I followed up Maggie Nelson with more Maggie Nelson. This time it was her 2016 book, Jane: A Murder, which explores the 1969 murder of Nelson’s aunt Jane. Obviously, I’ve just been mesmerized by everything Nelson touches lately. This book is thoughtful, creative, but also frightening in the true crime kind of way. I don’t have much more to say about this piece–just that I think Nelson’s work is so novel and important and a way forward for us literary types.
The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson wasn’t on my reading list, but I dropped everything when I remembered I hadn’t read it. What a great book! First, it should be taught in graduate-level theory courses. (It probably is, but nothing like this was taught in mine.) We need more feminist theory like this that truly integrates the (deeply) personal with the philosophical. I can’t be the only one who gobbled this up, and I suppose I can do my part by quoting it and integrating it into my scholarship myself.
The blurbs about this book say it’s about art and philosophy, but, I don’t know, somehow those descriptions fail to capture what Nelson is doing, which is, admittedly, unparalleled and difficult to describe.
The book helped me understand some philosophy and culture more deeply through her insights and critique. Unsurprisingly, I clung to her thoughts on motherhood, joy, femininity, womanhood, and culture. Perhaps especially as a mother, I appreciated the spare, yet complex prose. What can I say–The Argonauts is yet another important book by Nelson.
I needed to read something artistic, and so I finally read Bluets by Maggie Nelson. I read it quickly. (It did not need to be read slowly.) It seemed like I’d read this book before. It reminded me of Coeur de Lion by Ariana Reines, but not as beautiful as that in terms of the sentence. It was beautiful, though, and smart–one of the best books I’ve read in the genre. I had little patience for the sexual aspects of the book. That’s me though. Lately, those inclusions seem cheap. I used to “get it.” Adding the sexual gave writing that perfect blend of raw and mystery. Anymore I only want to think about birds and botany.
image from wavepoetry.com
Lines I liked:
“My Thought has though itself through and reached a Pure Idea. What the rest of me has suffered during the at long agony, is in describable” (Mallarmé 2-3).
“Now I like to remember the question alone, as it reminds me that my mind is essentially a sieve, that I am mortal” (62).
“…the blue of the sky depends on the darkness of empty space behind it” (62).
“For some, the emptiness itself is God; for others, the space must stay empty” (86).
“…ask not what has been real and what has been false, but what has been bitter, and what has been sweet” (86).
“As a rule we find pleasure much less pleasurable, pain much more more painful that we expected” (87).
“She is too busy asking, in this changed form, what makes a livable life, and how she can live it” (88).
“Imagine someone saying, “Our fundamental situation is joyful.” Now imagine believing it…Or forget belief: imagine feeling, even if for a moment, that it were true” (89).
“When I was alive, I aimed to be a student not of longing, but of light” (95).
Words/concepts that inspired further study:
SHEREWIN 