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A review by lolocole
The Crying Book by Heather Christle
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
This book was mesmerizing. In fits and starts but always lulling, Christle moves through memory, poetry, sorrow, dreams, and despair.
I wish I’d read this book more slowly, to savor the fragments that it presents rather than devouring them for their connections, their fragile, terrible beauty.
Even before she named Plath as a poetic mother, her work walked the same footsteps of heartbreak at all the world.
Woolf is mentioned too. So is Didion. And I would add to this list Jenny Slates book: “Little Weirds”.
Favorite moments (of which there are many, brace yourself):
“As far as words go, /crying/ is louder and /weeping/ is wetter. When people explain the difference to English-language learners they say that weeping is more formal, can sound archaic in everyday speech. You can hear this in their past tenses- the plainness of cried, the velvet cloak of wept. I remember arguing once with a teacher who I stated /dreamt/ was incorrect, /dreamed/ the only proper option. She was wrong, of course, in both philological and moral ways, and ever since I’ve felt a peculiar attachment to the t’s of the past: weep, wept, sleep, slept, leave, left. There’s a finality there, a quiet completion, of which d has never dreamt” (12-13).
“The body at rest suddenly finds its feelings have caught up, and- as you’ve neglected them in favor of more practical concerns- they arrive loudly, demanding immediate physical expression” (28).
“”I would like to make poems out of real objects. The lemon to be a lemon that the reader could cut or squeeze or taste- a real lemon like a newspaper in a collage is a real newspaper. I would like the moon in my poems to be a real moon, one which could suddenly be covered with a cloud that has nothing to do with the poem- a moon utterly independent of images. The imagination pictures the real. I would like to paint the real, disclose it, to make a poem that has no sound in it but the pointing of a finger”” (29).
“I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real… I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body” (30).
“A person who “cries for the moon” wants too much- wants, in fact, more wanting- weeps into the lack. You can’t make a wish upon the moon” (38).
“I imagined us into a triangle, each of us nestled in her own corner. It had to be isosceles. Scalene was too erratic, equilateral too composed. I could trust neither. I am pretending this is past tense, but honestly the feeling remains. I couldn’t cry, because I needed to be the angle of difference, the angle that made the whole just unbalanced enough to keep going” (69).
“/Despair/ recognizes its own ridiculousness, it’s emotional exaggeration. It invites you to say, like Anne of Green Gables, that you are in the “depths of despair.” It makes no space for shallows” (79).
“It is raining, not crying. There is enough grief without trying to wring tears from the moon” (100).
“Byzantine physicians wrote that you could recognize a werewolf by its tearlessness” (140).
“If I had a prayer, it would say, /Let this not be a mirror to the past, not a window to the future. Let each night be only itself/…” (142).
*despite my respect for and love of this book, I do take umbrage with the disdain for Flight of the Concords. Unfunny music?!
I wish I’d read this book more slowly, to savor the fragments that it presents rather than devouring them for their connections, their fragile, terrible beauty.
Even before she named Plath as a poetic mother, her work walked the same footsteps of heartbreak at all the world.
Woolf is mentioned too. So is Didion. And I would add to this list Jenny Slates book: “Little Weirds”.
Favorite moments (of which there are many, brace yourself):
“As far as words go, /crying/ is louder and /weeping/ is wetter. When people explain the difference to English-language learners they say that weeping is more formal, can sound archaic in everyday speech. You can hear this in their past tenses- the plainness of cried, the velvet cloak of wept. I remember arguing once with a teacher who I stated /dreamt/ was incorrect, /dreamed/ the only proper option. She was wrong, of course, in both philological and moral ways, and ever since I’ve felt a peculiar attachment to the t’s of the past: weep, wept, sleep, slept, leave, left. There’s a finality there, a quiet completion, of which d has never dreamt” (12-13).
“The body at rest suddenly finds its feelings have caught up, and- as you’ve neglected them in favor of more practical concerns- they arrive loudly, demanding immediate physical expression” (28).
“”I would like to make poems out of real objects. The lemon to be a lemon that the reader could cut or squeeze or taste- a real lemon like a newspaper in a collage is a real newspaper. I would like the moon in my poems to be a real moon, one which could suddenly be covered with a cloud that has nothing to do with the poem- a moon utterly independent of images. The imagination pictures the real. I would like to paint the real, disclose it, to make a poem that has no sound in it but the pointing of a finger”” (29).
“I have dreamed of you so much that you are no longer real… I have dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown used to being crossed on my chest as I hugged your shadow, would perhaps not bend to the shape of your body” (30).
“A person who “cries for the moon” wants too much- wants, in fact, more wanting- weeps into the lack. You can’t make a wish upon the moon” (38).
“I imagined us into a triangle, each of us nestled in her own corner. It had to be isosceles. Scalene was too erratic, equilateral too composed. I could trust neither. I am pretending this is past tense, but honestly the feeling remains. I couldn’t cry, because I needed to be the angle of difference, the angle that made the whole just unbalanced enough to keep going” (69).
“/Despair/ recognizes its own ridiculousness, it’s emotional exaggeration. It invites you to say, like Anne of Green Gables, that you are in the “depths of despair.” It makes no space for shallows” (79).
“It is raining, not crying. There is enough grief without trying to wring tears from the moon” (100).
“Byzantine physicians wrote that you could recognize a werewolf by its tearlessness” (140).
“If I had a prayer, it would say, /Let this not be a mirror to the past, not a window to the future. Let each night be only itself/…” (142).
*despite my respect for and love of this book, I do take umbrage with the disdain for Flight of the Concords. Unfunny music?!
Content Warnings
Moderate: Suicide