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4.2 AVERAGE
4.2 AVERAGE
what am i missing here?
were some lines beautiful? yes. did i find this to be “deeply layered” as promised? no!
despite this supposedly being a modern retelling of a greek myth, i feel like carson dropped all of the elements that would make this story really special. the protagonist, geryon, is indeed a red winged monster. yet this is never really any issue at all even though it’s hinted that there’s an ancient myth of his kind in peru. carson tells us that geryon is traditionally killed by herakles and she translates this to… herakles being an asshole lover? i feel like i’ve read many versions of this story (traumatic, doomed first gay love) that honestly executed it better. in attempting to make this greek myth modern, carson lands nowhere.
i feel similar to when i finished BLUETS :/
were some lines beautiful? yes. did i find this to be “deeply layered” as promised? no!
despite this supposedly being a modern retelling of a greek myth, i feel like carson dropped all of the elements that would make this story really special. the protagonist, geryon, is indeed a red winged monster. yet this is never really any issue at all even though it’s hinted that there’s an ancient myth of his kind in peru. carson tells us that geryon is traditionally killed by herakles and she translates this to… herakles being an asshole lover? i feel like i’ve read many versions of this story (traumatic, doomed first gay love) that honestly executed it better. in attempting to make this greek myth modern, carson lands nowhere.
i feel similar to when i finished BLUETS :/
I really wanted to like this more based on such positive reviews I’ve seen, but a combination of me going into this book with almost no knowledge of its contents and me not being the greatest with poetry kind of just left me feeling a bit hollow by the end. There were some absolutely beautiful and profound moments, and the concept as a whole, cool as hell, but I can’t help feeling that I really missed most of the point, which is probably mostly my problem, so I’ll still give this a 3/5.
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I do wish I had read into the myth/s this book is based off of before reading.
Carson’s voice is enigmatic yet incisive, as always, and Geryon is such an intriguing protagonist.
I didn’t get all the answers I wanted, but I got the ones I needed.
Carson’s voice is enigmatic yet incisive, as always, and Geryon is such an intriguing protagonist.
I didn’t get all the answers I wanted, but I got the ones I needed.
Suddenly you start to feel a little too human and simultaneously like nothing at all
AC’s obsession with volcanoes, quoting Gertrude Stein, Emily Dickinson.
Stesichorus: “He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet.”
"What is time made of?"
« To deny the existence of red
is to deny the existence of mystery. The soul which does so will one day go mad »
“What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning 'placed on top', 'added', 'appended', 'foreign'. Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions, but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being.”
“Depression is one of the unknown modes of being.
There are no words for a world without a self, seen with impersonal clarity.
All language can register is the slow return
to oblivion we call health when imagination automatically recolors the landscape
and habit blurs perception and language
takes up its routine flourishes.”
« I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it.
But this separation of consciousness
is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is
to believe in an undivided being between us. »
« I once loved you, now I don’t know you at all. »
Emily Dickinson:
« The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan—
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.
If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her
Can human nature not survive
Without a listener?
Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every babbler be
The only secret people keep
Is Immortality.
EMILY DICKINSON,NO. 1748
« On My Volcano Grows the Grass, »
1st read : audiobook on the train Mtp-Paris
2nd read : bought and annotated a paper copy
Stesichorus: “He came after Homer and before Gertrude Stein, a difficult interval for a poet.”
"What is time made of?"
« To deny the existence of red
is to deny the existence of mystery. The soul which does so will one day go mad »
“What is an adjective? Nouns name the world. Verbs activate the names. Adjectives come from somewhere else. The word adjective (epitheton in Greek) is itself an adjective meaning 'placed on top', 'added', 'appended', 'foreign'. Adjectives seem fairly innocent additions, but look again. These small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. They are the latches of being.”
“Depression is one of the unknown modes of being.
There are no words for a world without a self, seen with impersonal clarity.
All language can register is the slow return
to oblivion we call health when imagination automatically recolors the landscape
and habit blurs perception and language
takes up its routine flourishes.”
« I will never know how you see red and you will never know how I see it.
But this separation of consciousness
is recognized only after a failure of communication, and our first movement is
to believe in an undivided being between us. »
« I once loved you, now I don’t know you at all. »
Emily Dickinson:
« The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan—
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.
If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her
Can human nature not survive
Without a listener?
Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every babbler be
The only secret people keep
Is Immortality.
EMILY DICKINSON,NO. 1748
« On My Volcano Grows the Grass, »
1st read : audiobook on the train Mtp-Paris
2nd read : bought and annotated a paper copy
the most original book/writing/piece I’ve ever read. stunning lines and imagery. this, from page sixty, is staying with me:
“This was when Geryon liked to plan
his autobiography, in that blurred state
between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open in the soul.
Like the terrestrial crust of the earth
which is proportionately ten times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul
is a miracle of mutual pressures.
Millions of kilograms of force pounding up from earth’s core on the inside to meet
the cold air of the world and stop,
as we do, just in time.”
“This was when Geryon liked to plan
his autobiography, in that blurred state
between awake and asleep when too many intake valves are open in the soul.
Like the terrestrial crust of the earth
which is proportionately ten times thinner than an eggshell, the skin of the soul
is a miracle of mutual pressures.
Millions of kilograms of force pounding up from earth’s core on the inside to meet
the cold air of the world and stop,
as we do, just in time.”
“There it was
One of those moments
The opposite of blindness
The world poured back and fourth between their eyes once or twice.”
One of those moments
The opposite of blindness
The world poured back and fourth between their eyes once or twice.”
challenging
dark
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This was fantastic. A very tender story of two young men navigating their complicated emotional and physical relationship. It was sensitive, sexy, and heart-warming.
novel in verse from fragments of old greek poetry by a master of metaphors. life of a gay monster. myth retelling. love.