Quote for the Day: July 25th, 2021

Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let’s not forget this.
Dave Eggers

One of my favorite things in the world is the feeling you get when you’re totally unguarded, immersed in a book, and you read a line or a passage that arrests you completely. In that moment, there are only two entities in the entire world: you and the author. Something clicks. It’s a spiritual connection made between two minds that validate each other through that silent acknowledgment, that yes, I feel that too.

In that moment, there are only two entities in the entire world: you and the author. Something clicks.

The last time that happened to me was while I was reading Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Quartet. Those books destroyed me completely. Starting with My Brilliant Friend, Ferrante follows two women, Elena and Lila, living in an impoverished neighborhood in Naples, Italy. Their friendship is really the story at the heart of the novels, and Ferrante follows them from around the time they’re eight years old in primary school to the time they’re in their fifties. The transformation of their friendship mirrors the transformation of Naples and Italy itself, with all the concomitant volatility, upheaval, violence, grace, and love.

The transformation of their friendship mirrors the transformation of Naples and Italy itself, with all the concomitant volatility, upheaval, violence, grace, and love.

There were times when I was reading I would actually forget Elena and Lila were fictional characters, and I would cry, and I would tense up from the sheer electricity of Ferrante’s prose. Their sorrows were my sorrows, their pain my pain, their love my love. If all prose writers were like Elena Ferrante, I don’t think my heart could handle it. For me, that’s the purpose of literature—to both transcend your personal understanding of the world at the same time your own experience is validated.

For me, that’s the purpose of literature—to both transcend your personal understanding of the world at the same time your own experience is validated.

Thanks as always for being a faithful reader of The Voracious Bibliophile. If you like what you see, please follow, like, comment, and subscribe to my email list to get notified of new posts as soon as they drop. You can also email me at thevoraciousbibliophile@yahoo.com or catch me on Twitter @voraciousbiblog. Keep reading the world, one page (or pixel) at a time.

Quote for the Day: July 24th, 2021

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Mary Oliver

One of the reasons I love Mary Oliver and her poetry so much is she gives you, me, all of us, permission to be the most authentic versions of ourselves. We can shed the artifice, the smoke and mirrors, the self-flagellation. We can allow ourselves to exist without imposing legalistic strictures on who we are and how we’re supposed to behave. We can be wild, in the purest sense. And how freeing that thought is.

We can shed the artifice, the smoke and mirrors, the self-flagellation. We can allow ourselves to exist without imposing legalistic strictures on who we are and how we’re supposed to behave. We can be wild, in the purest sense.

Sometimes I read Mary Oliver when I need a dose of self-forgiveness. The world teaches us to feel shame, to loathe and condemn, but that is not in our original design. It is okay to just be. For anyone looking for a good place to start reading Mary Oliver’s oeuvre, I’d personally recommend Devotions, because it includes work from all of her previous collections of poetry.

Quote for the Day: July 23rd, 2021

To survive trauma, one must be able to tell a story about it.

Memorial Drive: A Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Trethewey was arguably the best book I read last year. Like so many of the books I seem to be gravitating toward recently, it explores loss; specifically, the loss of the author’s mother. Trethewey’s mother was murdered by her stepfather when she was only 19 years old, and Memorial Drive both grounds and mythologizes her mother’s story, likening her to Persephone of Greek mythology, who was kidnapped by Hades and made Queen of the Underworld.

I love the quote I chose from the book today because I have experienced its truth in my own life. There are some things I have experienced I’m unsure I would have survived had I not been able to create narratives around them; the stories of how I came so very close to the edge, could in fact hear the wind whistling in the canyon below, and how Something always pulled me back.

All Aboard the ARC: A Fine Yellow Dust: Poems by Laura Apol

***Note: I received a free digital review copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***

Expected Release Date: August 1st, 2021

Publisher: Michigan State University Press

Review

Losing someone you love is hard. Losing a child is arguably the worst thing that can happen to a person during their lifetime. Losing a child to suicide is nearly unimaginable, at least until it happens to you.

In A Fine Yellow Dust, Laura Apol has given us a chronicle in verse of her first grief-year, filled with staccato bursts of anguish, confusion, longing, and finally, a tacit acceptance. She shows us that grief is not a process that ever really reaches completion, but instead is something that you learn to carry with you, and how writing through your pain can be both a deliberate act of remembering as well as a testament to what you’ve lost. Reading Apol’s collection brought to my mind people I’ve lost over the years, and in remembering them through her words, I became a little lighter, a little freer, myself. Please read this.

She [Apol] shows us that grief is not a process that ever really reaches completion, but instead is something that you learn to carry with you, and how writing through your pain can be both a deliberate act of remembering as well as a testament to what you’ve lost.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Fine Yellow Dust: Poems is now available to preorder wherever books are sold.

Quote for the Day: July 22nd, 2021

here is my hand. i am not afraid of the night.
Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems by Sonia Sanchez

When I first read the collection from which today’s quote is taken, I had a hard time getting through it. Some of the poems, some of the lines, made no sense to me. I do not like the feeling of grappling for purchase in the dark. I prefer spotlights lighting my path, illuminating the forest floor—guiding me home. I didn’t get it.

I do not like the feeling of grappling for purchase in the dark. I prefer spotlights lighting my path, illuminating the forest floor—guiding me home.

I mined the depths of the page, demanding it to reveal its secrets to me. But you can’t make demands of poetry any more than you can make demands of God. I had to be patient. I had to listen, utilizing sound when sight proved elusive. There is nothing more satisfying in the entire world than allowing a poem to reveal to you its truths. Some poems I have read dozens of times, over handfuls of years, before they have deigned to speak to me. It’s always worth the wait.

…you can’t make demands of poetry any more than you can make demands of God.

Quote for the Day: July 21st, 2021

BY EMILY BERL/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX.
MYLES PHOTOGRAPHED IN WEST HOLLYWOOD IN 2016.

Movies have caused me to become / an artist. I guess I simply / believe that life is not / enough. I spin dreams / of the quotidian out of words I / could not help but choose.
I Must Be Living Twice: New and Selected Poems by Eileen Myles

Myles has always, ever since they first came on the scene, been a master of language. I love the way the artist’s prerogative is characterized here, as something that cannot be chosen, that some other force outside one’s consciousness does the choosing for them.

I love the way the artist’s prerogative is characterized here, as something that cannot be chosen, that some other force outside one’s consciousness does the choosing for them.

I remember reading years ago about someone asking Stephen King why he wrote such horrific stories, and his reply being something along the lines of questioning them as to why they thought he would be able to choose what he wrote.

There is something magical about writing, about any creative outlet really, and also something grueling—fierce and terrible and insistent. Sometimes there’s something you just have to get on paper or you know you’ll combust. A character or a line or an image, something fleeting yet enormous, that demands to be made flesh. So you obey. You commit to memory the thing that lives inside you and hope that eventually it will be sated.

Sometimes there’s something you just have to get on paper or you know you’ll combust. A character or a line or an image, something fleeting yet enormous, that demands to be made flesh. So you obey. You commit to memory the thing that lives inside you and hope that eventually it will be sated.

All Hail Halsey: New Baby, New Beats

Ashley Frangipane, otherwise known as global superstar Halsey, has been quite busy lately. They dropped their third full-length LP Manic in January of last year. 2020 also brought us collaborations between Halsey and Kelsea Ballerini (the other girl), Juice WRLD (Life’s a Mess; R.I.P.), and Marshmello (Be Kind).

As if this wasn’t already a bountiful Halsey harvest, she also released her first collection of poetry, I Would Leave Me If I Could, in November.

Now, Halsey has welcomed their first child with boyfriend Alev Aydin, named Ender Ridley Aydin. Emergent motherhood must bolster creativity in some way, because shortly after giving birth, Halsey also surprised us with news of the release date for their new album, due out on August 27th, titled If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power. Just from the title alone, we can probably anticipate fare we’ve come to expect (and adore) from Halsey: angst tinged with tenderness, stories of survival, and declarations of love steeped in her own mythos.

Just from the title alone, we can probably anticipate fare we’ve come to expect (and adore) from Halsey: angst tinged with tenderness, stories of survival, and declarations of love steeped in her own mythos.

How are we supposed to handle all of this? I know 2020 gave a lot of us more time to create, but I don’t know if I can emotionally process new bodies of work by Billie Eilish, Lana Del Rey, Lorde, and now Halsey all in one year. This isn’t even mentioning Red (Taylor’s Version) due out in the fall, which is sure to make mincemeat of our hearts. If only I could get someone to fall in love with me and break my heart before then, so I could really appreciate the album the way it was meant to be appreciated.

I guess I’ll have to find a way to cope. It looks like Adele and Rihanna are hell-bent on making us wait for new material, and at this point I can only say thank God, because that would really be too much.

Quote for the Day: July 20th, 2021

I don’t want the people who love me to avoid the reality of my body. I don’t want them to feel uncomfortable with its size and shape, to tacitly endorse the idea that fat is shameful, to pretend that I’m something I’m not out of deference to a system that hates me. I don’t want to be gentled like I’m something wild and alarming. If I’m gonna be wild and alarming, I’ll do it on my terms.

Reading Lindy West’s Shrill made me reckon with the decades of internalized fatphobia I still needed to vomit up. Now, I am unashamed of being fat. One of my best friends and I were having a conversation the other day about how fat people (we’re both fat) cannot make a single self-deprecating comment about our weight without having it psychoanalyzed or misinterpreted by skinny people.

I cannot tell you how many times that I’ve had a conversation that goes something like this:

Me: God, I’m feeling so fat today.

Skinny Rando: Oh, stop it! You’re beautiful!!!

Me: Bitch, did I say I was ugly?

Bitch, did I say I was ugly?

People really enjoy telling on themselves. You see, for the first thousand times I had that interaction, I didn’t really think much of it. But eventually, I looked deeper. When I say that I’m fat, and someone counters with something asinine like No, you’re beautiful, they’re (consciously or not) letting me know that fat can never = beautiful in their estimation.

When I say that I’m fat, and someone counters with something asinine…they’re (consciously or not) letting me know that fat can never = beautiful in their estimation.

As fat people, we confuse people when we exist in the world without the specter of shame hanging over us like a cloud. To live in a fat body, and to have the audacity to not cower, to deliberately take up space, to not cover every square inch of ourselves with fugly industrial fabric, is still considered radical. People want me to explain to them why I’m so confident in my skin. Sweetheart, have you seen me? How could I not be confident? I am so gorgeous and radiant I should come with a UV warning.

To live in a fat body, and to have the audacity to not cower, to deliberately take up space, to not cover every square inch of ourselves with fugly industrial fabric, is still considered radical.

I earned every single stretch mark that traverses my skin like so many highways all leading me home. They tell the story of how I survived, and how I keep on surviving, despite every cacophonous magpie screaming at me and asking if I’ve tried the SOUTH BEACH JENNY CRAIG KETO CARROT JUICE WONDERLAND DIET? Hell no, and you can keep it—I’ll stay fat and happy.🖕🏻

Quote for the Day: July 19th, 2021

You’re the only one who can say who you are with authority.

I love this. It is so succinct in conveying the idea that it is up to each of us as individuals to decide who we are and in which way(s) we will present our identity(ies) to others. It also reminds us that we do not have to take on the words other people assign to us, especially those which are harmful misrepresentations of our characters or even contradictory to the ways we view ourselves.

It also reminds us that we do not have to take on the words other people assign to us, especially those which are harmful misrepresentations of our characters or even contradictory to the ways we view ourselves.

It takes a lot of courage to tell the world who you are and I believe everyone deserves the right to be seen and celebrated as well as have the opportunity to see others like them celebrated. Simply stated, representation matters. As a bookseller, I love those moments when young queer people clock me as a “sibling in the struggle” and look to me for resources for people like them.

When you’re fourteen or fifteen years old, and you’re any kind of Other, reading about an adult who looks the way you do, loves the way you do, worships the same way you do, or speaks the same language(s) you do, and is happy and healthy, is incredibly life-affirming. It says to them that it is possible to be authentic. To not compromise. To be radically yourself and still succeed. That feeling of being able to help someone else feel seen is like oxygen to me. I rely on it. I use it as a compass when the ugliness of the world threatens to make me lose my way.

That feeling of being able to help someone else feel seen is like oxygen to me. I rely on it. I use it as a compass when the ugliness of the world threatens to make me lose my way.

Book Review: Truth & Beauty: [A Friendship] by Ann Patchett (Audiobook)

Truth & Beauty is an exquisitely written and heartfelt evocation of a friendship. Reading it reminded me that most of the time we are incapable of saving anyone other than ourselves. We love, and that love may indeed be reciprocated, but we cannot pull someone back from the cliff of their own self-destruction by sheer force of will. Love is not a panacea. Losing someone we love is torture in its most essential form, distilled and pure. In the absence of someone we’ve loved more than our own lives, how do we reckon with what comes next in the aftermath? I don’t know that there’s an answer for this. Perhaps memory is the only thing that saves us. By committing to memory and the page everything that we hold dearest, we stave off our own oblivion, if only for the briefest of moments.

Perhaps memory is the only thing that saves us. By committing to memory and the page everything that we hold dearest, we stave off our own oblivion, if only for the briefest of moments.

I think that’s why Ann Patchett wrote Truth & Beauty. By writing about the love and friendship she shared with Lucy, everyone who reads it will know that there were once two friends named Ann and Lucy who loved each other with everything they had, and that death could not quell that love or erase its impact.

Favorite Quotes from the Book

We had invented time and could not kill it fast enough.

For the first time in my life I’ve found myself praying for actual things. Before I only prayed for stuff like wisdom and love and states of mind. These past few months, though, I’ve been much more materialistic. I want definite action on God’s part. Is this wrong? I worry that I’ll get punished somehow. I need to get out of this mess but I just don’t know how so I ask for his help.
From one of Lucy’s letters to Ann

She [Lucy] loved Christ for his suffering, for what they had in common. With all his strength, even Christ had asked if this burden could be lifted from him. The idea that pain was not a random thing, but a punishment of the evil upon the good, the powerful upon the weak, gave her something to rage against. After all, what is the point of being angry at nature when nature could care less? If you cried against barbarism, then at least you were standing up to a consciousness that could hypothetically be shaped. When Lucy believed that there were actually things in the world that were worse than what had happened to her, she could pull herself up on this knowledge like a rope. When she lost sight of it, she sank.

I used to think that once you really knew a thing, its truth would shine on forever. Now it’s pretty obvious to me that more often than not, the batteries fade, and sometimes what you knew even goes out with a bang when you try to call on it just like a light bulb cracking off when you throw the switch.
From one of Lucy’s letters to Ann

History is strangely incomprehensible when you’re standing in the middle of it.