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3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
emotional
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
This book tore me up. It was exactly the right length. Exactly the right amount of peek-a-boo narrative sprinkled throughout historical fact, scientific inquiry, poetic pondering. I never wanted Christle to go any deeper into commentary on any of the topics. Each one was gently woven together and lightly handed over to the reader. I did not cry while reading this, I wept.
emotional
reflective
sad
fast-paced
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
shimmery, salty magic. beautiful, beautiful writing.
Some mornings I awake with an enormous sensation inside me and cannot identify whether the urge is to cry or write or fuck someone. All at once? My body has cross-indexed the impulse. (13)
One of the ways Chris loves me is that he waits while I cry. He tells me it will pass. He does not leave. And when the fog lifts he makes space for me to write. (45)
.. while my sister, who has not slept, begins to cry. I understand she is crying because she is witnessing a difficult and maybe sorrowful event. I understand I am not crying because I am the event. (47)
Here is the English langauge's first autobiography. We had a wet beginning! (49)
It was when fish first became terrestrial amphibians that the body's lacrimal system evolved. We left the water and began to weep the home we'd abandoned. (62)
Then I am laughing and crying all at once - wet and loud and thankful - and it feels as if my heart has turned itself inside out. (72)
There is no phoenix, and no phoenix tears, nothing can bring back the dead, but these words— these hopes and these breathless responses—they can shock the heart alive. I have felt it. Have felt myself alive. (75)
[on Hammurabi's Code] How surprising, this concern that the medium would need instructions for its own use. It is like explaining sorrow to tears. (76)
Stanzas are rooms, they say. A paragraph, too? I look for doors. There is very little time. Mostly there is winter and long nights and snow. (77)
When people do not have a killing ability within themselves they ask gravity to do the work instead. Gravity lives in rocks. People fill the bag with rocks and kittens. Or if you are Virginia Woolf it is rocks in your pockets. I wonder if she thought 'rocks' or 'stones.' (78)
I say despair because it is a word that can live comfortably in a house without changing a building's purpose. It only changes the mood. Depression and suicidal ideation and anxiety all cast a staged or a laboratory light. Even here, in this room. It shifts from paragraph to clinic. (79)
This is why people offer handkerchiefs to each other; it is an act of care, a restoration of dignity, a small instruction to get dressed. (80)
There are days when it feels like happiness is a man I am renting for a fee I can no loner pay. (80)
I believe in ending sentences with a preposition in order to give the ideas a way out. (81)
"no know utterly what you'll never be, to understand in doing so / what you are, and so no to it, not to who you are, to say no to despair" Carl Philipps' poem 'Gold Leaf'
And what shall we make ourselves from today? A memory, a seedling, a word? What can we hold up to the light and find despair has not yet touched? (82)
Crying is my spare room. Winter's brief suns and the ongoing sleeplessness make me a frequent visitor. (85)
To *break* into tears seems the right verb, as if one leans on a membrane until it gives way, until the boundary between the body and its tears dissolve, until the citizen self falls into the nation of cry. (99)
I do not want to see so much of myself in these lines. I do not want the lives of mothers to have changed so little in 130 years. I am afraid for my daughter's future. I am afraid of coming apart. (96)
When I am not in despair I can barely even describe it. It is a trap door in my life. A bridge to nowhere. It is only a metaphor, a line. But one I send my love across. (103)
He barely had any time to write to walk, to think freely. I wanted what is tender in me to tend to his signal that he was overcome, in need of help. But it was like that part of my body had fallen asleep. (107)
Judith Butler wonders if it might be possible to find a "[source] of nonviolence in the capacity to grieve, to stay with the unbearable loss without converting it into destruction," or if the grief is unbearable is there another way to live with it that is not the same as bearing it?" (128)
I learned the other day that water freezes around that which is not water, that it requires a molecule of difference to remember how to form ice, that each snowflake very likely takes shape around a bacterium. An occasion. (110)
I want to find a way to set mastery aside, so that I seek neither to master that which brings me to tears nor to surrender to it completely. I want neither to master the waves these sentences ride, nor to submit to a buffeting that would only reproduce the harms that already exist. I want to learn to navigate by stars that have nothing to do with me, stars no human can master, but by whose light one might see where to go. I want to point my child towards that light. (112)
I do not know how to name why I am crying. I mean, I can name something some contributing circumstances — sleep deprivation chief among them — but in the moment nothing can adequately explain why my whole consciousness is made of pain. The despair is not reasonable. It has no sense of proportion. It knows the material conditions of my life are not under threat but it does not care. (113)
When I am lowest, when I am in despair .. suffering has no end to it, its immensity is matched only by the immensity of my guilt and powerlessness. When I am not in despair, I can act. The guilt transforms to responsibility, the powerlessness to resolve. (119)
I keep sharing this poem with people, as it gives me courage— which holds me when I cannot reach hope — but only other poets seem to understand. Other people seem puzzled, concerned. I think they want a poem to be a net, a nest. They want Jesus in a purple robe to console them. (119)
Writing a poem is not so very difficult from digging a hole. It is work. You try to learn what you can from other holes and the people who dug before you. The difficulty comes from people who do not dig or spend time thinking that holes ought to be not so wet, dark or full of worms. "Why is your hole not lined with light?" Sir, it is a hole. (120-1)
I think it would make me laugh, not out of joy, but out of surprise at glimpsing the strange grid hovering behind what we can see. (124)
The moments I catch a glimpse of the inexplicable grid feel like the opposite of despair. (125)
Frank O'Hara's poem 'Steps': 'and in a sense we're all winning / we're alive' (131)
I close the book before it reaches my head. (134)
... about how a poem can function as a therapeutic device which people use to release pain. (137)
If I had a prayer, it would say, Let this not be a mirror to the past, nor a window to the future. Let each night only be itself. Let my child's life find its own peace. (142)
What fragments of her history live in my body? What rooms does my body remember? (148)
While we're driving to the airport I tell my mother that I'm grateful for the way we spoke, for the openness between us.
...
"And us?" my mother asks. "Is everything all right between us?" I can hear her voice changing, the roughness of encroaching tears.
"Yes" I say, and I take my hand from the wheel to place it over hers. "Everything is wonderful." And I mean it. I mean it enough. (151)
I have felt close to it myself, but I do not want to scare him, so I tell him I am okay now. And I think for now it is true. (156)
I say book. I mean poem. I mean the way the landscape suddenly reveals itself in layers, a vertical beam of light shining its connective beam from one moment to the next. An entry into— an awareness of—a dimension always present. Not always seen. I think if I can keep myself alive to it, it will keep me from going under. (157)
Some mornings I awake with an enormous sensation inside me and cannot identify whether the urge is to cry or write or fuck someone. All at once? My body has cross-indexed the impulse. (13)
One of the ways Chris loves me is that he waits while I cry. He tells me it will pass. He does not leave. And when the fog lifts he makes space for me to write. (45)
.. while my sister, who has not slept, begins to cry. I understand she is crying because she is witnessing a difficult and maybe sorrowful event. I understand I am not crying because I am the event. (47)
Here is the English langauge's first autobiography. We had a wet beginning! (49)
It was when fish first became terrestrial amphibians that the body's lacrimal system evolved. We left the water and began to weep the home we'd abandoned. (62)
Then I am laughing and crying all at once - wet and loud and thankful - and it feels as if my heart has turned itself inside out. (72)
There is no phoenix, and no phoenix tears, nothing can bring back the dead, but these words— these hopes and these breathless responses—they can shock the heart alive. I have felt it. Have felt myself alive. (75)
[on Hammurabi's Code] How surprising, this concern that the medium would need instructions for its own use. It is like explaining sorrow to tears. (76)
Stanzas are rooms, they say. A paragraph, too? I look for doors. There is very little time. Mostly there is winter and long nights and snow. (77)
When people do not have a killing ability within themselves they ask gravity to do the work instead. Gravity lives in rocks. People fill the bag with rocks and kittens. Or if you are Virginia Woolf it is rocks in your pockets. I wonder if she thought 'rocks' or 'stones.' (78)
I say despair because it is a word that can live comfortably in a house without changing a building's purpose. It only changes the mood. Depression and suicidal ideation and anxiety all cast a staged or a laboratory light. Even here, in this room. It shifts from paragraph to clinic. (79)
This is why people offer handkerchiefs to each other; it is an act of care, a restoration of dignity, a small instruction to get dressed. (80)
There are days when it feels like happiness is a man I am renting for a fee I can no loner pay. (80)
I believe in ending sentences with a preposition in order to give the ideas a way out. (81)
"no know utterly what you'll never be, to understand in doing so / what you are, and so no to it, not to who you are, to say no to despair" Carl Philipps' poem 'Gold Leaf'
And what shall we make ourselves from today? A memory, a seedling, a word? What can we hold up to the light and find despair has not yet touched? (82)
Crying is my spare room. Winter's brief suns and the ongoing sleeplessness make me a frequent visitor. (85)
To *break* into tears seems the right verb, as if one leans on a membrane until it gives way, until the boundary between the body and its tears dissolve, until the citizen self falls into the nation of cry. (99)
I do not want to see so much of myself in these lines. I do not want the lives of mothers to have changed so little in 130 years. I am afraid for my daughter's future. I am afraid of coming apart. (96)
When I am not in despair I can barely even describe it. It is a trap door in my life. A bridge to nowhere. It is only a metaphor, a line. But one I send my love across. (103)
He barely had any time to write to walk, to think freely. I wanted what is tender in me to tend to his signal that he was overcome, in need of help. But it was like that part of my body had fallen asleep. (107)
Judith Butler wonders if it might be possible to find a "[source] of nonviolence in the capacity to grieve, to stay with the unbearable loss without converting it into destruction," or if the grief is unbearable is there another way to live with it that is not the same as bearing it?" (128)
I learned the other day that water freezes around that which is not water, that it requires a molecule of difference to remember how to form ice, that each snowflake very likely takes shape around a bacterium. An occasion. (110)
I want to find a way to set mastery aside, so that I seek neither to master that which brings me to tears nor to surrender to it completely. I want neither to master the waves these sentences ride, nor to submit to a buffeting that would only reproduce the harms that already exist. I want to learn to navigate by stars that have nothing to do with me, stars no human can master, but by whose light one might see where to go. I want to point my child towards that light. (112)
I do not know how to name why I am crying. I mean, I can name something some contributing circumstances — sleep deprivation chief among them — but in the moment nothing can adequately explain why my whole consciousness is made of pain. The despair is not reasonable. It has no sense of proportion. It knows the material conditions of my life are not under threat but it does not care. (113)
When I am lowest, when I am in despair .. suffering has no end to it, its immensity is matched only by the immensity of my guilt and powerlessness. When I am not in despair, I can act. The guilt transforms to responsibility, the powerlessness to resolve. (119)
I keep sharing this poem with people, as it gives me courage— which holds me when I cannot reach hope — but only other poets seem to understand. Other people seem puzzled, concerned. I think they want a poem to be a net, a nest. They want Jesus in a purple robe to console them. (119)
Writing a poem is not so very difficult from digging a hole. It is work. You try to learn what you can from other holes and the people who dug before you. The difficulty comes from people who do not dig or spend time thinking that holes ought to be not so wet, dark or full of worms. "Why is your hole not lined with light?" Sir, it is a hole. (120-1)
I think it would make me laugh, not out of joy, but out of surprise at glimpsing the strange grid hovering behind what we can see. (124)
The moments I catch a glimpse of the inexplicable grid feel like the opposite of despair. (125)
Frank O'Hara's poem 'Steps': 'and in a sense we're all winning / we're alive' (131)
I close the book before it reaches my head. (134)
... about how a poem can function as a therapeutic device which people use to release pain. (137)
If I had a prayer, it would say, Let this not be a mirror to the past, nor a window to the future. Let each night only be itself. Let my child's life find its own peace. (142)
What fragments of her history live in my body? What rooms does my body remember? (148)
While we're driving to the airport I tell my mother that I'm grateful for the way we spoke, for the openness between us.
...
"And us?" my mother asks. "Is everything all right between us?" I can hear her voice changing, the roughness of encroaching tears.
"Yes" I say, and I take my hand from the wheel to place it over hers. "Everything is wonderful." And I mean it. I mean it enough. (151)
I have felt close to it myself, but I do not want to scare him, so I tell him I am okay now. And I think for now it is true. (156)
I say book. I mean poem. I mean the way the landscape suddenly reveals itself in layers, a vertical beam of light shining its connective beam from one moment to the next. An entry into— an awareness of—a dimension always present. Not always seen. I think if I can keep myself alive to it, it will keep me from going under. (157)
This book is what the youngs these days would call Extremely My Shit. My love for it is endless. With a voice that resonates with those of some of my favorite writers—Sarah Manguso, Sheila Heti, Maggie Nelson—but that is entirely its own, Heather Christle broke my heart and made me laugh and filled me to the brim with love of words and their soft magic (and their hard magic, too) for one hundred seventy five pages of glorious fragments. This book was written over the course of years. It travels through a life, through grief and despair and hope and love and suicide and history and art and memory and motherhood and raising a child. It’s about tears and sadness and that means it’s about everything. Like all the writers I listed above, Christie has a sharp edge that cuts to the tenderest parts of things. Christie is a poet and so she knows the power of the volta, the turn...these fragments often feel like they are stitching up old wounds and then the final sentence or image or clause will make me gasp—a brand new incision, a fresh trickle of blood.
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced