The Balloonists

Eula Biss' work eludes categorization. Her autobiographical snippets and vignettes are organized by memory and association, not chronology, and occasionally punctuated with excerpts from a carpenter's handbook and the "black box" recordings of pilots. From this impressionistic style, themes emerge: can grown children understand their parents as individuals? Is it possible to build a different kind of relationship or marriage than the one you grew up knowing?

Quotes

She has said so many things that have gone unheard. Off the record.
Mother: "He made me feel like I wasn't really a writer if I wasn't published. It was as if my poetry didn't mean anything unless it was accepted by someone else." (13)

Are we going to keep living the same show more stories our parents lived? (39)

What if an entire generation were to reject their central story line? (43)

When he says, "Why can't you follow a recipe?" I am hurt, because I know that he is not just asking why I can't be told what to do, but why I can't let things be simple. (55)

When a woman finally begins to write for herself, Virginia Woolf wondered, what she will have to say? [sic] And how will she say it? ...And I went on to ponder how a woman nowadays would write a poetic tragedy in five acts - would she use verse - would she not use prose rather? (59)

The picture was taken at exactly the right moment, but there was no more film on the roll. (71) show less

These, often short (1-4 lines) prose poems are about Biss' parents, their divorce, and breaking away from your family of origin to make your own life. Some are remembered conversations. Some just observations. Example:

I grew up by the Hudson. The river that flows both ways. Where I lived it only breathed a little bit with the tides. When I first came to New York and looked out the window and saw the river flowing the wrong way, I checked a map, then a compass, and then I sat by the window feeling scared.

I'm not usually a fan of prose poems, but, once I figured out the direction this collection was headed, I enjoyed this book.

I wasn't sure about this at first. The whole story had to unfold for me to get it. I've never read anything like this 72-page book of lyrical nonfiction that discusses balloonists very little but swells and floats in the air before settling down to perfect sense.