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Hera Lindsay Bird
New Zealand's best-selling collection, from the mysterious force behind such poems as 'Monica' (the one from Friends) and 'Keats is Dead so F**k Me from Behind'
this impressive debut has established Hera Lindsay Bird as a good girl......with many beneficial thoughts and feelings......
with themes as varied as snow and tears, the poems in this collection shine with the fantastic cream of who she is................juxtaposing many classical and modern breezes
Bird turns her prescient eye on love and loss, and what emerges is like a helicopter in fog......or a bejewelled Christmas sleigh, gliding triumphantly through the contemporary aesthetic desert.........
this is at once an intelligent and compelling fantasy of tenderness......
heart-breaking and charged with trees......without once sacrificing the forest............
whether you are masturbating luxuriously in your parents' sleepout..........
..........or pushing a pork roast home in a vintage pram...................
this is the book for you.............................................
heroically and compulsively stupid..................................................................
...........................................................whipping you once again into medieval sunlight.
112 pages, Paperback
First published October 24, 2016
57 people are currently reading
3152 people want to read
About the author
Hera Lindsay Bird
6 books118 followersBorn 1987 in Thames. She attended Victoria University of Wellington and then received her Master's degree in poetry from its International Institute of Modern Letters.
One of New Zealand's most promising poets, Ms Bird was one of 11 recipients of the annual Arts Awards of New Zealand in 2017.
One of New Zealand's most promising poets, Ms Bird was one of 11 recipients of the annual Arts Awards of New Zealand in 2017.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 333 reviews
June 14, 2018
This was absolutely fantastic. The first collection from New Zealand poet Hera Lindsay Bird, it's funny, sexy, wildly imaginative and full of melancholy…it took me completely by surprise. I suppose my expectations when it comes to new young poets are fairly low – too many of them just seem to
consider poetic form
as no more than a literary weaponisation
of line breaks
…and that is true here as well, but she makes up for it by packing every line with more startling imagery and productive disorientation than most poets manage in a whole book. You never find yourself wondering how something should be interpreted, or how to give the author the benefit of the doubt over whether something is trite or profound. Instead it all just washes over you in little bursts of aesthetic pleasure.
Bird's primary tool is the simile, which she wields with disarming flair and confidence. At every turn you find thoughts expressed by means of comparisons that make you laugh, take you by surprise, or give you strange new angles on familiar ideas. She describes the heart, for instance, as being ‘like a cold sleigh drawn / again & again / through the dark avenues of spring’, says that her bisexuality is ‘like turning your back on God...........but in a risqué halter neck’, and writes about
Elsewhere, a sexual partner's O-face puts her in mind of ‘an athlete winning a prestigious sporting tournament at the exact moment he realises his wife has been cheating on him’. Writing about one enthusiastic sexual encounter, she says:
…which is the kind of line that makes me put a book down and stare around me in delight, at a world newly-changed. I mean, the book's worth the price for that alone. This particular poem, ‘Ways of Making Love’, is one of many in here that are, on a formal level, not much more than lists of similes, strung together in overwhelming profusion and in such a way that the technique is triumphantly justified. It begins:
The images come and go, succeeding each other so rapidly that you're left only with lingering impressions, floundering in some weird subjective space where they all intersect. The same can be said for the litany of rhetorical conditionals in a poem like ‘If You Are An Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh’:
(She goes on in this vein for three more pages.) Bird has a good ear for well-handled swearwords, an affinity for playful titillation, and an engagement with pop culture (one poem is all about Monica from Friends), but she is definitely not a ‘pop poet’ in a dismissive sense. There are serious linguistic tricks going on in here, and surprisingly deep thinking, too. She likes the eye-catching glare of sex as a subject – but it's usually there to smuggle in something much more serious about mortality, loss, the transience of interpersonal relations.
I'll close by leaving you with my favourite from this collection, a poem that somehow manages to live up to its title of ‘Keats Is Dead So Fuck Me From Behind’:
consider poetic form
as no more than a literary weaponisation
of line breaks
…and that is true here as well, but she makes up for it by packing every line with more startling imagery and productive disorientation than most poets manage in a whole book. You never find yourself wondering how something should be interpreted, or how to give the author the benefit of the doubt over whether something is trite or profound. Instead it all just washes over you in little bursts of aesthetic pleasure.
Bird's primary tool is the simile, which she wields with disarming flair and confidence. At every turn you find thoughts expressed by means of comparisons that make you laugh, take you by surprise, or give you strange new angles on familiar ideas. She describes the heart, for instance, as being ‘like a cold sleigh drawn / again & again / through the dark avenues of spring’, says that her bisexuality is ‘like turning your back on God...........but in a risqué halter neck’, and writes about
how the past illuminates the present
still swinging from the heart's rafters
like a chandelier in an ambulance
Elsewhere, a sexual partner's O-face puts her in mind of ‘an athlete winning a prestigious sporting tournament at the exact moment he realises his wife has been cheating on him’. Writing about one enthusiastic sexual encounter, she says:
You are a denim tree and I'm the world's fastest autumn.
…which is the kind of line that makes me put a book down and stare around me in delight, at a world newly-changed. I mean, the book's worth the price for that alone. This particular poem, ‘Ways of Making Love’, is one of many in here that are, on a formal level, not much more than lists of similes, strung together in overwhelming profusion and in such a way that the technique is triumphantly justified. It begins:
Like a metal detector detecting another metal detector.
Like two lonely scholars in the dark clefts of the Cyrillic alphabet.
Like an ancient star slowly getting sucked into a black hole.
So hard we break sports, leaving the conveners of the Olympics
with a generous redundancy package.
The images come and go, succeeding each other so rapidly that you're left only with lingering impressions, floundering in some weird subjective space where they all intersect. The same can be said for the litany of rhetorical conditionals in a poem like ‘If You Are An Ancient Egyptian Pharaoh’:
IF YOU ARE AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN PHARAOH
I am carving dirty hieroglyphics
into the wall of your tomb
If you are a dead French aristocrat
I am the suspicious circumstances
surrounding your death
If you are a shape-shifting wizard
I am the shape you are shifting into
If you are a fast-moving cloud
I am an entire field of deer
looking up
(She goes on in this vein for three more pages.) Bird has a good ear for well-handled swearwords, an affinity for playful titillation, and an engagement with pop culture (one poem is all about Monica from Friends), but she is definitely not a ‘pop poet’ in a dismissive sense. There are serious linguistic tricks going on in here, and surprisingly deep thinking, too. She likes the eye-catching glare of sex as a subject – but it's usually there to smuggle in something much more serious about mortality, loss, the transience of interpersonal relations.
I'll close by leaving you with my favourite from this collection, a poem that somehow manages to live up to its title of ‘Keats Is Dead So Fuck Me From Behind’:
Keats is dead, so fuck me from behind
Slowly and with carnal purpose
Some black midwinter afternoon
While all the children are walking home from school
Peel my stockings down with your teeth
Coleridge is dead, and Auden too
Of laughing in an overcoat
Shelley died at sea and his heart wouldn't burn
And Wordsworth.......
They never found his body
His widow mad with grief, hammering nails into an empty meadow
Byron, Whitman, our dog crushed by a garage door
Finger me slowly
In the snowscape of your childhood
Our dead floating just below the surface of the earth
Bend me over like a substitute teacher
& pump me full of shivering arrows
O emotional vulnerability
Bosnian folk-song, birds in the chimney
Tell me what you love when you think I’m not listening
Wallace Stevens’s mother is calling him in for dinner
But he’s not coming, he’s dead too, he died sixty years ago
And nobody cared at his funeral
Life is real
And the days burn off like leopard print
Nobody, not even the dead can tell me what to do
Eat my pussy from behind
Bill Manhire’s not getting any younger
January 13, 2021
listen... read this fucking book
January 3, 2017
And Ms Bird is perched on the cover like a...bird.
If the cover is somewhat enigmatic, the poetry isn't. Hard hitting,honest, sometimes funny and sometimes shocking my daughter (who played with Hera when they were both very tiny children) describes this as poetry that speaks to millennials. I am well out of that age group, but I was still intrigued by Hera's ability to play with words.
The red hot favourite to win the poetry section of this year's Ockham's (New Zealand's main book awards)
If the cover is somewhat enigmatic, the poetry isn't. Hard hitting,honest, sometimes funny and sometimes shocking my daughter (who played with Hera when they were both very tiny children) describes this as poetry that speaks to millennials. I am well out of that age group, but I was still intrigued by Hera's ability to play with words.
The red hot favourite to win the poetry section of this year's Ockham's (New Zealand's main book awards)
November 22, 2020
Nusipirkau seniai, skaitymuose buvau, perskaičiau tik dabar. Nelabai. Tokia buitinė poezija - vietom naivi, vietom pamaiviška, kaip Lana Del Rey, su daug daugtaškių, klaustukų. O šiaip..................????? nelabai gaaaaaaal.....................
Dabar apie daug ką sako - išpažintinė poezija, aš nesu iki galo supratusi, ką tas reiškia. Hera Lindsay Bird daug rašo apie save, daug patirčių, daug buities; tarsi nesivadovauja kažkokiais modeliais - bet ką aš žinau apie Naujosios Zelandijos poeziją ir jos modelius????????? ........ Eilėraščiuose daug seksualumo, drąsos, visokių atsivėrimų. Gal faina??????? Bet kažkaip manęs nelabai veikia?..... Toks demonstratyvus naivumas??? O gal čia irgi modelis?......
Gal čia tokia pati instagramo stiliaus poetė kaip Rupi Kaur, tik ne paauglėms, o studentėms, pageidautina humanitarėms (daug citatų, filosofija + popsas, cituoja "Draugus" ir Deleuze'ą + Guattari)? Aš jau jaučiuos smarkiai pensininkė. Nors, jei vietoj "Draugų" būtų parašius apie "X failus", būčiau davus daugiau žvaigždučių.........!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Dabar apie daug ką sako - išpažintinė poezija, aš nesu iki galo supratusi, ką tas reiškia. Hera Lindsay Bird daug rašo apie save, daug patirčių, daug buities; tarsi nesivadovauja kažkokiais modeliais - bet ką aš žinau apie Naujosios Zelandijos poeziją ir jos modelius????????? ........ Eilėraščiuose daug seksualumo, drąsos, visokių atsivėrimų. Gal faina??????? Bet kažkaip manęs nelabai veikia?..... Toks demonstratyvus naivumas??? O gal čia irgi modelis?......
It's hard to know what bisexuality means
It just.....comes over you, like an urban sandstorm
When a fish crawls up onto land?—that's bisexuality
It's an ancient sexual amphibiousness
It's like climbing out of a burning building into too much water
Or climbing out of a burning building.....
into a second identical burning building
Why does everything have to be so on fire? you ask yourself
But when you look down, your fretwork is smoking
Not the well of loneliness, more like a water feature
But a tasteful one, with a hidden power supply
You look out over the hills and the rows of red houses
And worst of all, you don't even like softball!!!
(p. 48)
Gal čia tokia pati instagramo stiliaus poetė kaip Rupi Kaur, tik ne paauglėms, o studentėms, pageidautina humanitarėms (daug citatų, filosofija + popsas, cituoja "Draugus" ir Deleuze'ą + Guattari)? Aš jau jaučiuos smarkiai pensininkė. Nors, jei vietoj "Draugų" būtų parašius apie "X failus", būčiau davus daugiau žvaigždučių.........!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
July 9, 2018
This was amazing. It was so irreverent and bold and the images were genius, perfect and hilarious all at once. So delighted to have found her. It’s so rare I fall head over heels in love with a poet.
July 4, 2020
"To be bisexual is to be out of office, even to yourself
Like a rare sexual Narnia and no spring in sight
They won't let you out of the closet to get back in again
Deep in the winter coats, a little snow starts falling..."
Please take this collection and tattoo the entire thing on my body, or plaster it to my bedroom walls. This was gifted to me by my lovely friend Sophie whilst I was visiting her in NZ, as its a favourite of hers -- and then like the awful person I am, I didn't read it for a year! Something I'm seriously regretting now because... count me obsessed. This collection is about love, dating, sexuality, sex, gender, womanhood, literature, art, popular culture, modern life, the millennial generation.
A lot of this review will probably be made up of quotes from the collection, because that's better than anything I could say myself.
"You have to think like this all day in a cucumber facemask
You have to lie very still and wish you were dead
You have to think 'love has radicalised me' & walk around like Helen of Troy
You have to walk around until the ship burns off"
It's been a long time since I read any poetry this good; not only in terms of the quality of the language and structure and metaphor, but in terms of how much I connected to Bird's voice. It was like she took a hook and dug it into my soul about two poems in, and then pulled me along for the ride. Not only was it deeply affecting, but it was also so funny, and self-aware, and ironic, and witty, and shamless. It puts the classical alongside the modern, the absurd alongside the everyday, the morbid alongside the crude. A perfect exercise in juxtapositions.
"Love like Windows 95
The greatest, most user-friendly Windows of them all
Those four little panes of light
Like the stained glass of an ancient church
vibrating in the sunlit rubble
of the twentieth century"
I've had a love-hate relationship with the recent poetry movement -- what some might call insta-poetry, although I don't know if Bird really fits into that -- but this was absolutely the best iteration I've seen of it so far. Her use of line breaks and page breaks and page layout felt purposeful and added to the tone or the narrative she was telling, unlike some of the more arbitrary attempts I've seen. Her language and imagery is rich and demands to be spoken allowed. It not only feels good and sounds good in your head; it sounds good syllabically.
"Poetry is a fake nostalgia, like dollhouse curtains flapping in the breeze
It rears up behind you on its antique leg brace
This is like an encore to an empty auditorium
It's a swarm of hornets rising out of the piano
Who was it that said 'the life we enter is not the one we leave'?
It's an arcane law, like falling in love
It's like a game of musical chairs, but they keep adding more chairs
You got up to leave, but the gramophone goes on and on"
I can't wait to pick up some more of Bird's work in the future, and to perhaps look into some similar poets. I know I'll be revisiting this collection again and again.
Also, if you made it to end of this review, you need to go and read "Keats Is Dead So Fuck Me From Behind" right now. I don't know if its the best or even my favourite, but it's certainly iconic and the most memorable. Am I biased because Keats is my favourite poet? Because it name checks all of the other Romantics too? Is that what pushed the collection up to a 5 star? No... but also yes.
June 13, 2017
Well, it has taken an age, but I'm done. I didn't love this book, but I did think it was a deeply intimate, quirky and very personal book of poems. I know she is considered the bright young thing of New Zealand poetry right now, and I did really enjoy some of these immensely, but some of them were not my cup of poetry at all. I like that she makes me feel uncomfortable, I like that she takes risks. I want new voices in poetry and I like it that the book made the bestsellers lists, how often does it happen that poetry is on the top sellers lists, not very often.
July 12, 2020
3.75⭐️some absolute gems in here. Can't wait until her next book.
August 13, 2016
One of the better books of poems I've read in a while - there's hype threatening to crush this and angry backlash telling others it can't at all be good but most of this is very, very good, and even in its weakest moments its intriguing. The best thing this does is urge you to read it over and again. I'm looking forward to diving right back in - and though that should seem an obvious hope for poetry I don't often feel that way. The language here in this book most often is funny and wise and thoughtful. It's a joy to read this - to image the poet's mind working as she put all of these pieces together. I really loved it.
January 2, 2019
I read some really excited reviews on here and, to be honest, they bewilder me... It is not bad poetry... What even is poetry? You know what I mean? We used to make so much fun of arguments about what makes poetry poetry and the true form of poetry... So who am I to judge? But... There's always a but... And the dots and the breaks really tired me out...
I have this problem with some poets that I feel they get lost in their own words. This one does not fall into the problem my last such experience had, of too much beauty and too little meaning, and yet I could say it does. There are so many sentences that work individually (for me), but stringed one after another, for pages, they tire me. I get filled with meaningful phrases so much I fail to see the meaning of the poem in its entirety. But what if there isn't meaning? That, too, is cool. It is! And yet the tiredness remains.
It's like falling into somewhere on the internet, a forum, a tumblr argument, a twitter (I'm horrible at twitter) and not getting the inside jokes and the format and what the langugage has evolved into. In a way this, that effect itself, has me intrigued. I know that I only enjoy tumblr, for example, as much as I do (I really do), because I have learnt the language. Is this what internet culture (some form of it, somewhere) feels like for someone who hasn't? Is this the poetry of my generation?
I have this problem with some poets that I feel they get lost in their own words. This one does not fall into the problem my last such experience had, of too much beauty and too little meaning, and yet I could say it does. There are so many sentences that work individually (for me), but stringed one after another, for pages, they tire me. I get filled with meaningful phrases so much I fail to see the meaning of the poem in its entirety. But what if there isn't meaning? That, too, is cool. It is! And yet the tiredness remains.
It's like falling into somewhere on the internet, a forum, a tumblr argument, a twitter (I'm horrible at twitter) and not getting the inside jokes and the format and what the langugage has evolved into. In a way this, that effect itself, has me intrigued. I know that I only enjoy tumblr, for example, as much as I do (I really do), because I have learnt the language. Is this what internet culture (some form of it, somewhere) feels like for someone who hasn't? Is this the poetry of my generation?
August 12, 2017
Hera is one of those poets who remind you of a magician who stands on stage and explains exactly what they're doing, explains slight of hand, perception and showmanship. Despite all this transparency you're still left thinking "witchcraft! Where did these powers come from!?" after the performance. One of my favourite collections in years.
December 31, 2024
”and to be able to maintain a friendship / through the various complications of heterosexual monogamy / is enormously difficult / especially when you take into consideration / what cunts they all were”
hera lindsay bird no one is doing it like you. happy new year everybody! :)
hera lindsay bird no one is doing it like you. happy new year everybody! :)
December 24, 2017
Sometimes funny, sometimes silly, sometimes beautiful, always meta.
January 30, 2025
Go home nerds, poetry is cool now!
November 7, 2020
i adore poetry that makes me go, “oh so some people really do understand and know what it is like to be like this”
April 17, 2022
The Dad Joke is Over
[...]
When I was young, my mother couldn’t afford brand-name jokes
All we had to laugh at was…………the unceasing bitterness of life
Even now, I am compelled to laugh in the face of heartbreak
but when a witticism is made…………………………………………..
The mother joke is here, and the punchline is
………………………………………………………………….there is no punchline
it’s gone beyond the format of a joke, and is in your blood
everything is wrong, but you can’t stop laughing
ancient punishments repeating themselves
like nunchucks on a nursery frieze
The mother joke is here, and there is no punchline
this is a poem, not a joke, and the only way out is death
You stare and stare at your vast superfluity of life
it stretches out beyond itself, like too many razors on a kite tail
[...]
When I was young, my mother couldn’t afford brand-name jokes
All we had to laugh at was…………the unceasing bitterness of life
Even now, I am compelled to laugh in the face of heartbreak
but when a witticism is made…………………………………………..
The mother joke is here, and the punchline is
………………………………………………………………….there is no punchline
it’s gone beyond the format of a joke, and is in your blood
everything is wrong, but you can’t stop laughing
ancient punishments repeating themselves
like nunchucks on a nursery frieze
The mother joke is here, and there is no punchline
this is a poem, not a joke, and the only way out is death
You stare and stare at your vast superfluity of life
it stretches out beyond itself, like too many razors on a kite tail
August 21, 2018
There are some real gems in here, although it is not a collection for the faint hearted or those that get annoyed by something sweary.
For example, this took me by surprise:
"because writing poetry about fucking
when you could be fucking
is the last refuge of the stupid."
There are some classic titles in this collection - for example 'The dad joke is over' 'Keats is dead so fuck me from behind' and 'The ex-girlfriends are back from the wilderness'. 'Pain Imperatives' runs to twenty-nine pages, with mostly four lines on each page, and containing thought-provoking classics such as;
"I write this poem like an obituary in Comic Sans
I write it like suicide hotline hold music"
The first verse from 'The ex-girlfriends are back from the wilderness' is one of the most pleasing for me:
"The ex-girlfriends are back...
emerging once again from the tree shadows...
into the primordial burlesque of autumn
with their low-cut...
reminiscences... and soft dubious ironies...
trembling once again into their
opulent...
seasonal migration patterns
a corsage of wilting apologies
tethered to the bust..."
The imagery and the language combine beautifully to hint and suggest at themes which Bird tosses back and forth in the rest of the poem. It is a poem of strength - she is not letting those ex's intimidate her.
One final gem from the bright sparkly box of trinkets. From 'Planet of the Apes' come the lines;
"I've always never felt this way about anyone
but the way in which I've never felt about you
is a way of never feeling so new it's somehow old
like a cave painting of a fax machine."
For example, this took me by surprise:
"because writing poetry about fucking
when you could be fucking
is the last refuge of the stupid."
There are some classic titles in this collection - for example 'The dad joke is over' 'Keats is dead so fuck me from behind' and 'The ex-girlfriends are back from the wilderness'. 'Pain Imperatives' runs to twenty-nine pages, with mostly four lines on each page, and containing thought-provoking classics such as;
"I write this poem like an obituary in Comic Sans
I write it like suicide hotline hold music"
The first verse from 'The ex-girlfriends are back from the wilderness' is one of the most pleasing for me:
"The ex-girlfriends are back...
emerging once again from the tree shadows...
into the primordial burlesque of autumn
with their low-cut...
reminiscences... and soft dubious ironies...
trembling once again into their
opulent...
seasonal migration patterns
a corsage of wilting apologies
tethered to the bust..."
The imagery and the language combine beautifully to hint and suggest at themes which Bird tosses back and forth in the rest of the poem. It is a poem of strength - she is not letting those ex's intimidate her.
One final gem from the bright sparkly box of trinkets. From 'Planet of the Apes' come the lines;
"I've always never felt this way about anyone
but the way in which I've never felt about you
is a way of never feeling so new it's somehow old
like a cave painting of a fax machine."
October 16, 2016
This is one of my favourite books of poetry of all time.
I don't say that lightly, and this isn't the first book of poetry I've read either, in case you are wondering. :)
It is twisting, funny, raw and oh, so clever. I understand why it is getting all the attention in New Zealand (and I hope elsewhere soon).
I am reading bits and pieces out loud to other people - and if I don't have the book with me, summarizing salient pieces to my friends. It's a rare and wonderful book that can do that to anyone.
Her metaphors and similes are taken out back and beaten into submission, which makes them all that much more enjoyable, to know that they are bleeding and bruised from Hera Lindsay Bird's poetry craft makes me happy.
I don't say that lightly, and this isn't the first book of poetry I've read either, in case you are wondering. :)
It is twisting, funny, raw and oh, so clever. I understand why it is getting all the attention in New Zealand (and I hope elsewhere soon).
I am reading bits and pieces out loud to other people - and if I don't have the book with me, summarizing salient pieces to my friends. It's a rare and wonderful book that can do that to anyone.
Her metaphors and similes are taken out back and beaten into submission, which makes them all that much more enjoyable, to know that they are bleeding and bruised from Hera Lindsay Bird's poetry craft makes me happy.
December 11, 2016
I read this in a five star hotel between crisp white sheets and it was glorious. That was in July and it's stayed with me until December.
A great work that at times felt unbearably painful. I know Hera and I felt like I'd stumbled into reading her emails yet couldn't look away.
Rich, smart and so clever as to be intimidating. I just felt that because I'd read the poems in quick succession they became a bit same-samey towards the end.
Pick at it is my recommendation. A little afternoon delight.
A great work that at times felt unbearably painful. I know Hera and I felt like I'd stumbled into reading her emails yet couldn't look away.
Rich, smart and so clever as to be intimidating. I just felt that because I'd read the poems in quick succession they became a bit same-samey towards the end.
Pick at it is my recommendation. A little afternoon delight.
December 10, 2019
My book club is reading books from the Ockham Book Awards. We can choose any of the 2017 shortlisted titles, and Hera Lindsay Bird's book of poetry has had stellar reviews. The hard copy is heavily reserved, but was available as a e-book from Auckland Libraries. Excellent, I thought, and downloaded it.
I like poetry, and enjoy reading it, but this one did nothing for me. It made me feel stupid because I didn't understand it at all. So no stars from me because I DON'T GET IT. Lots of words strung together and bugger all meaning gained by me.
And it will probably win!
I like poetry, and enjoy reading it, but this one did nothing for me. It made me feel stupid because I didn't understand it at all. So no stars from me because I DON'T GET IT. Lots of words strung together and bugger all meaning gained by me.
And it will probably win!
April 30, 2022
new favorite!! screaming !!!!!!!! shes honestly so real for saying bisexuality is turning your back on god but in a risque halter neck .... like who does that shes so real for that
March 5, 2023
3,5
no me ha encantado, quizás porque a mí el recurso de utilizar el sexo como transgresor no me termina de calar, pero es muy interesante todo el planteamiento y creo que merece la pena revisitarlo en otra ocasión. tiene momentos verdaderamente brillantes!!! he llegado a reírme en voz alta para luego quedarme tiesa, así que bien, bastante bien.
no me ha encantado, quizás porque a mí el recurso de utilizar el sexo como transgresor no me termina de calar, pero es muy interesante todo el planteamiento y creo que merece la pena revisitarlo en otra ocasión. tiene momentos verdaderamente brillantes!!! he llegado a reírme en voz alta para luego quedarme tiesa, así que bien, bastante bien.
August 1, 2024
The queen of similes? I think if you took a shot every time the phrase "it's like" appears in this collection, you might actually die. A really fun, explorative and wry collection that was engaging intellectually if not quite emotionally for me.
October 1, 2018
Labai gera. Nėra tas, ką norėtųsi vis iš naujo paskaityti, bet tą vieną kartą skaitant - gražu, nes nėra nei kažko dirbtinai gilaus, nei universalaus. Viskas asmeniška ir viskas patirta kuo nors - kūnu, akimis, ausimis, kalba - užtai atpažįstama. Dar gražu, kad neperkrauta, nesutirštinta, nesudramatinta.
February 9, 2025
“mirrors curl in the sunlight”
*
“I love to feel this bad because it remind me of being human | I love this life too | Everyday something new happens and I think | so this is the way things are now”
*
“You make me want to think of you in a sentence with me in it.”
*
“The moral of poetry is too lonely to be written | it’s a sad old hygiene, like Cleopatra’s hand soap”
🌞 απροσδόκητο, θρασύ, ευφάνταστο, ειλικρινές. ανυπομονώ να διαβάσω κάτι ακόμα δικό της.
*
“I love to feel this bad because it remind me of being human | I love this life too | Everyday something new happens and I think | so this is the way things are now”
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“You make me want to think of you in a sentence with me in it.”
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“The moral of poetry is too lonely to be written | it’s a sad old hygiene, like Cleopatra’s hand soap”
🌞 απροσδόκητο, θρασύ, ευφάνταστο, ειλικρινές. ανυπομονώ να διαβάσω κάτι ακόμα δικό της.
December 19, 2021
Often I look at the world
And I am dumbfounded that anyone can function at all
Given the kind of violence that
So many people have inherited from the past
But that’s still no excuse to throw
A dinner plate at your friends, during a quiet game of Pictionary
And even if that was an isolated incident
And she was able to move on from it
It still doesn’t make me want to watch her on TV
I am falling in love and I don’t know what to do about it
Throw me in a haunted wheelbarrow and set me on fire
And don’t even get me started on Ross
ten stars.
And I am dumbfounded that anyone can function at all
Given the kind of violence that
So many people have inherited from the past
But that’s still no excuse to throw
A dinner plate at your friends, during a quiet game of Pictionary
And even if that was an isolated incident
And she was able to move on from it
It still doesn’t make me want to watch her on TV
I am falling in love and I don’t know what to do about it
Throw me in a haunted wheelbarrow and set me on fire
And don’t even get me started on Ross
ten stars.
April 14, 2022
really funny, deep and confesive, loved it
February 17, 2023
i had the shittiest english teacher last year, i don't think he has a goodreads account or anything and i also don't think he didn't know i didn't like him since i spent basically the whole last semester playing papa's donuteria on my phone and doing sporcle world flag quizzes in his class and doing this thing with my friend where whenever he said something to us we would turn and look at each other and laugh, which was kind of major bitch of us in hindsight but whatever okay that is a long time ago now and while i do feel a lot of empathy for underpaid teachers this guy was just not good so i don't feel bad saying this. he didn't really plan out any lessons and was just freestyling the entire year and he made really valiant efforts to be chummy and cute but it came off kind of creepy which i would empathise with but it was really quite weird. he asked an fijian indian girl in my class if she could even speak english when she had like grown up in new zealand also i think he forgot her name despite the fact this was in like october. when he had run out of ideas for things to do in class he would take us to the library and get the school librarian to show us how to use the library databases (he did this multiple times so we learnt how to use the databases over and over again), and then he would get annoyed at the librarians for asking what books we were studying because he was embarrassed because we did not read a single book in class last year. we watched american beauty 4 times. also i used the word 'alight' in a story and he tried to convince me it wasn't a word.
but the one thing this teacher did that was good was show us hera lindsay bird! he wasn't all bad at all! even when he made the class read her poems aloud and one girl had to say the line about taking shots of cum.
i really love this book and i really love hera lindsay bird. her poetry is awkward and halting and grotesque and so funny and so sad. it's so devoid of beauty that it's gorgeous. there are so many chances for it to be jaded and ironic and cruel but it dodges them deftly and translates full-throttle love and grief and misery into images like 'an antique locket filled with pubic hair.' it kind of hates itself! but it's so good! idc man. i definitely liked some poems better than others but like it would be weird if i liked all of them equally and thought all of them were fantastic. and i do love a good ellipsis.....
sorry for talking about my teacher so much but i already told my parents and instagram followers and two places are never enough to vomit out negativity and hate plus i don't think many people read my reviews and if they do they don't interact with them so i get to pretend no real people are seeing this until they like and comment and then i get really embarrassed
but the one thing this teacher did that was good was show us hera lindsay bird! he wasn't all bad at all! even when he made the class read her poems aloud and one girl had to say the line about taking shots of cum.
i really love this book and i really love hera lindsay bird. her poetry is awkward and halting and grotesque and so funny and so sad. it's so devoid of beauty that it's gorgeous. there are so many chances for it to be jaded and ironic and cruel but it dodges them deftly and translates full-throttle love and grief and misery into images like 'an antique locket filled with pubic hair.' it kind of hates itself! but it's so good! idc man. i definitely liked some poems better than others but like it would be weird if i liked all of them equally and thought all of them were fantastic. and i do love a good ellipsis.....
sorry for talking about my teacher so much but i already told my parents and instagram followers and two places are never enough to vomit out negativity and hate plus i don't think many people read my reviews and if they do they don't interact with them so i get to pretend no real people are seeing this until they like and comment and then i get really embarrassed
Read
December 3, 2022absolutely wild, but absolutely gorgeous
August 22, 2017
I will definitely need to take another pass at her work because it is so packed with metaphors either that they initially have nothing to do with the subject and that you're going absolutely crazy - which, to be honest, I think is the intention.
I really enjoyed 'Having Already Walked Out On Everyone I Ever Said I Loved' for how it made me think back to the slightly scary and quite surprising truth of that every relationship that you get into will either end or last forever - and the fear and delight that that realisation elicits.
Hate was quite a revelatory ode to the emotion. As someone who struggles to feel hate and sometimes wishes that I could just let go in that way it was nice to see how freeing and "human" and flawed Bird seemed to feel when she experienced it.
Also - thanks to the brilliant and celebratory and empowering experience that was Naked Girls Reading another one of my favorites was 'Keats is dead so Fuck me From Behind'. It was an incredibly well chosen poem that offers up the opinion that we have a new generation of romantics and that that they are almost 'anti-romantic' in their approach to the flaunting of prescribed social rules of dating and the way that they reveal in their explicit queerness.
I really enjoyed 'Having Already Walked Out On Everyone I Ever Said I Loved' for how it made me think back to the slightly scary and quite surprising truth of that every relationship that you get into will either end or last forever - and the fear and delight that that realisation elicits.
Hate was quite a revelatory ode to the emotion. As someone who struggles to feel hate and sometimes wishes that I could just let go in that way it was nice to see how freeing and "human" and flawed Bird seemed to feel when she experienced it.
Also - thanks to the brilliant and celebratory and empowering experience that was Naked Girls Reading another one of my favorites was 'Keats is dead so Fuck me From Behind'. It was an incredibly well chosen poem that offers up the opinion that we have a new generation of romantics and that that they are almost 'anti-romantic' in their approach to the flaunting of prescribed social rules of dating and the way that they reveal in their explicit queerness.
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