometimes to be so stimulated. that’s why i think max was so impressive—he managed to be focused on himself but also on other people so much that it seems impossible, like he must’ve contained the focus of more than one person.
i found some of the later poems hard to get through. as the book progresses and max gets sicker, his writing turns more corporeal (that’s the only way i can think to describe it). he speaks of what he feels in such physical terms, reading is melancholic and choppy at times. i read some poems several times and got frustrated when i couldn’t understand exactly what they meant. but not all poems are exact. and even though max often turns his feelings into objects, the objects he turns them into feel alive in his description. it’s like a paradox; he is alive, he turns himself into objects, the objects turn alive when he describes them. is that a paradox? i’m not sure. maybe it doesn’t count as one.
whatever i am, it is good at cutting meat.
the trick is: that’s blood.
if you focus your fingers on feeling it,
you cannot mistake yourself for the animal,
who cannot feel; you never cut yourself
if you give your life to the blood you shed.
my skeleton wandered from the house
and out onto the street
if i were alive i’d have told him
i was nothing like what he was feeling—
that the rain felt more like
the shell of a crab
then the way i’d held him.
that it felt more like him.
But I wasn’t alive—
i was the ghost in the bridge
willing the cars to join me...
lwalla01's review against another edition
5.0
4.5 stars. An intellectual joy; truly. Max and Sarah are both brilliant minds.
etecho's review against another edition
4.0
I feel I read this book at the wrong time. It feels strange to read musings about death with everything going on in this world, and my experience oscillated between heavy emotions, feeling the poetry deeply, and rushing through because I knew the end.
I hope to pick it back up one day.
I hope to pick it back up one day.
bribeatris's review against another edition
5.0
GOD. It’s been maybe a week since I finished this and still don’t know how to review it. I got it at the strand for a $1 and was still hesitant on it and thought it would be cliche somehow. Then I read it. And couldn’t put it down. It is an exchange of emails from a professor and her student who has cancer. She weaves in their texts and phone call conversations and really pulls the context of the letters or emails all together. It has inspired and stayed with me every day since reading it. And I keep wanting to reach for it to reread it instead of starting something new. Also when I reached to a certain page (I won’t spoil it) I literally slammed the book shut and started BAWLING my eyes out. I have cried from books before but nothing like this. It hit me. I cried for probably 10 minutes. Then reread the page and cried again and finished the book with tears in my eyes spilling onto the pages.
Just phenomenal. I can’t even. The words don’t measure up to how much this book means to me.
Just phenomenal. I can’t even. The words don’t measure up to how much this book means to me.
hydrodon's review against another edition
3.0
Some talks about spirituality weren't as interesting to me, but a heartwarming book of wonderful little and poems