Pothos
by Rosa Campbell
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Description
Epipremnum aureum, devil's ivy, or (somewhat erroneously) pothos is not special. It is not symbolically useful, it is not rare, it is not hard to grow or care for. But in the aftermath of unexpected death, an impossible-to-kill houseplant might have something to say about keeping going.In Pothos, Campbell traces a polyvocal narrative of loss, absent presence, and queer homemaking through a poetics of attention and an engagement with texts, art, music, and the occasional hologram. Hovering show more somewhere between memoir, prose poetry and essay, Pothos examines the condition of being alternately infuriated, bored, and overwhelmed by grief - its mutability, its opacity, its refusals. It is a raw and nebulous exploration of mourning, care and domesticity, and the way in which the small background sentience of plants can (maybe) tell us something about our own growth. show lessTags
Member Reviews
This slim book is a memoir of grief, almost a prose poem, or a series of prose poems. The author is grieving the death of her father, and in an almost stream-of-consciousness way, she captures what grief can feel like in its many facets. There’s also a bibliography at the end of the “literature of grief” that she draws from, because this is also an artistic and an intellectual enterprise. I think this book resonated with me because there’s been a recent death in my family.
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Author Information
2 Works 8 Members
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2021
- Epigraph
- ‘I shall offer to the mind all its sorrows, all its mourning garments: this will not be a gentle prescription for healing but cautery and the knife.'
—Seneca, De Consolatione ad Helviam
You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing, you may not know
how much terror we bear, the spotted leaf,
the red leaves of the maple falling
eve... (show all)n in August, in early darkness: I am responsible
for these vines.
—Louise Glück, ‘Vespers'
‘On one level, I think I have lost “you” only to discover that “I” have gone missing as well.'
—Judith Butler - Dedication
- i.m. Mike Campbell
- First words
- You must begin. You must pick a point in time — before, after — & simply go from there.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)And yet. And yet and yet and still and still.
- Blurbers
- Hazzard, Oli; Scott, Richard; Lawlor, Andrea
Classifications
- Genres
- Biography & Memoir, Nonfiction
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 2
- Popularity
- 6,024,487
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.50)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 1
