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Wow, what an excellent book. I got it from the library figuring it would be poetry, but it's actually a book of lyric essays. The very first essay, "Of Power and Time", completely floored me and knocked me on my ass with its beauty and truth. I also really liked the last full essay, "The Poet's Voice". These provided a really good framework for the book and the very different essays in it.
I also absolutely loved "Steepletop", the piece about Edna Millay--I read Nancy Milford's Millay biography a few years ago and adored it. I loved the sense of the beauty and fleetingness of love, and those fragile moments when something might have changed but didn't. I also loved the essay "A Few Words", which is about cuteness, and the things that are not cute. Incredibly terrific.
Random quotes that almost made me cry when I read them and they punched me (often while I was on the train):
When you first saw her--beauty, the dream--the human vortex of your life--or him--did you stop, and stand in the crisp air, breathing like a tree? Did you change your life?
-----
I don't mean it's easy or assured, there are the stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet. But there is, also, the summoning world, the admirable energies of the world, better than anger, better than bitterness and, because more interesting, more alleviating. And there is the thing that one does, the needle one plies, the work, and within that work a chance to take thoughts that are hot and formless and to place them slowly and with meticulous effort into some shapely heat-retaining form, even as the gods, or nature, or the soundless wheels of time have made forms all across the soft, curved universe--that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life.
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Conclusion: I loved pretty much the whole book, and I want my own copy to keep and cherish and read over and over again. Thank you to Mink for recommending this.
I also absolutely loved "Steepletop", the piece about Edna Millay--I read Nancy Milford's Millay biography a few years ago and adored it. I loved the sense of the beauty and fleetingness of love, and those fragile moments when something might have changed but didn't. I also loved the essay "A Few Words", which is about cuteness, and the things that are not cute. Incredibly terrific.
Random quotes that almost made me cry when I read them and they punched me (often while I was on the train):
When you first saw her--beauty, the dream--the human vortex of your life--or him--did you stop, and stand in the crisp air, breathing like a tree? Did you change your life?
-----
I don't mean it's easy or assured, there are the stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet. But there is, also, the summoning world, the admirable energies of the world, better than anger, better than bitterness and, because more interesting, more alleviating. And there is the thing that one does, the needle one plies, the work, and within that work a chance to take thoughts that are hot and formless and to place them slowly and with meticulous effort into some shapely heat-retaining form, even as the gods, or nature, or the soundless wheels of time have made forms all across the soft, curved universe--that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life.
-----
Conclusion: I loved pretty much the whole book, and I want my own copy to keep and cherish and read over and over again. Thank you to Mink for recommending this.
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yay!
Date: 2008-09-13 03:21 am (UTC)From:I'll have to bump it to Next on my reading list. I remember loving it but not anything much more specific.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-13 03:24 am (UTC)From: