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This Party of the Soft Things
"The forest as history's mobius strip / pressing collectively / daydreaming in geological time // I don't feel frantic"
reflects Nhatt Nichols in This Party of the Soft Things, a book-length walk in the woods during which the poet-artist navigates by birdsong the swansong of human civilization succumbing to the scrapheap and ending up as wormfodder. Pressing on with her grail-less quest, an outlet to the sea within sight, Nhatt laments the great squandering of human presence and the anthropic betrayal of nature, while embracing the radical solace of a future we won't be around to endanger.
reflects Nhatt Nichols in This Party of the Soft Things, a book-length walk in the woods during which the poet-artist navigates by birdsong the swansong of human civilization succumbing to the scrapheap and ending up as wormfodder. Pressing on with her grail-less quest, an outlet to the sea within sight, Nhatt laments the great squandering of human presence and the anthropic betrayal of nature, while embracing the radical solace of a future we won't be around to endanger.
- GenresPoetry
80 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2022
13 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
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February 5, 2022"They and I know / to become invisible is not to be nothing / all of the strongest things are unseen"
November 7, 2022
Picked up this book at a book festival and the first lines convinced me to buy it:
There is plastic everywhere
and somewhere someone
is making more of it
This choking time
our future ends
Thankfully
we won't be around
to ruin things forever
A beautiful love letter to nature and the planet. Grieving it while we are still here. And fantasizing what nature will reclaim when humans are gone.
It reminded me of a quote from an article interviewing climate activists that I read. Camila Thorndike said "A while ago, I was there with my grandma, whom I loved, as she died. How would you treat your grandmother on her deathbed? It was so hard, but I wanted to hold her hand. As our world dies, we should be holding its hand and holding each other’s hands." This book feels like holding hands at the end of the world.
There is plastic everywhere
and somewhere someone
is making more of it
This choking time
our future ends
Thankfully
we won't be around
to ruin things forever
A beautiful love letter to nature and the planet. Grieving it while we are still here. And fantasizing what nature will reclaim when humans are gone.
It reminded me of a quote from an article interviewing climate activists that I read. Camila Thorndike said "A while ago, I was there with my grandma, whom I loved, as she died. How would you treat your grandmother on her deathbed? It was so hard, but I wanted to hold her hand. As our world dies, we should be holding its hand and holding each other’s hands." This book feels like holding hands at the end of the world.
February 21, 2024
This book caught my eye at a small bookstore in cdmx! It was the quote before the first page that got me “I felt a rush of trust- felt that life might be not just tolerable but beautiful, if I could only remember to find the bare Present.”
This author finds peace in the thought of Mother Nature taking back the crumbled and polluted land after humans are extinct. I understand this, but also know that there is such a disproportionate amount of people effected by the climate crisis who do not contribute to it at all. The book had me reflecting on how indigenous communities are really the only humans who have the knowledge, skills and heart to use land and resources while also protecting it. They should get the opportunity to see Mother Nature take back the land that we destroyed.
I’ll be reflecting on this short, thoughtful book for a while. It did “fracture my heart open” just like it hoped for us in the end.
This author finds peace in the thought of Mother Nature taking back the crumbled and polluted land after humans are extinct. I understand this, but also know that there is such a disproportionate amount of people effected by the climate crisis who do not contribute to it at all. The book had me reflecting on how indigenous communities are really the only humans who have the knowledge, skills and heart to use land and resources while also protecting it. They should get the opportunity to see Mother Nature take back the land that we destroyed.
I’ll be reflecting on this short, thoughtful book for a while. It did “fracture my heart open” just like it hoped for us in the end.
September 18, 2023
This is a sweet, short book of poetry and illustrations. Because of the amount of text vs the size of the drawings, I'd be more likely to shelve this as AGN with some kind of "graphic poetry" subject heading.
I'm not a strong poetry reader but I can say that I enjoyed this novella-length poem. It feels stream-of-consciousness and I would have liked some more punctuation, or maybe some more structure to the phrases. A good readalike for On an Ebbing Seafoam Tide.
I'm not a strong poetry reader but I can say that I enjoyed this novella-length poem. It feels stream-of-consciousness and I would have liked some more punctuation, or maybe some more structure to the phrases. A good readalike for On an Ebbing Seafoam Tide.
October 19, 2022
They and I know
to become invisible is not to be nothing
all of the strongest things are unseen
I mean love, of course
and time
& disease
I read this book twice in a way - I heard the author read it in Berlin, one of the last days of summer and I just read it on my own again, looking at the evocative, delicate drawings. Both times it gave me a kind of peace. An acceptance of the fact that one day maybe nature will recover and grow over all of the destruction that us humans have wrought. It is a feeling hard to describe, but it is contained here beautifully.
to become invisible is not to be nothing
all of the strongest things are unseen
I mean love, of course
and time
& disease
I read this book twice in a way - I heard the author read it in Berlin, one of the last days of summer and I just read it on my own again, looking at the evocative, delicate drawings. Both times it gave me a kind of peace. An acceptance of the fact that one day maybe nature will recover and grow over all of the destruction that us humans have wrought. It is a feeling hard to describe, but it is contained here beautifully.
May 6, 2022
I love this little book! I re-read it frequently. It is a love letter to nature, acknowledging the terrible things we do to her and ends on a hopeful note. The drawings are wonderful. And it's just a beautiful book to own - beautifully put together, printed, etc. It feels good in my hands.
March 14, 2024
"They and I know
to become invisible is not to be nothing
all of the strongest things are unseen
I mean love, of course
and time
& disease"
to become invisible is not to be nothing
all of the strongest things are unseen
I mean love, of course
and time
& disease"
August 22, 2024
Delightful 😍
October 28, 2025
this book is so unbelievably beautiful. and to have woken up this morning to the news that sea turtles are no longer endangered makes it all the more precious to read in this moment rn! ☺️
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews