seventieth (2023-03-23)
“i would always rather be happy than dignified”― charlotte brontë, from jane eyre
photo of me and my friend esther who just won a golden gloves fight and is headed to the finals! | by steph byce
poem (click here for my full list of poems on the docket for 2022)
Elizabeth Bishop, “One Art”
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
a rhyming poem feels like a lost art. this is a strange one - it’s hard to tell if the voice is earnest or bleakly sardonic. there is a sense of entropy, erosion, and the inescapability of loss, as if loss is kinetic energy in the things themselves instead of in our relation to them.
books
big swiss by jen beagin, 2023
it has been awhile since i read a novel that i found so captivating. jen beagin reminds me of a more polished kristen arnett with a touch of lorrie moore’s absurdity and ottessa moshfegh’s delusional, nonsensical protagonists. (i know comparing authors to other authors is reductive but… i’m still doing it.) i loved nearly everything about this book with the exception of the ending which was clearer and less zany than i craved. the language was fun and wacky and contemporary which was refreshing after reading books where authors take themselves Very Seriously (ahem, houellebecq).
intimacies by katie kitamura, 2021
the word that keeps coming to mind is austere. kitamura reminds me of rachel cusk in the nameless, ghost-like main character who is a vessel for other’s projections, wishes, fears, but also sally rooney for the alluring descriptions of the minutiae of every day life. if i read correctly, the narrator’s race was not shared until the end of the book, which i won’t spoil but is telling in the way she’s treated throughout. i loved this and find it hard to place - there’s something about the cool, aloof, cerebral nature of the narrator in relation to her job (translator at the hague) and rootlessness that moves in the spaces between language.
submission by michel houellebecq, 2015
this was my least favorite houellebecq so far. the narrative was intentionally, unsubtly provocative and the constant anhedonic yet sex-crazed middle-aged male narrators are grating. that’s all i have to say about that.
film
inside llewyn davis, directed by joel and ethan Coen, 2013
i know i am 10 years late to this but what else is new! the coen brothers make the best anti-hero movies. a 60s story about an unsuccessful, often-jerky folk musician who roves from couch to couch leaving small disasters in his wake could’ve been cheugy and overwrought but the styling, soundtrack, and acting throughout were delicate and irreverent. we’re all simultaneously exhausted by llewyn yet hoping he finally get his shit together and the resultant anticipation of these conflicting emotions are, to me, what makes a movie great. there is one scene i can’t get out of my head - without spoiling it, i’ll just say it inspired me to extend more grace and forgiveness to those behaving llewyn-y (rudely and erratically) and to hope for grace from others in return.
thanks for reading - more to come -
bria