What do you think?
Rate this book
Garments Against Women
Garments Against Women is a book of mostly lyric prose about the conditions that make literature almost impossible. It holds a life story without a life, a lie spread across low-rent apartment complexes, dreamscapes, and information networks, tangled in chronology, landing in a heap of the future impossible. Available forms—like garments and literature—are made of the materials of history, of the hours of women’s and children’s lives, but they are mostly inadequate to the dimension, motion, and irregularity of what they contain. It’s a book about seeking to find the forms in which to think the thoughts necessary to survival, then about seeking to find the forms necessary to survive survival and survival’s requisite thoughts.
“Here Anne Boyer accounts for a form of life—form of life of a woman in this century living in Kansas City apartment complexes or duplexes with names like The Kingman or Colonial Gardens, form of life of a low-rent, cake-baking intellectual parenting a Socratic daughter, form of life of a person whose body refuses to become information or pornography, which are the same. These are the confessions of Anne Boyer, a political thinker who takes notes and invents movements, social and prosodic. Ta gueule, Rousseau.” —Lisa Robertson
Anne Boyer Artist Statement:
I read a lot, old works and new ones, but there were so many books that I couldn’t find. These were the books that should have contained an answer to the problem—how do we survive our survival? If a work of literature approached an answer, the answer was bent, asemic, obscured, distorted into sentimental accounts, melodrama, or pornography by literary convention established to make knowing what we needed to impossible.
.
Sometimes the answer was deformed by the failure of survival itself—there were texts severed by their author’s severed lives, by madness, by social isolation, by early death or a long life passed always wanting it. Literature, like garments, had so often been against so many of us, enforcing and sustaining the hostilities of a world with the unequal distribution of resources and the corresponding unequal distribution of suffering.
.
The libraries I needed were full of works written by ghosts of the dead so common their graves lacked stones, the literature of those humans whose names were never their own, whose names were mostly said aloud so that someone might make a command of them, whose names were never used as the mark of their own property—what was it they had known? How did the great human majority—women and girls, those without property, the poor and the workers and enslaved people—resist? In what forms, what languages, what codes were their poems? What possibilities inhabited their thinking, their philosophies, their politics? What names would they be called if they could choose their own?
During much of the time Garments Against Women was being written, I wanted to stop writing. I wanted to stop wanting and needing to write. This was so that my daughter and I could better survive; this was also because of my disappointment with literature.
.
But Garments Against Women exists because I failed. I failed to find the literature I needed, so I had to try to write it down. I failed, also, at refusal, failed at failing, failed at self-negating, failed at being ruined despite all that would ruin us, failed at keeping survival bare, failed at obeying history’s prohibitions, failed at being intimidated by the centuries of hostile traditions. What I failed at was not writing despite all the conditions that had been relentlessly calibrated to keep not writing sustained.
.
Some of us write because there are problems to be solved. My life is different than it was when I wrote Garments Against Women, but there’s still a problem: the world as we know it remains the world.
“Here Anne Boyer accounts for a form of life—form of life of a woman in this century living in Kansas City apartment complexes or duplexes with names like The Kingman or Colonial Gardens, form of life of a low-rent, cake-baking intellectual parenting a Socratic daughter, form of life of a person whose body refuses to become information or pornography, which are the same. These are the confessions of Anne Boyer, a political thinker who takes notes and invents movements, social and prosodic. Ta gueule, Rousseau.” —Lisa Robertson
Anne Boyer Artist Statement:
I read a lot, old works and new ones, but there were so many books that I couldn’t find. These were the books that should have contained an answer to the problem—how do we survive our survival? If a work of literature approached an answer, the answer was bent, asemic, obscured, distorted into sentimental accounts, melodrama, or pornography by literary convention established to make knowing what we needed to impossible.
.
Sometimes the answer was deformed by the failure of survival itself—there were texts severed by their author’s severed lives, by madness, by social isolation, by early death or a long life passed always wanting it. Literature, like garments, had so often been against so many of us, enforcing and sustaining the hostilities of a world with the unequal distribution of resources and the corresponding unequal distribution of suffering.
.
The libraries I needed were full of works written by ghosts of the dead so common their graves lacked stones, the literature of those humans whose names were never their own, whose names were mostly said aloud so that someone might make a command of them, whose names were never used as the mark of their own property—what was it they had known? How did the great human majority—women and girls, those without property, the poor and the workers and enslaved people—resist? In what forms, what languages, what codes were their poems? What possibilities inhabited their thinking, their philosophies, their politics? What names would they be called if they could choose their own?
During much of the time Garments Against Women was being written, I wanted to stop writing. I wanted to stop wanting and needing to write. This was so that my daughter and I could better survive; this was also because of my disappointment with literature.
.
But Garments Against Women exists because I failed. I failed to find the literature I needed, so I had to try to write it down. I failed, also, at refusal, failed at failing, failed at self-negating, failed at being ruined despite all that would ruin us, failed at keeping survival bare, failed at obeying history’s prohibitions, failed at being intimidated by the centuries of hostile traditions. What I failed at was not writing despite all the conditions that had been relentlessly calibrated to keep not writing sustained.
.
Some of us write because there are problems to be solved. My life is different than it was when I wrote Garments Against Women, but there’s still a problem: the world as we know it remains the world.
90 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2015
69 people are currently reading
4643 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 183 reviews
February 27, 2018
2/26/18: This just grows more and more important to me every time I read it.
--------
At Least Two Types of People by Anne Boyer
There are at least two types of people, the first for whom the ordinary worldliness is easy. The regular social routines and material cares are nothing too external to them and easily absorbed. They are not alien from the creation and maintenance of the world, the world does not treat them as alien. And also, from them, the efforts toward the world, and to them, the fulfillment of the world's moderate desires, flow. They are effortless at eating, moving, arranging their arms as they sit or stand, being hired, being paid, cleaning up, spending, playing, mating. They are in an ease and comfort. The world is for the world and for them.
Then there are those over whom the events and opportunities of the everyday world wash over. There is rarely, in this second type, any easy kind of absorption. There is only a visible evidence of having been made of a difference substance, one that repels. Also, from them, it is almost impossible to give to the world what it will welcome or reward. For how does this second type hold their arms? Across their chest? Behind their back? And how do they find food to eat and then prepare this food? And how do they receive a check or endorse it? And what also of the difficulties of love or being loved, its expansiveness, the way it is used for markets and indentured moods?
And what is this second substance? And how does it come to have as one of its qualities the resistance to the world as it is? And also, what is the person made of the second substance? Is this a human or more or less than one? Where is the true impermeable community of the second human whose arms do not easily arrange themselves and for whom the salaries and weddings and garages do not come?
These are, perhaps, not two sorts of persons, but two kinds of fortune. The first is soft and regular. The second is a baffled kind, and magnetic only to the second substance, and made itself out of a different, second, substance, and having, at its end, a second, and almost blank-faced, reward.
___
Please, please read this collection. Will try and write about it, but I think I have too much to say to organize any of it.
--------
At Least Two Types of People by Anne Boyer
There are at least two types of people, the first for whom the ordinary worldliness is easy. The regular social routines and material cares are nothing too external to them and easily absorbed. They are not alien from the creation and maintenance of the world, the world does not treat them as alien. And also, from them, the efforts toward the world, and to them, the fulfillment of the world's moderate desires, flow. They are effortless at eating, moving, arranging their arms as they sit or stand, being hired, being paid, cleaning up, spending, playing, mating. They are in an ease and comfort. The world is for the world and for them.
Then there are those over whom the events and opportunities of the everyday world wash over. There is rarely, in this second type, any easy kind of absorption. There is only a visible evidence of having been made of a difference substance, one that repels. Also, from them, it is almost impossible to give to the world what it will welcome or reward. For how does this second type hold their arms? Across their chest? Behind their back? And how do they find food to eat and then prepare this food? And how do they receive a check or endorse it? And what also of the difficulties of love or being loved, its expansiveness, the way it is used for markets and indentured moods?
And what is this second substance? And how does it come to have as one of its qualities the resistance to the world as it is? And also, what is the person made of the second substance? Is this a human or more or less than one? Where is the true impermeable community of the second human whose arms do not easily arrange themselves and for whom the salaries and weddings and garages do not come?
These are, perhaps, not two sorts of persons, but two kinds of fortune. The first is soft and regular. The second is a baffled kind, and magnetic only to the second substance, and made itself out of a different, second, substance, and having, at its end, a second, and almost blank-faced, reward.
___
Please, please read this collection. Will try and write about it, but I think I have too much to say to organize any of it.
January 5, 2020
This was not an easy book to penetrate. Boyer's writing is ellusive and almost academic but not in the clear, informative way; and it wasn't supposed to be, I don't think: these are the jumbled thoughts about poverty, feminism, and writing. It was hard to connect to it for the reasons stated above; however, when I was able to peel the foggyness behind the words and get a clear idea, Anne Boyer is genius. She just makes you work for it.
Read
August 25, 2025Sinto que já li bastante, mas ainda há tantas coisas tão relevantes acerca das quais nunca encontrei um livro.
Partilho desta sensação de Anne Boyer - do bastante (sempre relativo) que li, do bastante que tenho a ler e do bastante que não lerei (porque não existe ou porque já lá não chegue). E partilho da sua antecipação de que há ainda muito com que fazer habitar um livro. E a prova está neste Vestuário contra as mulheres. Misto de ensaio, poesia em prosa, memórias e fluxo de consciência, este é um daqueles livros inclassificáveis que abrem a fazer valer a surpresa de os encontrar numa livraria independente. O tom inconspícuo, a lembrar a memorabília e a anotação à margem, não nos prepara para alguns dos arrombos que lá vêm:
Penso sobretudo em roupa, sexo, comida e variações sazonais. Fiz tanta coisa para ser normal e fiz um registo desse processo: primeiro nasci, depois fui criança, depois aprendi coisas e fiz coisas e amei e tive quem me amasse e muitas vezes senti-me sozinha. O meu corpo ora estava bem, ora estava mal. Como tu, fui-me aproximando da morte.
Tecido de várias considerações sobre as condicionantes que se impõem, maioritariamente, às mulheres, este pequeníssimo livro recorre à história e às experiências pessoais da autora e traça delicadas linhas entre a costura, o ofício da poesia, a maternidade, a doença, a política, a dependência digital e a sociedade do consumo e da (des)informação:
Muitas informações inadmissíveis são inadmissíveis porque provocam um sentimento de pena, culpa ou desprezo. Todos estes três (pena, culpa e desprezo) são sentimentos de poder, são as indulgências emocionais daqueles que têm poder ou daqueles que o procuram. Quem é que quer admitir a informação que vai tornar ainda mais ricos aqueles que já são tão feios de tão ricos que são?
Num estilo manifestamente pós-moderno, fragmentário e descontínuo, Anne Boyer desconstrói as problemáticas do capitalismo, da classe e do género...
Estava a cortar legumes na cozinha e a pensar em como o discurso é uma conspiração, depois em como o discurso é uma conspiração como o «gosto», depois em como o gosto é uma arma de classe.
...e lança-se nos caminhos traiçoeiros da legitimidade do discurso (a fazer lembrar Solnit e o seu mansplaining):
Ele é o homem que olha para o céu azul e diz: «Não te lembres deste céu azul como sendo azul».
Olho com os meus olhos para o céu azul e vejo que é azul, depois olho para ele também com os meus olhos e tomo nota para não me lembrar do céu azul como azul. Tomo nota, também, para me lembrar da sua proclamação contra a cor do céu. Tomo nota, também, de que terei sabido que o céu era azul, depois ter-me-ão dito para esquecer o que sei sobre o céu, o que terei por certo feito. Tomo nota para duvidar da legibilidade de qualquer uma destas notas, pois são notas sobre pessoas que acreditam colectivamente que uma frase humana - dita por um homem e ouvida por uma mulher pode transmutar até a azulidade do céu.
(...)
Suspeito de que, tal como tantos humanos nesta nossa cultura, já me confrontei com mais imperativos de homens do que com o próprio céu. Entre duas realidades a do céu, empírica, uma cor, e a do homem, que insiste em dizer a outra pessoa que o que ela viu do céu, com os seus próprios olhos, não é real, dei comigo a viver na do homem.
E já que estamos a fomentar paralelismos entre autoras, Vestuário contra as mulheres é também um livro que traça paralelos com Um quarto só para si e com os condicionalismos que enfrenta toda a mulher perante a mercantilização do seu tempo pessoal:
Há anos, dias, horas, minutos, semanas, momentos e outras medidas de tempo que se gastam na produção de «não escrever». Não escrever é trabalhar, e quando não é trabalhar num trabalho remunerado é trabalhar num trabalho não remunerado.
Por tudo isto, esta leitura tem-me feito pensar em pequeninos grandes nadas que, como aqueles que os textos aqui reunidos exploram, condicionam a vida das mulheres (e das restantes categorias marginalizadas). Pequeninos grandes nadas que neste livro são abordados de forma poética - e que, no meu caso, não são assim tão inspirados. Ainda assim, pequeninos grandes nadas que afetam a vida de milhares de pessoas: pense-se em ecrãs tácteis nas mãos de um invisual; em tesouras para destros nas mãos de esquerdinos; e depois, pense-se nos muitos diagnósticos errados de que as mulheres comummente sofrem; na altura descomunal a que se encontram as alças e as barras de segurança num comboio ou autocarro; na quase impossibilidade de uma mulher fazer uma viagem sozinha por esse mundo fora (já para não falar da incrível proeza de fazer couch surfing); na autêntica odisseia de escolher a roupa apropriada para um dia de trabalho - sem fazer levantar sobrancelhas, motivar apupos ou piscadelas de olho...
Estes pequeninos grandes nadas que afetam as camadas normalmente marginalizadas pela sociedade (as maiorias, e não as minorias!), têm-me surgido a par e passo com as reflexões de Boyer - não tão polidas, é verdade, e talvez não tão direcionadas, mas motivadas por este seu confessionário. E com isso, muitas das suas preocupações têm-se revelado minhas também. Questões de género e opressão, sobretudo (a opressão através da literatura é um tópico particularmente caro à autora), merecem de Anne Boyer alguma da mais conceptual e interessante poesia:
Em breve escreverei um livro longo e triste intitulado Uma Mulher às Compras. Será um livro sobre aquilo que somos obrigadas a fazer e também um livro sobre aquilo que somos odiadas por fazer. Será um livro sobre a inveja e um livro sobre coisas que mal se vêem. Esse livro seria também um livro sobre a história da literatura e os usos da literatura contra as mulheres, e também contra a literatura e a favor dela, e também contra as compras e a favor delas. O flâneur é um poeta, é um agente desembaraçado de bolsas, mas uma mulher não é uma mulher sem uma alça ao ombro ou a segurar uma mala de mão.(...)
Mas quem publicaría este livro, e quem, já agora, o compraria? E como pode ser literatura, se não for tímida mas sinceramente contra a literatura, como também é contra nós mesmas?
Pela sua intimidade, Vestuário contra as mulheres é também um livro que se torna, a tempos, desconfortável. Pessoal e incisivo, faz do leitor seu cúmplice (e as muitas ilustrações que acompanham o texto apenas reforçam o sentimento de intromissão num espaço pessoal que tanto pode ser o da autora como da narradora como da leitora - que aqui pouco se destinguem):
Naquele tempo, algumas pessoas estavam doentes com o mundo, outras doentes por falta dele, e eram duas doenças opostas e também, por vezes, duas doenças simultâneas, e certamente duas doenças que exigiam duas ou mais curas.
(...)
Havia pelo menos dois tipos de pessoas: as que abominavam o mundo e estavam aprisionadas na sua terribilidade e as que se abominavam a si próprias por combinarem bem com o mundo. Não me pareceu descabido tomar notas sobre isto.
Brutal com a sua própria criadora, a obra de Boyer é coisa que se lê como uma espécie de diário desencantado. E a sua autora, uma mulher que se apresenta sem adornos, cingida de um vestuário de liberdade e liberta das roupagens que nos contêm a todas nós nas malhas de habitar o próprio corpo.
Era demasiado triste para levar uns tabefes. Estava pedrada e inconsolável. Era uma engenheira de foguetões derreada, a olhar para os restos retorcidos de uma astronáutica com erros de cálculo. Queria dispensar adendas.
Adendas dispensadas, Vestuário contra as mulheres escapa, felizmente, a qualquer categorização forçada e à compartimentação típica dos nossos dias, ensinando-nos a parar para contemplar as estruturas da sociedade que nos acolhe e molda:
Imaginas que podes escapar a uma categoria desmoronando-a, mas, se tentas desmoronar a categoria, o tecto cai sobre a tua cabeça. Então ali está a pessoa, não tendo escapado à categoria, tendo apenas mudado a sua arquitectura. Antes era uma categoria com um tecto, agora é uma categoria em que toda a gente está soterrada nos escombros do que antes era um tecto sobre as suas cabeças.
Partilho desta sensação de Anne Boyer - do bastante (sempre relativo) que li, do bastante que tenho a ler e do bastante que não lerei (porque não existe ou porque já lá não chegue). E partilho da sua antecipação de que há ainda muito com que fazer habitar um livro. E a prova está neste Vestuário contra as mulheres. Misto de ensaio, poesia em prosa, memórias e fluxo de consciência, este é um daqueles livros inclassificáveis que abrem a fazer valer a surpresa de os encontrar numa livraria independente. O tom inconspícuo, a lembrar a memorabília e a anotação à margem, não nos prepara para alguns dos arrombos que lá vêm:
Penso sobretudo em roupa, sexo, comida e variações sazonais. Fiz tanta coisa para ser normal e fiz um registo desse processo: primeiro nasci, depois fui criança, depois aprendi coisas e fiz coisas e amei e tive quem me amasse e muitas vezes senti-me sozinha. O meu corpo ora estava bem, ora estava mal. Como tu, fui-me aproximando da morte.
Tecido de várias considerações sobre as condicionantes que se impõem, maioritariamente, às mulheres, este pequeníssimo livro recorre à história e às experiências pessoais da autora e traça delicadas linhas entre a costura, o ofício da poesia, a maternidade, a doença, a política, a dependência digital e a sociedade do consumo e da (des)informação:
Muitas informações inadmissíveis são inadmissíveis porque provocam um sentimento de pena, culpa ou desprezo. Todos estes três (pena, culpa e desprezo) são sentimentos de poder, são as indulgências emocionais daqueles que têm poder ou daqueles que o procuram. Quem é que quer admitir a informação que vai tornar ainda mais ricos aqueles que já são tão feios de tão ricos que são?
Num estilo manifestamente pós-moderno, fragmentário e descontínuo, Anne Boyer desconstrói as problemáticas do capitalismo, da classe e do género...
Estava a cortar legumes na cozinha e a pensar em como o discurso é uma conspiração, depois em como o discurso é uma conspiração como o «gosto», depois em como o gosto é uma arma de classe.
...e lança-se nos caminhos traiçoeiros da legitimidade do discurso (a fazer lembrar Solnit e o seu mansplaining):
Ele é o homem que olha para o céu azul e diz: «Não te lembres deste céu azul como sendo azul».
Olho com os meus olhos para o céu azul e vejo que é azul, depois olho para ele também com os meus olhos e tomo nota para não me lembrar do céu azul como azul. Tomo nota, também, para me lembrar da sua proclamação contra a cor do céu. Tomo nota, também, de que terei sabido que o céu era azul, depois ter-me-ão dito para esquecer o que sei sobre o céu, o que terei por certo feito. Tomo nota para duvidar da legibilidade de qualquer uma destas notas, pois são notas sobre pessoas que acreditam colectivamente que uma frase humana - dita por um homem e ouvida por uma mulher pode transmutar até a azulidade do céu.
(...)
Suspeito de que, tal como tantos humanos nesta nossa cultura, já me confrontei com mais imperativos de homens do que com o próprio céu. Entre duas realidades a do céu, empírica, uma cor, e a do homem, que insiste em dizer a outra pessoa que o que ela viu do céu, com os seus próprios olhos, não é real, dei comigo a viver na do homem.
E já que estamos a fomentar paralelismos entre autoras, Vestuário contra as mulheres é também um livro que traça paralelos com Um quarto só para si e com os condicionalismos que enfrenta toda a mulher perante a mercantilização do seu tempo pessoal:
Há anos, dias, horas, minutos, semanas, momentos e outras medidas de tempo que se gastam na produção de «não escrever». Não escrever é trabalhar, e quando não é trabalhar num trabalho remunerado é trabalhar num trabalho não remunerado.
Por tudo isto, esta leitura tem-me feito pensar em pequeninos grandes nadas que, como aqueles que os textos aqui reunidos exploram, condicionam a vida das mulheres (e das restantes categorias marginalizadas). Pequeninos grandes nadas que neste livro são abordados de forma poética - e que, no meu caso, não são assim tão inspirados. Ainda assim, pequeninos grandes nadas que afetam a vida de milhares de pessoas: pense-se em ecrãs tácteis nas mãos de um invisual; em tesouras para destros nas mãos de esquerdinos; e depois, pense-se nos muitos diagnósticos errados de que as mulheres comummente sofrem; na altura descomunal a que se encontram as alças e as barras de segurança num comboio ou autocarro; na quase impossibilidade de uma mulher fazer uma viagem sozinha por esse mundo fora (já para não falar da incrível proeza de fazer couch surfing); na autêntica odisseia de escolher a roupa apropriada para um dia de trabalho - sem fazer levantar sobrancelhas, motivar apupos ou piscadelas de olho...
Estes pequeninos grandes nadas que afetam as camadas normalmente marginalizadas pela sociedade (as maiorias, e não as minorias!), têm-me surgido a par e passo com as reflexões de Boyer - não tão polidas, é verdade, e talvez não tão direcionadas, mas motivadas por este seu confessionário. E com isso, muitas das suas preocupações têm-se revelado minhas também. Questões de género e opressão, sobretudo (a opressão através da literatura é um tópico particularmente caro à autora), merecem de Anne Boyer alguma da mais conceptual e interessante poesia:
Em breve escreverei um livro longo e triste intitulado Uma Mulher às Compras. Será um livro sobre aquilo que somos obrigadas a fazer e também um livro sobre aquilo que somos odiadas por fazer. Será um livro sobre a inveja e um livro sobre coisas que mal se vêem. Esse livro seria também um livro sobre a história da literatura e os usos da literatura contra as mulheres, e também contra a literatura e a favor dela, e também contra as compras e a favor delas. O flâneur é um poeta, é um agente desembaraçado de bolsas, mas uma mulher não é uma mulher sem uma alça ao ombro ou a segurar uma mala de mão.(...)
Mas quem publicaría este livro, e quem, já agora, o compraria? E como pode ser literatura, se não for tímida mas sinceramente contra a literatura, como também é contra nós mesmas?
Pela sua intimidade, Vestuário contra as mulheres é também um livro que se torna, a tempos, desconfortável. Pessoal e incisivo, faz do leitor seu cúmplice (e as muitas ilustrações que acompanham o texto apenas reforçam o sentimento de intromissão num espaço pessoal que tanto pode ser o da autora como da narradora como da leitora - que aqui pouco se destinguem):
Naquele tempo, algumas pessoas estavam doentes com o mundo, outras doentes por falta dele, e eram duas doenças opostas e também, por vezes, duas doenças simultâneas, e certamente duas doenças que exigiam duas ou mais curas.
(...)
Havia pelo menos dois tipos de pessoas: as que abominavam o mundo e estavam aprisionadas na sua terribilidade e as que se abominavam a si próprias por combinarem bem com o mundo. Não me pareceu descabido tomar notas sobre isto.
Brutal com a sua própria criadora, a obra de Boyer é coisa que se lê como uma espécie de diário desencantado. E a sua autora, uma mulher que se apresenta sem adornos, cingida de um vestuário de liberdade e liberta das roupagens que nos contêm a todas nós nas malhas de habitar o próprio corpo.
Era demasiado triste para levar uns tabefes. Estava pedrada e inconsolável. Era uma engenheira de foguetões derreada, a olhar para os restos retorcidos de uma astronáutica com erros de cálculo. Queria dispensar adendas.
Adendas dispensadas, Vestuário contra as mulheres escapa, felizmente, a qualquer categorização forçada e à compartimentação típica dos nossos dias, ensinando-nos a parar para contemplar as estruturas da sociedade que nos acolhe e molda:
Imaginas que podes escapar a uma categoria desmoronando-a, mas, se tentas desmoronar a categoria, o tecto cai sobre a tua cabeça. Então ali está a pessoa, não tendo escapado à categoria, tendo apenas mudado a sua arquitectura. Antes era uma categoria com um tecto, agora é uma categoria em que toda a gente está soterrada nos escombros do que antes era um tecto sobre as suas cabeças.
February 4, 2016
"I was at the edge of cities. I was at the edge of economies. In those days some even accused me of googling my dreams.
I ignored the ordinary digital manners of those times."
I ignored the ordinary digital manners of those times."
May 25, 2016
This little book is so hard to characterize...is it poetry? A lyrical essay? Definitely a musing on life, the condition of being a woman and an artist/thinker who works and does not work...I just know that I found myself at times laughing at loud and other times resonating deeply with the confusion, pain and loveliness of her language. Not like anything else I've ever read, which for me was part of the fun.
January 28, 2020
"I filled up the bathtub with water boiled on the stove, and the windows went opaque with steam. The coffee went cold in a minute. My daughter and I put all the blankets and clothes we owned over us. I decided I would be a poet so that I could complain publicly of this."
More poets who write honestly about poverty. More poets who write incisively about labor & capital.
More poets who write honestly about poverty. More poets who write incisively about labor & capital.
October 9, 2015
Anne Boyer's writing is #goals. I feel very understood right now.
January 2, 2021
a catalogue of whales that is a catalogue
of whale bones inside a catalogue of garments
against women that could never be a novel itself.
Challenging and avant-garde.
of whale bones inside a catalogue of garments
against women that could never be a novel itself.
Challenging and avant-garde.
February 23, 2025
Musiałam użyć 110% mózgu, żeby to zrozumieć, ale było piękne
December 28, 2016
This slim and lovely book of poetry challenges what poetry is while examining how we make our lives. I especially loved the poem "What I'm Not Writing" all about the things she is not writing when she is not writing. Sounds like a great writing exercise!
April 16, 2018
YES!!!!!!!
March 3, 2025
Oh, Anne, how cryptic in the destination but how exact in the beautiful and stabbing writing.
I cannot choose between the quotes, so here they come:
"At that time, I wanted to be nice like a word in a dictionary. I was anonymous, or trying to be. I lost my head. I lost my head. I fell in love with everyone. Love was a figure of speech."
"Every morning, I wake up with a renewed commitment to learning to be what i'm not. This is the day in which i will sew a straight seam, cut a piece of fabric precisely, follow the directions."
"I knew what it was like to be unpunctuated."
"Poetry was the wrong art for people who love justice [...] Information is the poetry of the people who love war."
"'each garment holds in it hours of a garmet worker's life'. I sew and the historical of sewing becomes a feeling as just when I used to be a poet, when I used to write poetry and that thing -culture- began tendriling out in me."
She paused. "do you have enough dreams?"
I cannot choose between the quotes, so here they come:
"At that time, I wanted to be nice like a word in a dictionary. I was anonymous, or trying to be. I lost my head. I lost my head. I fell in love with everyone. Love was a figure of speech."
"Every morning, I wake up with a renewed commitment to learning to be what i'm not. This is the day in which i will sew a straight seam, cut a piece of fabric precisely, follow the directions."
"I knew what it was like to be unpunctuated."
"Poetry was the wrong art for people who love justice [...] Information is the poetry of the people who love war."
"'each garment holds in it hours of a garmet worker's life'. I sew and the historical of sewing becomes a feeling as just when I used to be a poet, when I used to write poetry and that thing -culture- began tendriling out in me."
She paused. "do you have enough dreams?"
Read
April 20, 2024i enjoyed this, particularly "sewing," "not writing," "what is 'not writing'?" and "ma vie en bling"
anne boyer is really sharp! i'm compelled by her disappointment in literature, by her ability to make clear the economic underpinnings of writing & literature without being overly didactic
i've read and liked her newsletters for a long time now and maybe went into this book looking for something like guidance/wisdom lol, which of course it couldn't really offer me. i don't really know how to read poetry (or in this case "lyrical prose" i guess) so struggled with some of the pieces that felt more obscure. it'd be cool to learn how to read poetry!
anne boyer is really sharp! i'm compelled by her disappointment in literature, by her ability to make clear the economic underpinnings of writing & literature without being overly didactic
i've read and liked her newsletters for a long time now and maybe went into this book looking for something like guidance/wisdom lol, which of course it couldn't really offer me. i don't really know how to read poetry (or in this case "lyrical prose" i guess) so struggled with some of the pieces that felt more obscure. it'd be cool to learn how to read poetry!
September 24, 2023
3.5 ⭐
lost brain cells reading this....
I enjoyed the first half of the book more.
lost brain cells reading this....
I enjoyed the first half of the book more.
Read
November 21, 2023always find the but what even is poetry???? debate incredibly boring but it's true that penguin categorising this as POETRY does taste a little odd, that nebulous term Lyric Essay may be better ? But anytime I think about this I kind of like how stubborn it is in calling itself poetry ; whose garment? & I believed that if one came to poetry for solace one was fucked
anyway it's really good esp towards the end, particularly because it asks a fair bit from its reader, to meet halfway. stein in here. a kind of obsession with economies , exchange which I find in Shapero too. nice
anyway it's really good esp towards the end, particularly because it asks a fair bit from its reader, to meet halfway. stein in here. a kind of obsession with economies , exchange which I find in Shapero too. nice
August 16, 2016
I appreciated Boyer's syntactical play, but it was a collection I could only be read in short bursts. She has constructed a house that has no doors, only windows, and Boyer herself can only be seen through those windows as she goes from room to room with a faulty flashlight.
There are great, honest bursts of light, though: "I believed that if one came to poetry for solace one was fucked. I believed things would go on like this."
It is a good read, a dense read, a read that probably needs a re-read, at least for me.
There are great, honest bursts of light, though: "I believed that if one came to poetry for solace one was fucked. I believed things would go on like this."
It is a good read, a dense read, a read that probably needs a re-read, at least for me.
January 7, 2016
Beautifully written!
March 31, 2016
It was amazing. I saw Anne Boyer read, and it was amazing. Her book is amazing. I want to read it again.
September 10, 2016
Brilliant.
July 20, 2022
<3 her brain!!!!! I drink up everything she writes. This reads like an extended self-portrait of Boyer, her relationship with writing, motherhood, womanhood, happiness, & information. I do sort of wish the sewing portion was more of a through line bc I loved it so much!
some of my favorite lines/passages:
"I'm okay with subjectivity. It's silky wovens that mess me up."
"On attempting to open doors for the elderly and in the process of this, touching their arms"
"Inadmissible information is inadmissible because it provokes a kind of social discomfort, like how if a group of poor people are in the room with one not-poor person the poor people might without conferring about it work together to carefully conceal their own poverty for the benefit of the other, not-poor person, sometimes going so far as to increase their poverty by paying for the things they cannot afford."
"In the dreams there is always walking around, finding walls, follies, and not getting to one place or the next but it is often those I love but whom I do not get to see veery much who walk with me."
"On the local radio show a man who won a Pulitzer prize in fiction explained that one must write every day because if a person does not write everyday a person forgets how to access the subconscious. If one did not write everyday then whenever a person comes back to writing she would have to learn to write from the beginning again. This has always been my plan. I would like to not know how to write, also to know no words. I believe this prize winning novelist believed that the mind had two places, the conscious and subconscious, and that literature could only come out of the subconscious mind, but that language preferred to live in the conscious one. This is wrong. Language prefers to live on the internet."
"The anarchist pop star had a baby with the billionaire's son. It's a green gray blur of guns and money. It was proof for those who needed it that she didn't really mean what she said."
"There is trauma which is fantastic in the way it is brief and clear and also the way it lingers around and emerges unpredictably as if it will forever."
some of my favorite lines/passages:
"I'm okay with subjectivity. It's silky wovens that mess me up."
"On attempting to open doors for the elderly and in the process of this, touching their arms"
"Inadmissible information is inadmissible because it provokes a kind of social discomfort, like how if a group of poor people are in the room with one not-poor person the poor people might without conferring about it work together to carefully conceal their own poverty for the benefit of the other, not-poor person, sometimes going so far as to increase their poverty by paying for the things they cannot afford."
"In the dreams there is always walking around, finding walls, follies, and not getting to one place or the next but it is often those I love but whom I do not get to see veery much who walk with me."
"On the local radio show a man who won a Pulitzer prize in fiction explained that one must write every day because if a person does not write everyday a person forgets how to access the subconscious. If one did not write everyday then whenever a person comes back to writing she would have to learn to write from the beginning again. This has always been my plan. I would like to not know how to write, also to know no words. I believe this prize winning novelist believed that the mind had two places, the conscious and subconscious, and that literature could only come out of the subconscious mind, but that language preferred to live in the conscious one. This is wrong. Language prefers to live on the internet."
"The anarchist pop star had a baby with the billionaire's son. It's a green gray blur of guns and money. It was proof for those who needed it that she didn't really mean what she said."
"There is trauma which is fantastic in the way it is brief and clear and also the way it lingers around and emerges unpredictably as if it will forever."
January 30, 2022
was starting to doubt last night's feelings while re-reading and noting down bits from a handbook of disappointed fate, wondering whether the frustration was from reading late & haphazardly, but then i started this from scratch and felt my brain wriggle. there's just Is something abt anne boyer's style that i find overstimulating, that makes me Itch.
[to the tune of there was a little girl] when she's direct, she is v v direct & when she is not, she Confounds me.
will probably come back to this at some point, but esp to 'at least two types of people', 'sewing', 'the open book' & 'bon pour brûler'.
[to the tune of there was a little girl] when she's direct, she is v v direct & when she is not, she Confounds me.
will probably come back to this at some point, but esp to 'at least two types of people', 'sewing', 'the open book' & 'bon pour brûler'.
October 8, 2020
asjklflaskfjs AHHHHHHHHH
I think mostly about clothes, sex, food, and seasonal variations. I have done so much to be ordinary and made a record of this: first I was born, next I was a child, then I learned things and did things and loved and had those who loved me and often felt alone. My body was sometimes well, then sometimes unwell. I got nearer to death, as did you.
I think mostly about clothes, sex, food, and seasonal variations. I have done so much to be ordinary and made a record of this: first I was born, next I was a child, then I learned things and did things and loved and had those who loved me and often felt alone. My body was sometimes well, then sometimes unwell. I got nearer to death, as did you.
November 15, 2023
Waaaaaaaaat. Sweeped through this in just over an hour. Will try and review when my head is less messy. But wow ! Wow !!!!
August 19, 2021
I'm not sure why but I had a very hard time connecting with this on an emotional level.
The writing, however, was fantastic and the ideas behind the texts were very insightful and thought-provoking.
The writing, however, was fantastic and the ideas behind the texts were very insightful and thought-provoking.
March 27, 2025
not enough garments
December 9, 2022
One of the best texts I've read. Slightly difficult to read but thought-provoking.
June 12, 2025
read on my work computer from internet archive while pretending to do work sort of
February 9, 2021
million percent wowzers and I don't even like poetry anymore; I sent snippets from different poems to a few different people and I wish someone would send some to me
December 24, 2019
Probably too dumb to get the parts I perceived as mishmosh but the best parts I am certain are the best parts: 'At Least Two Types of People' and 'What Is "Not Writing"?' and 'A Woman Shopping'
August 31, 2016
I really, really wanted to love this book, but I just didn't. I went to a reading that Anne Boyer did and when she was reading her work, I thought it sounded lyrical and pleasant to the ears. But when I was reading it myself, it just didn't make any sense to me. I kind of got the feeling that if I could just figure out what she was saying it would have been some kind of beautiful commentary on the state of things in the world, but honestly most of it just sounded like rambling nonsense to me. There were some quotes and some sections that I did like, but most of it I just couldn't understand. Anne Boyer is such a great person and I really wanted to like her book, but I just didn't.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 183 reviews