Bluets by Maggie Nelson (2009)

by Abbigale Kernya, ​for The 44 North

Managing Editor

The book cover of Bluets by Maggie Nelson

Genre: Poetry, Autobiography

Recommended Age: 13+ readers​

Rating Scale

Educational value: ​​ 3/5

Positive message: 4/5

Positive role models: 2/5

Violence: 2/5

Sex: 35

Language: 3/5

Drinking, drugs, smoking: 4/5

Consumerism:​ 2/5

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“Last night I wept in a way I haven’t wept for some time. I wept until I aged myself. I watched it happen in the mirror. I watched the lines arrive around my eyes like engraved sunbursts; it was like watching flowers open in time-lapse on a windowsill. The tears not only aged my face, they also changed its texture, turned the skin of my cheeks into putty. I recognized this as a rite of decadence, but I did not know how to stop it.”

―Maggie Nelson, Bluets

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What happens if you fall in love with a colour?

Bluets by Maggie Nelson has been on my reading list for quite some time. In all honesty, I have been in the worst reading slump arguably in my life. In tandem with entering my final year for my bachelor’s degree, I feel a strange sort of grief following me wherever I go.

I wasn’t sure what book I would write about for this issue. I hadn’t read anything, and nothing finished on my bookshelf felt exciting enough. It wasn’t depression that clouded me, but like I said before, a type of grief and misplaced nostalgia weighed me down.

Change is scary, it’s inevitable and never quite predictable. One night, as I was laying in my bed in the soft hours of the night wide awake, and I locked eyes with Bluets on my nightstand and finally felt the urge to read.

Nelson writes a philosophical exploration of heartbreak, static suffering, and human connection channelled through the colour blue. The novella begins with Nelon’s exclamation that she has fallen in love with a colour, which hangs in the background of her personal essays into seemingly mundane and rather insignificant moments in life, until the presence of her hue interrupts back into the frame.

A reminder that the attachment to blue—love, agony, pain—exists all around us, even if sometimes hidden behind bus stops, laundry lines, or behind a lover’s closed eyelid. 

It’s a poetic lyrical masterpiece that bottles unimaginable human emotion into one shade of cool. Finally, I felt seen again in literature. Blue began appearing in my life, my walk to work, loose socks forgotten on my floor, my boyfriend’s eyes. Had I fallen in love with a colour too? Had I stolen something so personal to Nelson and plagiarized it? What does it mean, then, to be blue?

Bluets is a melancholic poetry-prose collection tied together by one author’s memories as a young adult. Being in your twenties is a wildly confusing time of life. The loneliness and constant internal struggle to find yourself, and try to uncover what that even means. It’s a time to reflect on teenage heartbreak and decide whether or not forgiveness means them or you—to move through each day not entirely sure how you managed to get here. 

Where did all this blue come from? Was it always around me?

Nelson is a master at her craft, truly. I know I am not alone in my appreciation for literature that understands the complexities of the void that is being a young adult, and I truly cannot emphasize the genius of her work enough. It’s been a while since a book has stared back at me, and if you were to read any of the books I recommend, let it be this one.