“For to wish to forget how much you loved someone—and then, to actually forget—can feel, at times, like the slaughter of a beautiful bird who chose, by nothing short of grace, to make a habitat of your heart.”

Maggie Nelson’s lyrical essay/prose poetry/poetry collection ‘Bluets’ was recommended by someone very close to me. It’s made up of 240 sections, or propositions, based on the speaker’s affinity for the color and all things blue. The speaker talks about blue in regards to philosophy, time, history, sexuality, depression, loyalty, friendship, and more. The speaker discusses blue in terms of Joni Mitchell, Goethe, Leonard Cohen, the crack epidemic, and other famous people/events.

Two key plot lines, for lack of a better word at the moment, is the speaker taking care of her friend and the speaker recovering from a heavy break up. But there is no plot.

There are so many wonderful lines, if there wasn’t a character limit I would put them all down, but here are a few I like:

“If I were today on my deathbed, I would name my love of the color blue and making love with you as two of the sweetest sensations I knew on this earth.”

“The ink and the blood in the turquoise water: these are the colors inside the fxcking.”

“According to Dionysius, the Divine Darkness appears dark only because it is so dazzlingly bright—a paradox I have attempted to understand by looking directly at the sun and noticing the dark spot that flirts at its center.”

This collection is really hxrny and poetic sometimes—such is a plus for me.