Scan barcode
get_wrecked_mate's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Truly masterful writing in the face of calamity. The form is like getting hit with a brick. There are no stanza breaks, almost now punctuation, there is is nowhere to go but through.
fjcookie's review
5.0
absolutely bawling
what a poet
what a collection of poems
what a poet
what a collection of poems
- "it can't it can't/ be yet not this"
- "I'm jealous/ of all the time I didn't know yet"
- "they lie who say it's over/ Rog it hasn't stopped"
- "I am only still here to be with you"
- "what is there left to be spoken Rog just/ that I'll be there momentarily"
- "you have to have been to Death to know the way"
- "oh my love tell me/ where you are"
- "I am/ the ghost who haunts us"
- "if I wake in tears/ and cry all morning it's joy at having/ seen you"
- "I'll take sorrow to be with you"
- "come come I will meet you beyond the moon/ in the amphitheater my slumbering heart"
- "we are a world inside him/ whether he knows or not"
- "if you should pass beneath our cypresses/ you who are a praying man your god can/ go to hell but since you are inclined/ pray that my friend and I be still together"
- "who loved/ youth and laughter and beautiful things so much/ they couldn't stop singing and we were the song"
hsienhsien27's review against another edition
4.0
I don't even want to call this a book review. why would you want to review someone's feelings? So I read this and I could feel Paul's feelings flowing through these words. his tears drip from them, his pain and anger roars in every sentence. He mourns for Roger and all of the people who had to live alone with a disease like AIDS. AIDS had taken Rog away and Paul uses the environment around him, paints a portrait of scenery and happy memories with Rog and then dots the canvas with his tears. This sounds weird to say but this is such a beautiful book, I would give Paul a hug. Unfortunately, he didn't live long enough to see that people with AIDS now can live a little longer, and Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, Transgender, or anybody Queer can get married. He would've been so happy living today, there are still people who are hateful but at least he would live a bit more comfortably? I'm not sure how to talk about this, but I love how Paul brings in Greek mythology into his words as if the whole battle with AIDS was a Greek tragedy. It is a tragedy indeed and to be honest, I have no idea how to end this. I guess I can say, thank you Paul.
Rating: 4/5
http://wordsnotesandfiction.blogspot.com/2014/05/love-alone-elegies-for-rog-by-paul.html
Rating: 4/5
http://wordsnotesandfiction.blogspot.com/2014/05/love-alone-elegies-for-rog-by-paul.html
chavelavragas's review against another edition
5.0
"The story that endlessly eludes the decorum of the press is the death of a generation of gay men. What is written here is only one man’s passing and one man’s cry, a warrior burying a warrior. May it fuel the fire of those on the front lines who mean to prevail, and of their friends who stand in the fire with them. We will not be bowed down or erased by this. I learned too well what it means to be a people, learned in the joy of my best friend what all the meaningless pain and horror cannot take away— that all there is is love. Pity us not."
love alone es un poemario sobre el duelo y la perdida de amores y amigos y la lucha por la memoria en la crisis del sida, y no se le puede poner un puto pero. desconocía por completo a paul monette hasta esta misma mañana, pero pienso leer cada uno de sus libros hasta q no me quede nada por destripar. necesitaba desesperadamente sumergirme en una rabia que me recogiera justo así, justo ahora.
love alone es un poemario sobre el duelo y la perdida de amores y amigos y la lucha por la memoria en la crisis del sida, y no se le puede poner un puto pero. desconocía por completo a paul monette hasta esta misma mañana, pero pienso leer cada uno de sus libros hasta q no me quede nada por destripar. necesitaba desesperadamente sumergirme en una rabia que me recogiera justo así, justo ahora.
thatwhichmeowsalsohisses's review
emotional
reflective
sad
5.0
this book is my most prized possession. it is the most moving and beautiful and emotional poetry i’ve ever read. i cherish paul monette
rickyschneider's review against another edition
4.0
"I would rather have this volume filed under AIDS than under Poetry, because if these words speak to anyone they are for those who are mad with loss, to let them know they are not alone." -Paul Monette
These are the soul-shattering reflections of the author's final days with his partner Rog as he succumbs to the AIDS virus. Heartbreaking is an ill-fitting understatement. Though often bleak, this cycle of poems expresses all the erratic emotions of grief. It oscillates between being devastatingly sad, then bitterly angry, then somehow managing a wistful sense of humor. It's difficult to rate someone's raw emotional reaction to watching the love of their life die in front of them. Regardless of any star rating, Monette clearly leaves his heart bleeding on each page of this book and it's beauty and importance is without question.
He wrote these with his pain still fresh and his wound still achingly open in the five months after his partner died. He wrote them almost back to back in a steady stream of sorrow. So it may be difficult to read, not only due to the subject matter but, because he uses no indentations or line breaks. This didn't really bother me because I felt it so effectively expressed his frenetic state of mind. It also had a deliberate intention behind it that I respect. In his preface Monette says, "I don't mean them to be impregnable, though I admit I want them to allow no escape, like a hospital room, or indeed a mortal illness."
Monette's writing is luscious in intimate detail and vicious in it's emotional velocity. He invites the reader into the most beautiful moments of his relationship so long as they can stand the intense suffering they also endured together and that he continued on with alone. I didn't find his poems depressing as much as moving and unflinching.
While we (especially those of us who belong to the PREP generations) cannot possibly relate to or fully understand his experience, we can all empathize with his profound sense of loss. He himself says that writing this saved him and I know that his vulnerability and honesty in its pages has done the same for so many others and will only continue to save more. It's devastating to think that if these men were living through this now, the outcome would probably have been much different. We may not enjoy reading their painful experiences but, because we do enjoy the luxury of living in a time when AIDS is no longer a death sentence, as it was for Rog, we at least owe them the honoring of their memory through reading their story and acknowledging how very fortunate we are.
"If we're lucky some far-off men of our sort, generations hence, a pair of dreamy types strolling among the hill graves... in a time when dying is not all day and every house riven, they'll laugh 'Here's 2 like us'"
These are the soul-shattering reflections of the author's final days with his partner Rog as he succumbs to the AIDS virus. Heartbreaking is an ill-fitting understatement. Though often bleak, this cycle of poems expresses all the erratic emotions of grief. It oscillates between being devastatingly sad, then bitterly angry, then somehow managing a wistful sense of humor. It's difficult to rate someone's raw emotional reaction to watching the love of their life die in front of them. Regardless of any star rating, Monette clearly leaves his heart bleeding on each page of this book and it's beauty and importance is without question.
He wrote these with his pain still fresh and his wound still achingly open in the five months after his partner died. He wrote them almost back to back in a steady stream of sorrow. So it may be difficult to read, not only due to the subject matter but, because he uses no indentations or line breaks. This didn't really bother me because I felt it so effectively expressed his frenetic state of mind. It also had a deliberate intention behind it that I respect. In his preface Monette says, "I don't mean them to be impregnable, though I admit I want them to allow no escape, like a hospital room, or indeed a mortal illness."
Monette's writing is luscious in intimate detail and vicious in it's emotional velocity. He invites the reader into the most beautiful moments of his relationship so long as they can stand the intense suffering they also endured together and that he continued on with alone. I didn't find his poems depressing as much as moving and unflinching.
While we (especially those of us who belong to the PREP generations) cannot possibly relate to or fully understand his experience, we can all empathize with his profound sense of loss. He himself says that writing this saved him and I know that his vulnerability and honesty in its pages has done the same for so many others and will only continue to save more. It's devastating to think that if these men were living through this now, the outcome would probably have been much different. We may not enjoy reading their painful experiences but, because we do enjoy the luxury of living in a time when AIDS is no longer a death sentence, as it was for Rog, we at least owe them the honoring of their memory through reading their story and acknowledging how very fortunate we are.
"If we're lucky some far-off men of our sort, generations hence, a pair of dreamy types strolling among the hill graves... in a time when dying is not all day and every house riven, they'll laugh 'Here's 2 like us'"
marigolds's review
Avoiding rating this, because rating a real person's personal experiences with disease and loss within a five-star system feels weird to me. This was fantastic, though.
More...