Bluets
Back of the Book
“Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color . . .”
A lyrical, philosophical, and often explicit exploration of personal suffering and the limitations of vision and love, as refracted through the color blue. With Bluets, Maggie Nelson has entered the pantheon of brilliant lyric essayists.
Maggie Nelson is the author of numerous books of poetry and nonfiction, including Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007) and Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007). She lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the California Institute of the Arts.
We Love It Because
Nelson observes the intertwining of love and loss and the sensory experience of color - what it can represent simultaneously other than itself. Through her interactions with the color, she meditates on the experience of objects and sensory experiences that become conduits for other human beings, and the pain of the loss of both the object and the beloved. Prose that reflects the inventive and generative mood of love and loss itself, Bluets is ultimately a study of Nelson’s creative process at a specific impasse - that of heartbreak.
Memorable Passage
But what kind of love is it, really? Don’t fool yourself and call it sublimity. Admit that you have stood in front of a little pile of powdered ultramarine pigment in a glass cup at a museum and felt a stinging desire. But to do what? Liberate it? Purchase it? Ingest it?...You might want to reach out and disturb the pile of pigment, for example, first staining your fingers with it, then staining the world. You might want to dilute it and swim in it, you might want to rouge your nipples with it, you might want to paint a virgin’s robe with it. But still you wouldn’t be accessing the blue of it. Not exactly.
About the Author
Maggie Nelson is a contemporary American author and cultural critic whose innovative and genre-defying work has garnered widespread acclaim. Born in 1973, Nelson is celebrated for her ability to seamlessly blend genres, tackling subjects ranging from gender and sexuality to art and motherhood. Her acclaimed book "The Argonauts" challenges traditional notions of memoir and cultural criticism, exploring her experiences as a queer woman, partner, and mother. Nelson's writing is characterized by its intellectual rigor, emotional honesty, and a fearless willingness to explore the complexities of identity and desire. Her wide-ranging body of work, including Bluets and The Red Parts, has established her as a vital voice in contemporary literature. Maggie Nelson is worth knowing for her transformative impact on the intersections of personal narrative, theory, and cultural critique, pushing the boundaries of literary form and offering readers a unique and profound perspective on the human experience.
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