I’m so glad you chose this book! I’d avoided Andrea’s work because I was scared it would be too sad - and they floored me a few pages in with the line “five minutes into our first conversation you knew I could take a punch better than I could take a compliment”. There is some incredibly hard reading in this book but there is also so much joy and humour and strength and power. It is lightning.
I’ve just finished it and I loved it soooo much. I tried to eke it out and savour it for as long as possible, but I know it’s something I will return to again and again.
Hard to pick favourites as most of the poems had lines that took my breath away, but I loved the opening poem “Acceptance speech...”
And this line in Time Piece ”No matter how it looks, you and everyone you know/ have hourglass figures. Each breath, a falling grain of sand. “
I thought there were so many beautiful lines like this that captured the fragility of life and the need to live it to the full and feel all the emotions at the same time.
The Test of Time summed this up for me, and I loved this section
“I wake up every morning and see, if I can still wiggle my toes, and I dance
in my pajamas before I brush my teeth, and I pray
to a different god every single day because I pray to me
and sometimes I’m clear and sometimes I’m scattered
as the ashes of my friends who were still alive last year”
Oof. Lines like this just hit like a punch in the stomach and made me well up instantly.
Thank you so much for bringing Andrea’s work to my attention. ❤️
I'm so glad I'm not alone in finding it so good. I re-read Test of Time this morning after reading your comment and loved it even more second time round. That line, oh my goodness. I think if I read it all over again I'll notice a ton of new things. Did you listen to them read some on YouTube? All memoirsed?! Blows my mind.
I admit to not reading. Basically I didn’t have the spare cash to buy the book. And because of my ME/CFS no energy to sort out from the library (and then you can’t make notes in the margins which I don’t like). I liked reading what you thought though. And I like the premise of a poetry book club. And I’m enjoying discovering new poets. I don’t know if I’d want to ‘book club’ just one or two poems, that smacks of college so hard. Hmm, so I don’t really have much more to contribute sadly.
Ha, that's my fear. Don't want any of this to feel classroomy. If nothing else we can keep sharing the books we are reading and discovering new poems and poets as we go along and find the time/money to do so. I think we're doing ok...
I’m so glad you chose this book! I’d avoided Andrea’s work because I was scared it would be too sad - and they floored me a few pages in with the line “five minutes into our first conversation you knew I could take a punch better than I could take a compliment”. There is some incredibly hard reading in this book but there is also so much joy and humour and strength and power. It is lightning.
I’ve just finished it and I loved it soooo much. I tried to eke it out and savour it for as long as possible, but I know it’s something I will return to again and again.
Hard to pick favourites as most of the poems had lines that took my breath away, but I loved the opening poem “Acceptance speech...”
And this line in Time Piece ”No matter how it looks, you and everyone you know/ have hourglass figures. Each breath, a falling grain of sand. “
I thought there were so many beautiful lines like this that captured the fragility of life and the need to live it to the full and feel all the emotions at the same time.
The Test of Time summed this up for me, and I loved this section
“I wake up every morning and see, if I can still wiggle my toes, and I dance
in my pajamas before I brush my teeth, and I pray
to a different god every single day because I pray to me
and sometimes I’m clear and sometimes I’m scattered
as the ashes of my friends who were still alive last year”
Oof. Lines like this just hit like a punch in the stomach and made me well up instantly.
Thank you so much for bringing Andrea’s work to my attention. ❤️
I'm so glad I'm not alone in finding it so good. I re-read Test of Time this morning after reading your comment and loved it even more second time round. That line, oh my goodness. I think if I read it all over again I'll notice a ton of new things. Did you listen to them read some on YouTube? All memoirsed?! Blows my mind.
It’s so brilliant isn’t it? I haven’t watched them on YouTube yet, but I really need to.
I'm not that familiar with Andrea Gibson's poems but WOW. I do love her Substack and her response to Taylor Swift's Champagne Problems was BEYOND xo
Honestly, this book is So good. I've not read her response to Taylor Swift, off to do that immediately, thanks
I admit to not reading. Basically I didn’t have the spare cash to buy the book. And because of my ME/CFS no energy to sort out from the library (and then you can’t make notes in the margins which I don’t like). I liked reading what you thought though. And I like the premise of a poetry book club. And I’m enjoying discovering new poets. I don’t know if I’d want to ‘book club’ just one or two poems, that smacks of college so hard. Hmm, so I don’t really have much more to contribute sadly.
Ha, that's my fear. Don't want any of this to feel classroomy. If nothing else we can keep sharing the books we are reading and discovering new poems and poets as we go along and find the time/money to do so. I think we're doing ok...