“electrifying experiments”

Heavy and beautiful. That’s my 3-word review of the anthology. It’s a thick volume full of gorgeous work, including poetry, criticism, cross-disciplinary texts and visual art. But “heavy and beautiful” also works for the challenges and themes the book aims to tackle.

what’s inside you begging to be expressed by love

i don’t want you to assume that kristin’s writing sugar-coated or romanticized the farm or the relationship. in fact, if i had to guess, the book’s scales weigh difficulty and sacrifice/death (for both the farm and the relationship) heavier than its victories. what it seems to come down to is what’s inside you begging to be expressed by love — whether it’s love of farming or love for another person. if there’s no other way you can find that bit of yourself, you commit to it. and probably a certain amount of fear about that is good.

following natalie into the room

i don’t remember my own grief very well. i’m not sure i’ve done much of it at all. nothing that has a narrative, for sure, like these memoirs seem to. and i can’t really access it: what was i doing while she was sick? what was i thinking about? who was around me? how did i feel when … and yet cheryl and natalie nail it. it makes me think of how incredibly important it is to tell the stories we can tell.