The radiant engine of this novel is neither plot or character but rather the thick bundle of arcs and associations working in tandem: angels and birds, wolves and castles, unions and debt, seasons and wine and cooking and love.
When I’m reading books that work within fantastic traditions, I find they’re able to hold more truths simultaneously and give me, as a reader, room to contemplate social justice and political issues and come to my own understanding of what’s what.
. . . in the end, the poem is its own witness to something indefinable with which the poet is engaged. Whatever the poet thinks it is, the poem itself is the vehicle, the container, describing itself and gesturing beyond its words.
. . . utopia is a living, breathing, imperfect thing that expands and grows with us. It’s always a reflection of our individual selves, of the larger communities we choose, and of the time and place we are born into.
What does a growth of new grass on a hillside in spring make you feel? Is it a mixture of nostalgia and hope? Or what does a distant mountain range wreathed in a crown of clouds make you feel?
Where are you, Susana Thénon?—which I think might mean: How does Thénon achieve something more than evasion and isolation with all of this wandering around? Does she land somewhere?—“In a room where if I am I’m not or I am who cares”