Franz Wright's 'Last Day on the Ward'

Poet Franz Wright died last year now, on May 14, 2015. I wanted to write about his death, and his poetry, and him, but I didn't have the words. I didn't know him, but I feel connected to him in the way anyone who admires someone else feels connected to that person. And it feels almost too personal to talk about how hard it is to know he's no longer alive, no longer walking around in his home, or writing. Because I didn't know him, he wasn't necessarily real to me as a person, and that somehow enhances the loss I feel. Which is a bit ridiculous, but it's how I feel so *shrugs* Thankfully, I still have so much of his work to read, and what I have read is hardly exhausted in its meanings and pleasure. 

I'm here today writing this because I recently read a small chapbook of his, published by Argos Books in 2014, titled The Writing. I want to talk a bit about the first poem in the collection,

Last Day on the Ward

There is a Heaven,

death. 

But getting there.

You can't

just say the word...

A blizzard. I can't see

a single person on the street,

a single light on.

I know they're out there, though: the fittest

reading the laptop and drinking their coffee,

winter light

filling the rooms where they sit

unaghast.

It's Monday in the world,

and time to go.

I've unpacked and already

have nothing to do 

but lie down

                                                                    and stare at the snow.

                                                                    Which is something

                                                                    I am good at, something I enjoy.

                                                                    Probably, I'll die like this

                                                                    a long time ago.

I love how in those two lines, it seems as if Wright is telling death that there is a Heaven, and it doesn't need to worry. But how does death get to Heaven? Or is Wright emphasizing that there is Heaven and death, but note that death isn't first listed. This slippage foreshadows the last two lines, in which Wright says he will die 'a long time ago' (line 23), once again mixing up the generally accepted process of living, dying, Heaven. Reading about this mix-up, though, reads to me now as an act of mourning. Wright is dead, a long time ago, and the time will only get longer. But I revisit his voice, his first person, his present tense, when I read this poem, this book, anything he's ever written. Though I don't believe in the common theme of literature that in books and writing people are eternal in a way because their words live on. No, they're not. They're dead. Whether they're somewhere else is not for me to tell you, but they're not immortal in literature. That has always seemed like a ridiculous fallacy to me, and completely unsatisfying as an end of a story.

What I do think is true, and what I think this poem is an example of, in life, there are visitations to death: we know we will die, we know people have died. This reality is so profound that the fact that people are even living is astonishing, which is emphasized in the middle of the poem,

I know they're out there, though: the fittest
reading the laptop and drinking their coffee,
winter light
filling the rooms where they sit
unaghast (lines 9-13).

This references, in part, the contrast of the fit and unfit, young and old, stable and unstable - the poem is titled 'Last Day on the Ward,' and mental health is an important theme in Wright's work. But I think all of this contributes to the strangeness of how people are actually alive. That simple things exist such as sitting at a desk, drinking coffee, unaghast. Life is not necessarily strange to these people, in the same way it is to Wright, but death has always been on his mind (if you read his other works) - they are not aghast, as he is. Death maybe is not so visibly intertwined with life for them.  

This is all really to try and figure out what it means to read Wright's work after he's died, months later, what it means to read this collection where Wright is even more so preoccupied with death. And I guess to mourn, to read his poems as a form of mourning, as a visitation, and to let death be intertwined with life a little more by reading this collection. I think it's okay if it is. 

Best Books I Read in 2015

It is the last day of 2015, and I finally feel ready to actually post what I think are the best books I read in 2015. I read a lot of amazing books this year, many of which I loved and thought were extremely well-written, but these books listed below specifically are ones that always seem to pop into my mind, that frame my thinking of other books, and whose images, characters and words keep me thinking/guessing. I'm also going to include a quote from each to entice you to read them, of course! They are in the order in which I read them.

Aside from these amazing books, peep my new bedsheets as the backdrop,
where were a gift from one of my best friends. Who wouldn't want
lovely bedsheets for Christmas?!

The City in Which I Love You by Li-Young Lee

But the boy is packing his shirts,
he is looking for his keys. Are you a god,the man screams, that I sit mute before you?
Am I a god that I should never disappoint? ('A Story' 15-18)

Li-Young Lee is one of my absolute favorite poets of all time. I want to say that Lee's poetry deals with a lot of big issues, such as being a refugee (he and his family fled from Indonesia when he was a baby, and knocked around a few countries in East Asia before settling in the US), religion, love, etc. But to just say that, to say Lee is a political poet, is not enough. All of his poetry are grounded in specific moments, images, and relationships, that when I think of what 'humane' means, I think of Lee's poetry. The City in Which I Love You exhibits, I think, Lee at his best. With stunning poems such as 'My Father in Heaven is Reading Out Loud,' which conflates the image of his own father with a Heavenly Father, Lee teases out the complexity of his relationship with his father, religion, and the legacy of his family's history.

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

'That is a good beginning; I am glad it is yours. Tonight shall be mine.'
'Ought we to have different ones?'
'Different beginnings? I think we must.'
'Will there be more of them?'
'A great many more' (832)

I read this book at the very beginning of 2015, and have not forgotten about it - images, characters, themes, and sentences recur in my mind, and connect with other things I've read in the past year. This novel has truly stayed with me. I don't think more than two days go by without me thinking about it. The Luminaries is an intricately plotted novel, that follows a sprawling cast of characters - there is a character list in the front of the novel! - in the gold-mining town of Hokitika, New Zealand in 1866. Catton uses the zodiac and astrology as the bones of her novel - each character is associated with a zodiac sign, for example - in order to showcase how they interact, collide, and circle one another in the events of the novel. The basic plot is there is a missing rich, young man named Emery Staines, and the other main characters are invested in him being alive or dead for whatever reason. The use of the zodiac and astrology is brilliant, and makes you think about the connections between the characters in new ways (although, do not be mistaken, this is not about horoscopes), and I think propels the basic narrative of the missing persons case in interesting ways. This novel is an odyssey, and by the end, I believe all the traveling you will have done with these characters is well worth it. 

Mariana by Monica Dickens

'At first she had thought that her heart was dead. She told herself that she had been through a searing experience which had left her as a woman set apart from love - a tragic figure. This sustaining vision had tided her over the misery of the end of last summer' (189).

This is the first novel published by Persephone Books I have ever read. I found it randomly in The Strand when I was looking for a Charles Dickens book - Monica is his great, great granddaughter! If you don't already know, Persephone Books publishes forgotten novels by (mostly) women. I am all for supporting women, and not letting women's contributions to literature be forgotten. This book was simply lovely. There is nothing like reading a satisfying romantic book that is not condescending towards its heroine (the titular character, Mariana), nor its audience, and it does so because it acknowledges and beautifully portrays the flaws and desires of its characters. We follow Mariana through ups and downs as she desperately tries to gain independence, and find a man she can truly love and who truly loves her. It's a well-written story about wanting a man, but not needing a man, which is a distinction too rarely made in novels about women, or in women's lives in general.

The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson

'Some religions call life a dream, or a dreaming, but what if it is a memory? What is this new world isn't new at all but a memory of a new world?' (87).

This is a bit of an odd one. A post-apocalyptic novel that jumps back and forth in time, between worlds (or maybe the same world? Never quite sure). For the most part, the novel follows Billie Crusoe, who falls in with a 'Robo sapien,' Spike, as they embark on a mission to find a new inhabitable planet, since Earth is dying after being ravaged by war and greed. In this novel, we basically get a queer android love story that investigates the nature of war, time, and humanity, itself. Really everything is in this novel.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

'The pleasure of ordinary devotion. The pleasure of recognizing that one may have to undergo the same realizations, write the same notes in the margin, return to the same themes in one's work, relearn the same emotional truths, write the same book over and over again - not because one is stupid or obstinate or incapable of change, but because such revisitations constitute a life' (112).

I knew this book would be one of my favorites. Last year, I read Nelson's Bluets - which if you haven't read YOU SHOULD - and absolutely fucking loved it. It's a brilliant book, which I will hopefully talk about on here soon, but haven't yet since I have so many thoughts on it that they are like an avalanche in my mind. Which is also my situation with The Argonauts. But anyway, this book is what Nelson calls a book of 'autotheory,' meaning it is an autobiography of sorts, in which she uses critical theory as a lens for her life, and as a way to shape her life. The autobiographical part deals in particular with Nelson's marriage to her partner, Harry, who is fluidly gendered, and their having a baby. Nelson is interested in what it means to make a family, and is interested in how the language shapes family relationships, and queer relationships. Nelson is brilliant at weaving her personal story with critical and literary texts, and the effect is a richer, and more comprehensive understanding of her life.

Nazi Literature in the Americas by Roberto Bolaño

'The stories simply happen, period - produced by the sovereign power of chance unleashed, operating outside time and space, at the dawn of a new age, as it were, in which spatio-temporal perception is undergoing transformation and even becoming obsolete' (123-124).

At least one Bolaño was going to be on this list, and this year, it's Nazi Literature in the Americas, a fictional encyclopedia of right-wing authors. Bolaño makes up entire histories, and creates a tapestry of a literary world that never existed. In this endeavor, Bolaño pushes the boundaries of fiction. What does it mean to have a made-up encyclopedia? Something that is meant to the record the world as it is, but made-up? There seems to be a paradox of fiction and reality. And I don't even know where to begin to unpack why he decided on right-wing authors - the role of politics, fascism, and the specter of WWII and the Holocaust are dissertation-worthy + ten books of criticism.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

'"Catch you all next time.' Luisa is going. 'It's a small world. It keeps recrossing itself"' (418).

I've just finished this book last week, and it blew my mind. The construction of the story is brilliant: 6 stories-within-stories, spanning centuries, and the globe. Each story leads into the next, and we see how people are connected across time and space. It's a very lofty goal, and the execution is perfect: never clinical, and never a slave to its conceit, this novel is so rich in its characters, and so brilliant in the way it shows their connection. Many talk about this novel in terms of how it discusses the 'universality' of human beings, reincarnations, that there is some deep, mysterious connection between us all. I'm not sure about all of those things, but what I am sure of is that this novel discusses brilliantly how we all become stories, passed on, retold, and forgotten.

_____

I also want to say a thank you to those that have been reading along, as I post my thoughts and theories on this blog. I'm excited for the new year, and more books!

Also, some time in the next few days I'm going to post more of a statistical analysis of the books I read in 2015. And by 'statistical analysis' I mean tally marks. So get ready!

'All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts / at my table'

Prayers or Oubliettes by Natalie Diaz

1
Despair has a loose daughter.
I lay with her and read the body's bones
like stories. I can tell you the year-long myth
of her hips, how I numbered stars,
the abacus of her mouth.

2
The sheets are berserks with wind's riddling.
All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts
at my table. Their breasts rest on plates
like broken goblets whose rims I once thirsted at.
Instead of grace, we rattle forks
in our empty bowls.

3
We are the muezzins of the desert
crying out like mockers from memory's
violet towers. We scour the earth
as Isis did. Fall is forever here -
women's dresses wrinkle
on the ground, men fall to their knees
in heaps, genitals rotting like spent fruit -
even our roots fall from the soil.

4
The world has tired of tears.
We weep owls now. They live longer.
They know their way in the dark.

5
Unfasten your cage of teeth and tongue.
The taste of a thousand moths is chalk.
The mottled wings are the words to pain.

6
We have no mazel tov.
We call out for our mothers
with empty wine jugs at our heels.

____________

Iterations // All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts / at my table

All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts / at my table: to overcome her ghosts, she attempts to parody them, by making them into cartoonish figures made out of bedsheets - it doesn't work

All the beds of the past: Not just evoking the image of white sheets, but of a bed, emphasizing the place of rest as what can be made a ghost - what we take comfort 'dresses' ghosts, covers them

at my table: she dines and communes with her ghosts

All: not just invoking the speaker's history, but everyone's

cannot dress: It doesn't work, and can only do so much

dress: something done every day

dress: treat, as in dress a wound; tender

____________

This line fascinates me because it is elliptical in its imagery: one thing leads to another, but then leads back to something else. Diaz evokes an image of beds stretching into the past, which transitions into the image of sheets being thrown over ghosts, which then leads back to the beds of the past also being ghosts, and all of these exist together at her table. It is image in which time stretches backwards and forwards, and stands still, as they all sit together at her table. This is an example of the confusion between prayers and oubliettes in the title, the mixture of pleasure and pain ('The year-long myth / of her hips' (lines 3-4), 'Their breasts rest on plates / like broken goblets whose rims I once thirsted at' (lines 8-9), 'Unfasten your cage of teeth and tongue' (line 23). 

____________

I wanted to try a more impressionistic approach to talking about poems. I find it hard to write mini-essays about poems (as I usually do with the various novels I've written about here), because poetry makes the most impact on me in images, in the lines that leave behind the most dynamic, distinct images, and I wanted to try and capture those images as I see them in my mind, in order to interrogate some of what is going in any given poem. With Iterations, I am hoping to merely present the possibilities and dynamism in any given line of a poem. 

Please let me know your thoughts, and impressions from this poem! It is from Natalie Diaz's collection, When My Brother Was an Aztec, published by the always amazing Copper Canyon Press.

The Lack and Abundance of ONIONS AND CUCUMBERS AND PLUMS

Onions and Cucumbers and Plums is one of those books that is like a one-in-a-million book. One of those books that so few people have read - my review on Goodreads is one of two - that there is no real scholarship on, and you just think, why have I been chosen by the Book Fates to read this? I say that because I loved this book, but in many ways, I am not the target audience for this book, there is nothing I can contribute to its legacy or subject matter, because its experiences are not mine, though I can relate here and there, and can touch the beauty of the poems. In something as intimate and personal as poetry, I want to find myself in them more so than novels, though that is not the ultimate aim of reading poetry. It is an experience, then, to read a collection like this and be so far removed from its origins and heartaches and dreams. All of this is especially important to recognize with this book, because it is partly about the loss of meaning, the loss of culture, the loss of language. Can we get to a point where something in inscrutable?

This book is a collection of poems by Jewish poets that have been translated from the original Yiddish. All of the poems were written in the twentieth century, and were translated by Sara Zweig Betsky for her Masters thesis that she was getting during WWII. She did it in reaction to the war, because she felt she could do nothing else but try and preserve something that was being destroyed. The Yiddish language, once spoken all over Eastern Europe, is a language largely lost - few speak it and study it. Partly lost because so many Jews killed in the Holocaust spoke Yiddish, and partly lost because of assimilation in the aftermath. The poems in this collection reflect the language and experiences that are largely gone. When we have books in translation, we know there is something missing. Not everything can be translated and saved, there is always a gap in understanding, but my profound misunderstanding contributed to my loving this book. There is a comfort in being the other, when it means that I can hear the stories of those I would not necessarily have ever heard before.

An example of a poem that I appreciated more because of the distance I felt from it is 'In Soft Moss, Muted Steps' by David Einhorn:

In soft moss, muted steps,
a whole week of Sabbath rest. 

You light candles every night --
your face in rosy light. 

Between the green pine tree boughs
the blue of God's blue roof top shows. 

There too someone lights Sabbath tapers --
on your face blue shadows vapor. 

So we sit, keeping watch,
waiting for a wonder night. 

Through the forest a rustle goes,
the sky splits apart and glows. 

In soft moss, muted steps,
a whole week of Sabbath rest. 

You light candles every night --
your face in rosy light.

With this poem, we see Einhorn applying the ritual of lighting candles on the Sabbath to the love he has for a woman, to her lighting candles everyday. Her daily candle-lighting is as the Sabbath rest to him. There is an intimacy and holiness to this love that is mirrored in the meaning of the Sabbath. As I'm not Jewish, I don't have this kind of connection to the idea of 'rest,' but this lack of understanding helps me feel the desire for connection in the poem, because I too have this desire to understand and connect as I read the poem.

There are a lot of gems in this collection. Since this collection is a bit hard to find, I would suggest seeking out some of these poets from the collection that were some of my favorites: J. Glatstein, Kadie Molodowsky, and Itzik Manger.

Pick-Up Line: 'It is a small country.'

Welcome to Pick-Up Line! My newest feature to this blog, in addition to my other features Interesting or Stupid?, Meta Moment, and Quick Chat, which you should catch up on *wink wink* In Pick-Up Line, I will discuss in-depth one line, or several, of a poem, or a sentence(s) of prose. I have found that when I read something, a line or two from it echoes in my mind after I've finished reading it for one reason or another. And I've named this feature Pick-Up Line to intrigue you, reader, to read the poem or book or collection. This feature will most likely feature poetry, because I think we all need more poetry in our lives, and it can be hard to get into poetry, I admit. So I'm hoping my focus on a line or two is enticing enough to have you read more poetry. Hence, my cheeky title.

Let us begin our first installment! I posted yesterday about The Country Between Us by Carolyn Forché. This book is seriously beautiful, and if you can, read the whole thing. The line I will discuss from The Country Between Us is from the poem 'The Visitor,' which you can find here.

'It is a small country' (line 8)

As you might be able to tell from the title, the idea of a country is central to the text. The title implies distance, and over the course of the collection we see what physical and emotional distance can mean between people. We also see a country being made and unmade, as this book is partly about the Salvadoran Civil War. In the poem, 'The Visitor,' a country is the hand of a lover, the imagining of a hand of a lover, or the wind imagined as the breath of a lover. The wind against the walls of the prison is

                                      ...his wife's breath
slipping into his cell each night while he
imagines his hand to be hers. It is a small country (lines 6-8).

There are two definitions of a country here:

1. It is a physical place, but it is the physical body and breath of his wife.
2. It is an imagined place, as Francisco is imagining the body and breath of his wife with him.

These ideas of a country are interesting because they imply that our 'citizenship' is tied with those we love. It reminds me of something Roberto Bolaño said - one of my absolute favorite authors of all-time. Bolaño was from Chile, and he grew up in various countries in Latin America. He supported the socialist regime in Chile, which was eventually overthrown by dictator Augusto Pinochet. Subsequently, he left Chile, fearing for his life, and because he was dissatisfied and antagonistic towards the prominent literary figures of Chile. Bolaño essentially put himself in exile. In his last interview ever, Bolaño said, 'My only country is my two children and perhaps, though in second place, some moments, streets, faces or books that are in me.'

In Bolaño's quote, and in Forché's poem, what we're seeing is that when you are stripped of the 'country' you were born, maybe even imprisoned by that country, it calls into question your citizenship and allegiance, not in a legal sense, but an existential one: what exactly does the borders and land of a country do for you when they are seemingly against you? When to be on one side of a wall or another means imprisonment or exile? And if we take into account the idea of a country being imagined - as it is implied through Francisco imagining the wind as his wife's breath, and imagining her hand - then that problem is only exacerbated. These delineations are illusory, but in our respective societies, we all commit and agree: yes, this a country. But it is also because of those agreements that a 'small country' can be made out of relationships.

Can I also say how beautiful it is that Forché specifies a small country. The inclusion of the word provides the perfect beat to slow the line and provide space for the gravity of the word 'country' and all that it implies for the poem. Including the word 'small' also shows a tenderness to the relationship, that it is concerned with the small things of feeling someone's breath, of holding someone's hand.

Let me know your thoughts, and if you've read anything by Carolyn Forché, or Roberto Bolaño, who I ALWAYS want to talk about. 

On Whose Authority?

Recently, I decided I wanted to re-read Carolyn Forché's book of poetry The Country Between Us. I first read it a few years ago for a Creative Writing class, and wanted to revisit it because I didn't remember much about it, and I just generally need to punctuate my typically fiction-centric reading with poetry, whether it's just going back to my favorite collections and reading a few poems or (re)reading a full collection.

The Country Between Us is partly about Forché's time working as a journalist in El Salvador as it was on the cusp of a civil war in the 70s. Poems about unrest in El Salvador between its people and leaders are told along with poems about the unrest and distance between two lovers. With this book, Forché is renowned for her weaving of the 'personal' and the 'political,' which is a popular topic in literary criticism. When we talk about the personal and the political in a text, we are acknowledging that there is not as a neat a distinction as we'd like between our personal lives, even our subjectivity, and the larger world - we are saying that maybe the sensibilities or function of the two are not so different. And in the case of Forché's book, we can say that the way the personal and political function are as metaphors of each other: the political situation in El Salvador can be a metaphor for the relationship between the lovers, and vice versa. It is also good to note that Forché is known for coining the term 'poetry of witness,' meaning that poetry is necessary in dealing with things such as war and conflict, and that it is a tool for social justice.

This book is beautiful. Because it is pretty short - just 59 pages - I decided to read it out loud to myself over the course of a few days, to really savor the language and imagery. I loved reading this book, and think it definitely warrants your attention. But one thing preoccupied my reading: Forché is a white woman writing about El Salvador, and she may be one of the most known voices on the Salvadoran Civil War. Even on the back of book, there is a blurb that says,

'Latin America needs a poet to replace the man who represented in his writings the beauty, sufferings, fears and dreams of this continent: Pablo Neruda. Carolyn Forché is that voice.' -Jacobo Timerman

This praise is ridiculous. It is ridiculous to say that Latin America needs a voice that is not their own, that Latin America needs the voice of a white person from the U.S. Latin America has plenty of voices, it is up to us whether or not we listen to those voices, whether we support them and give them a platform to be heard. This is not to say that Forché is not allowed to write about El Salvador because she is not from there, or that these poems are not good because she is not from El Salvador. It is that Forché should not be considered an authority, which is what the above blurb suggests. No one author should ever be looked at as an authority on a subject - people and events are too complicated to look to one person or one perspective. Each of us has a certain amount of privilege and gaps in our understandings, which is why it is so crucial read widely and diversely. In this blurb, we can see Forché's privilege of being considered an authority on something she does not actually have authority over. And while this book is certainly beautiful and important, it does not make it the authoritative poetic text on El Salvador, or Latin America.

Read widely, read diversely, read critically, read skeptically. Some may think that reading in these ways reduces the experience of reading, but I think it enhances it, and it pushes me to read new books to love.

LOOSE WOMAN by Sandra Cisneros

Photo: Katie Chin

I've been trying for about two weeks to write about Loose Woman by Sandra Cisneros. Partly because I have a lot of feelings about her work; and partly because her poetry is so upfront about what it is, I'm not sure what else I can say. Loose Woman is only the second book of Cisneros' that I've read, the first being The House on Mango Street, which I first read in the eighth grade and periodically since then. Mango Street is a deeply important book to me for so many reasons. I think Loose Woman is a good book of poetry. It's not my favorite, and not as transcendent as I'd like it to be, as Mango Street is to me ... but it is still just as vital because it highlights women asserting their own perspective and sexuality, and celebrating flaws laced within both. All of which is why I think I have ultimately had a hard time writing anything specific about this book. What I can say for sure is that we need more books like Loose Woman, we need more writers like Cisneros to be widely read and discussed. 

Hair and Tenderness

I've recently finished reading Rose, the first published book of poems written by Li-Young Lee. Lee is one of my absolute favorite poets, so I was excited to finally read this. Besides Rose, I have read The City in Which I Love You, and Behind My Eyes. I just need to read two more books in order to have read all of his published books (I am a bit of completist when it comes to authors). 

As this is my first real real post about a book, I just want to say I am not at all planning on writing legit in-depth reviews that are like four paragraphs long. I have made that decision for a few of reasons. First: I am not in college, and don't want to be again. Second: I am a sloooooow writer. One paragraph takes me a minimum one hour to write. Third: I am looking to organize my thoughts, but in a casual way that does not make this blog feel like work, but like an actual place for potential discussion and sharing. In any post, I will most likely focus on something specific in the work that caught my eye and just talk about it. All is subject to revision.

All of that said: Rose.

Photo: Katie Chin

Often when I read Li-Young Lee's poetry, I think of tenderness. There is a deep tenderness to his writing, to how he handles subjects and objects and events. A poem I keep circling back to in Rose is 'Early in the Morning.' In the poem, Lee is witness to two moments of subtle intimacy between his parents. The first moment takes place in the mornings, when his mother is combing her hair to put into a neat bun. The second is in the evenings when his father undoes the bun and his mother's hair falls. Lee notes his father likes the way his mother's hair falls, which is why she puts her hair in the bun in the first place. The poem builds to that moment of unfurling. These moments are precious, and the careful pace, the literal patience his father has as his mother does her in the morning in order to see it unfurl at night, exude the tenderness I feel whenever I read Lee's poems. It is also a poem I think of as pretty emblematic of Lee's work: he recalls, as a child, the worlds of intimacy and feeling he witnessed, and understanding those worlds is something that both haunts him and comforts him, or else why write about it. This is clearer when contrasted to a couple other poems in the book: 'Dreaming of Hair' and 'Braiding.' It is not a coincidence these poems resonate within the book. Far more than the rose(s) in 'Always a Rose' - the centerpiece of the book - it is hair, and the complicated intimacies imbued in it that stay.