THE FILAMENTS OF HEATHER
THERE IS NO WORD FOR BEAUTY AND HORROR TOGETHER BUT THESE WORDS COULD BE THE DEFINITION
book info: 20 pgs / sad spell press / $5 / november 30, 2015
i am writing this review at a café i hate. the walls are gray and they play music that is not conducive to getting work done. it is a very popular café because everyone claims to love the coffee but it tastes like shit. & let’s be honest, anybody will lie if it will make them sound like they know what good coffee tastes like. i know nothing about coffee; my drink of choice is a mocha.
but i’m writing here because reading THE FILAMENTS OF HEATHER should not be done in a comfortable environment. writing about it shouldn’t be done in a comfortable environment. the chap takes place in a home that cannot be a home anymore. if you are fragile, reading it in your own will drive you up the wall. it will feel like there is an ant crawling up your thigh and you want it to leave but you cannot risk moving. it is a glorious type of waiting.
“Someone wanted to make me crazy. Make me scared
Make me quiet.
Make me stop.
Make me take less space.
Unmake me.”
heather goodrich’s writing dances across some line of beauty and horror. i know, we are always thinking about both of these things. i know, that is how we learn comfort. i know, these two things are essentially human. essentially woman.
while reading, i found myself taken in. it is less about entering the poems and more about them entering you. they will eat you from the inside out & days later you will wonder how they could pinpoint your heart so easily. the people of these poems will start sweeping out your intestines. you will think they can never get to the bottom of it, of you, but they will. she will.
“She said it’s not polite to handle dead things.”
i’m trying to remember what it is to be stitched together by someone who loves me but does not understand me. like it would be better to just unravel with the world.
we are compelled, in this collection, to be concerned with politeness, but also hold a distain for it. but this does not just apply to politeness; it extends out to society, to a world we watch pile up in pieces on heather’s kitchen floor. there is no fixing it, no cleaning it up.
“Toward the end she asked: how’s the exercise coming? To which I replied: I am God.”
buy THE FILAMENTS OF HEATHER here
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review by: isabelle davis