katiemonty's review
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
4.75
Elsa Gidlow you brilliant lesbian PLAYER!
Youth: “Living is crusted with lies. I want life naked, Laughing and young. Not fettered, not tamed, But life unashamed, With the cry of Desire on her tongue.”
Futility: “Under all the beauty that I know, All the vital dreams, Sharp loveliness, Under the hair, the lips of laughter, The dusk-dim eyes of pain, Lurks the single thing I fear, Hard-mouthed, implacable-eyed, The monster, The satyr-thing, futility.”
Didn’t pull quotes from these but I really liked “I Must be Far” on page 29 and “This is Not Love” on page 45, “Mnasidika” on 59, “ Chance” on 71. Lovely writing.
“Episode” on page 43 is so undeniably gay
Experience: “Now you are gone I kiss your dented pillow and wonder if it hungers like my breast for the dear head we have both held in rest. I said once: Love alone cannot assuage my thirst, my hunger, love has no reply for that wild questioning, for this fierce cry. I said: there is no kiss that can feed me now. Perhaps love is life’s flower: I seek the root. Yea, I have loved and love is the dead sea fruit. Yet I lie here and kiss your dented pillow, a trembling girl who loves your overmuch — A harp in anguish for the players touch.”
The Artist: “Love has betrayed us enough with its treacherous wonder: Let us go now while we ache with magic or what is the gain? Art is our one immortality, all we may win from the gods in exchange for our labor and pain.”
Philosophy: “Since we must soon be fed as honey and new bread to ever-hungry Death: O, love me very sweet and kiss me very long and let us use our breath for song. Nothing else endures overlong.”
Of a Certain Friendship on page 57 is OUCH (positive) if you have lost a friend
Of a Certain Friendship:
“Odd how you entered my house quietly, quietly left again. While you stayed you ate at my table, slept in my bed. There was much sweetness, yet little was done, little said. After you left there was pain, now there is no more pain. But the door of a certain room in my house will always be shut. Your fork, your plate, the glass you drank from, the music you played, are in that room with the pillow where last your head was laid. And there is one place in my garden where it’s best that I set no foot.”
kellygorman's review
emotional
hopeful
reflective
relaxing
sad
slow-paced
3.5
Some poems felt a little repetitive of each other, and some stood out more than others. Overall, though, it wasn’t too difficult to consume, and it had some great moments! I enjoyed it.
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