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A review by anakelly21
Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
5.0
Genuinely the most beautiful book I've ever read. Lockwood tells laugh-out-loud stories of youth and religion with such generosity that this memoir almost reads as fiction. It is a candid portrait of growing up in both alignment and disconnect with your family, holding hands with your hometown while running towards your next apartment. I firmly believe every poet should be required to write a memoir now.
Here is casually the most beautiful paragraph:
"The natural order is a powerful narcotic. I don't mean this in the sense of any opiate of the masses. If you sneer at religion as the opiate of the masses, you must sneer also at the brain, because the receptors are there. You must sneer at the body, which knows how to feel that bliss. What I mean is, a sweet look of lying down in poppy fields, of feeling control finally by giving over control, a look of wild and then tame relinquishment. In the mirror, I examined my face for signs of my mother and saw something else." (245)
Here is casually the most beautiful paragraph:
"The natural order is a powerful narcotic. I don't mean this in the sense of any opiate of the masses. If you sneer at religion as the opiate of the masses, you must sneer also at the brain, because the receptors are there. You must sneer at the body, which knows how to feel that bliss. What I mean is, a sweet look of lying down in poppy fields, of feeling control finally by giving over control, a look of wild and then tame relinquishment. In the mirror, I examined my face for signs of my mother and saw something else." (245)