Bluets by Maggie Nelson: book review

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

I picked up Bluets from the library unsure what to expect, other than that it was on the recommendation of a poet-friend and that it was a very famous collection. I think I did expect something that more resembled a collection of poetry, though it is probably wrong to think so simply about what that looks like. Either way, I didn't expect these short vignettes that most often resemble paragraphs, numbered down the page, rambling into and out of one another. After much googling, I have learned that there are many opinions about what form Bluets is and how successfully it meets these standards, as one would expect of a book with this level of popularity and that's been out so long. The general consensus is that it is a poetry collection that sits somewhere between lyric essay and prose poem depending on what you're more inclined to. 

This seems correct, and I guess, in many ways, it read as more essayistic to me, likely because my understanding of creative nonfiction reaches deeper and therefore includes more reference points for placing the book. There were a few of these snippets that could stand alone as poems, but many feel more poetic than they do like poetry, even prose poems. 

Still, that doesn't change that this is a compulsively readable book with a beautiful use of language. I love work that can synthesize a number of topics together, weaving a tapestry of themes that are traded off and blended into one another. She'll talk about a certain topic or idea for a time and then grab a small thread from something that was last said and run off in that direction. Broadly, she circles general philosophy, color theory, blue (of course), an ex-love she's still processing, an important friendship, and the idea of God or spirituality. I wasn't convinced I'd find a deep resonance here considering I don't particularly care about the color blue, but Nelson does what all good writers do. She slips under your skin and makes you see the world through her lens. She communicates effortlessly what has captured her imagination about these things. How they relate to the world in interesting and unexpected ways. 

In the end, I read it in a single sitting. I couldn't put it down. I didn't want to. She constructs her constellation, stars spilling out in every direction. This felt like a much more compressed version of one of my favorite works of creative nonfiction, The Observable Universe, which I would highly recommend to anyone who enjoys this book, though there is much more density in that work. There's something that lights me up about watching ideas ricochet off one another in such a transparent way.