In the words of the book, that is, blue, meaning: hope, vision, philosophy, death, faith, sex, love, pharmakon, light. In the words of the book, then, not blue, but hope, vision, philosophy, death, faith, sex, love, pharmakon, light. I am tempted to say it is about blue, but I want to convince you that you want to read this book, and I worry that there are those for whom blue is not an understandable way of being and who might be put off by a book about blue. Trusting accumulation to carry meaning.ĥ.
I am learning this again, as I write about the book. I learned this as I read it - trusting the form to tell me things that the narrative avoided (about obsession and lack and neglect, but also about love and commitment and the pleasure of learning and even about truth). One thing Bluets taught me was to trust the form. Accumulation arises as a substitute for other kinds of obsession.Ĥ.
Early in Bluets, Nelson writes “Above all, I want to stop missing you” (§8). As Lyn Hejinian writes, quoting Wittgenstein, “in the end, it is as philosophy - as the making and seeing of connections… that poetry participates in knowing what we can and can’t know about the world and how to live in it.” Whether essay or poem, philosophy or poetry, Bluets participates in the organization of the world and attempts to render it, if not known, at least bearable in the face of unpredictable loss.ģ. Bluets comprises 240 short poems or pieces of prose (the book is designated “essay/literature” in the back matter, but the writing could be a long poem or an essay in 240 pieces). Enter, into this gray, Maggie Nelson’s book Bluets.Ģ. If you had told me there were other things out there, beyond the weight and darkness of spring, I would not have believed. I was in the throes of a doctoral dissertation. The thermometer stayed below 60° Fahrenheit.
In May, in England, it is gray as often as it is blue.
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