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Garments Against Women
''Around that time my daughter and I had this Anne, imagine if the world had nothing in it. Do you mean nothing at all - just darkness - or a world without objects? I mean a world without no houses, chairs, or cars. A world with only people and trees and dirt. What do you think would happen? People would make things. We would make things with trees and dirt. ' When the cold comes, when our needs announce themselves, it is with clothing, with possessions, in literature, through dreams - in all the forms and categories that shape, contain and constrain - that we keep ourselves alive. Yet, in a society in which some are rich and some are poor, who gets to dream, and who invents our forms? This is a book made of money and the lack of money; of writing and of not-writing; of illness and of care; of low-rent apartments, cake-baking mothers, Socratic daughters and bodies that refuse to become information.
112 pages, Paperback
First published March 15, 2015
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February 27, 2018
2/26/18: This just grows more and more important to me every time I read it.
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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.
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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
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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
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!!!!!!!
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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.
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May 2, 2026Oh, 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?"
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'
Read
March 6, 2023I don't read a lot of poetry, and so when I discovered this book of essays was actually a book of essays-in-poems-in-prose (sort of), I did panic a little. But they were fascinating, and mostly very interesting. There seemed to me a strong affinity for Gertrude Stein's work, and I was relieved to see a reference to Tender Buttons, which helped me contextualize the author's relationship to consumer culture:
At that last sentence I felt both glad, and also guilty, that I had checked this book out of the library. That sort of encapsulates everything I feel about the book. The question of whether writing can only produce unfillable desire is interesting to me, as is the question, obviously, of how writers are supposed to eat. The author longs to create "a literature...not coyly against literature, but sincerely against it, as it is also against ourselves," and this means that the memoiristic passages resist yielding up information about Boyer's selfhood, and the hero of the book is Robert Walser, and there is a confused notion that making your own things can sort of redeem and destroy you at the same time. Hence, "Garments Against Women," the final poem in the book, which is an ode to Walser without actually quoting him. (I wish she had quoted him directly, and provided other attributions before the acknowledgments page--lack of attribution may strike a blow against both literature and self, but it's also pretty coy, if you ask me.)
The ideas felt more successful to me than the memoir, although I understand you're not supposed to consider them apart. The anecdote about the $44 shoes (for a 5-year-old!) also struck me as coy--you can try to circumvent desire in literature, but if you aren't willing to make it clear in the end whether or not you actually bought your 5-year-old the $44 shoes she was throwing a fit for in the store, you haven't really circumvented anything! And I say this as someone who has definitely bought their 5-year-old a pair of more-than-$44 shoes when he burst through the old ones and we had to leave the store with a new pair before it closed, or send him barefoot the next day.
I think my favorite idea in the book, though, and perhaps the one that will make me revisit the whole book later, is the first, introduced in the poem, "The Animal Model of Inescapable Shock." The theory that we experience all types of arousal as analogous to pleasure, that both pain and its relief create opioid-like chemicals in the body, and that our attachment to capitalism is that of being constantly shocked and punished and soothed by it--as a writer and consumer of suspense and horror, as well as a survivor of the "wire mother" of all grad schools, this really spoke to me. Several found bits drawn from a '70s psychology book echoed this theme almost too perfectly--with chapter headings like "THE RICHNESS OF UNPLEASANT SETTINGS AND THE RICHNESS OF UNPLEASANT MIND EVENTS BOTH TEND TO INCREASE WITH TIME WHEN SUCH SETTING OR SUCH EVENTS CANNOT BE AVOIDED" I am tempted to go find this book myself (desire: produced!).
All in all this was a fascinating read. Star ratings don't seem appropriate here, but I'll give it four and a half antinomian zeroes, and look forward to reading more of her work.
There would be more: lavish descriptions of lavish descriptions of the perverse or decadently feminized marketplace, some long sentences concerning the shipping and distribution of alterity, an entire chapter about Tender Buttons in which each sentence is only a question. And from where did that mutton, that roast beef, that carafe come?... But who would publish this book and who, also, would shop for it?
At that last sentence I felt both glad, and also guilty, that I had checked this book out of the library. That sort of encapsulates everything I feel about the book. The question of whether writing can only produce unfillable desire is interesting to me, as is the question, obviously, of how writers are supposed to eat. The author longs to create "a literature...not coyly against literature, but sincerely against it, as it is also against ourselves," and this means that the memoiristic passages resist yielding up information about Boyer's selfhood, and the hero of the book is Robert Walser, and there is a confused notion that making your own things can sort of redeem and destroy you at the same time. Hence, "Garments Against Women," the final poem in the book, which is an ode to Walser without actually quoting him. (I wish she had quoted him directly, and provided other attributions before the acknowledgments page--lack of attribution may strike a blow against both literature and self, but it's also pretty coy, if you ask me.)
The ideas felt more successful to me than the memoir, although I understand you're not supposed to consider them apart. The anecdote about the $44 shoes (for a 5-year-old!) also struck me as coy--you can try to circumvent desire in literature, but if you aren't willing to make it clear in the end whether or not you actually bought your 5-year-old the $44 shoes she was throwing a fit for in the store, you haven't really circumvented anything! And I say this as someone who has definitely bought their 5-year-old a pair of more-than-$44 shoes when he burst through the old ones and we had to leave the store with a new pair before it closed, or send him barefoot the next day.
I think my favorite idea in the book, though, and perhaps the one that will make me revisit the whole book later, is the first, introduced in the poem, "The Animal Model of Inescapable Shock." The theory that we experience all types of arousal as analogous to pleasure, that both pain and its relief create opioid-like chemicals in the body, and that our attachment to capitalism is that of being constantly shocked and punished and soothed by it--as a writer and consumer of suspense and horror, as well as a survivor of the "wire mother" of all grad schools, this really spoke to me. Several found bits drawn from a '70s psychology book echoed this theme almost too perfectly--with chapter headings like "THE RICHNESS OF UNPLEASANT SETTINGS AND THE RICHNESS OF UNPLEASANT MIND EVENTS BOTH TEND TO INCREASE WITH TIME WHEN SUCH SETTING OR SUCH EVENTS CANNOT BE AVOIDED" I am tempted to go find this book myself (desire: produced!).
All in all this was a fascinating read. Star ratings don't seem appropriate here, but I'll give it four and a half antinomian zeroes, and look forward to reading more of her work.
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