I have decided to start this blog in order to share my OBSESSION with books, sharing literary and poetic musings to unite all disparate harpies and sad bards in need of new reading. Expect many poetry books and books on race and feminism among other topics!!!
To get this new blog going I am going to repost an old-ish review I wrote on Yrsa Daley-Ward's 'The Terrible'- it seems a fitting book with these times of fear and anxiousness.
Stay safe babes and don't go to public places if you can help it- tell everyone to piss off and have some YOU TIME instead!!!! Pick up a book and indulge in your existentialism...
The Terrible, by Yrsa Daley-Ward
Everybody gets settled in layers sometimes: relentless sediments of little things that somehow pile up, broiling into bodily pressures. Like a stone of fruit nuzzled at the back of your throat, or the constant feeling there is something you need to do, but don’t know how- a heavy mantle of blue. Blue that prickles and hisses from time to time, flashing hot points of red that peak to a frenzy- you petrify, then stutter. Words tumbling faster into nonsense, trying to outrun the wildfire infection of nerves scrambling for safety in a place of dead ends.
Emotions are a spectrum, which we all tilt and glide upon, attempting revelation, to reach that sweet spot of happy sanity. The fact that knowledge and identity are so intimately bound in such a mercurial, turbulent realm as emotion/ feeling, the foundational impulse of life impossible to define or fluently articulate, is both the saving grace and damning fall of us all. Feelings are so important, but it is so hard for us to say what we mean, to define or describe or demarcate. Today’s book has a remarkable literacy for tremulous inklings, the sinewed vibrations of soul- and while the narrative events are indeed specific and local to one person, the articulation of the emotion behind the person is something I think everybody could benefit from reading.
The Terrible is a pretty neat title encapsulating the ‘plot’- but really, there is no strict plot so far as the traditional rules apply. Daley-Ward uses poetry in all its various styles and modern applications to weave scenes, good and Terrible ones, to tell the story of a girl’s growth through childhood with her brother towards lonely adult life, all too familiar with pain. The way each poem functions as both a standalone piece and one part of a chain makes for a very compelling read, the pace is taut but always shifting in its moods.
Another element of the writing which I found beautiful was the role of imagination and fantasy, especially in episodes in the early part of the book. In order to cope with grim adult reality infiltrating their young souls, Little Roo and the main speaker (Yrsa) concoct sparkling realms of unicorns in the night and distant kingdoms where absent fathers are kings. It is a tender and magical touch of beauty in the sprawling chaos of lives ensnared in the grip of troubles- be that money as a Northern working class family, facing racism and misogyny as a black girl/ woman, or problems finding and sustaining love when you’re used to feeling murky.
Some parts of the book are incredibly difficult to read, especially knowing that the events are based in reality in some way. One episode that sticks with me is how the protagonist behaves towards another stripper whilst working; the betrayal of female love and friendship for the money of a nasty man is not something you can read without your heart hurting. The desolation and depression seems unbearable, but that only makes it all the more astounding that somehow, beauty was forged by Daley-Ward from it all. She survived the Terrible, in herself and the world, and oh my has she crafted magnificence.
If your'e feeling some kind of way and don’t know how to say it I recommend this book; Daley-Ward has a striking clarity with the powerful, direct language that she uses, tempered by whimsical strains of tenderness and imagination to bring the harmony. If you are feeling down trodden, lonely or lost The Terrible will show you how one girl coped with it- that infinite, unspeakable place called the mind that we all have in common.
“You may not run away from the thing that you are because it comes and come and comes as sure as you breathe. As certain. The thing is deep inside your linings, way down in the marrow. People have a lot of words for it…”