Racing Hummingbirds by Jeanann Verlee & Other People We Married by Emma Straub

Tonight's soundtrack has consisted of Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Tender Forever, and Peter Bjorn & John. Spotify is taking over my life. I do not mind in the slightest.
In about a month, I will be back in school. I will be a junior. Soon will come SATs, and college visits, and holidays. I am excited. I am taking things day by day. I have been chaotically busy, either in my mind or in the world, and I am having the greatest summer. I took the train today, for hours. I wandered around Boston by myself, and watched people, and watched my reflection. I thought of the people I know, and the people I don't, and how magnificent life is. That thought has often appeared in my mind, the past few weeks. Life is not always easy. Life is not always satisfying. But life is life, and I am alive, and I don't want to waste any more time. Or, if I'm wasting it, I would like to at least think through the wasting.
Here are two reviews of two great books (or, collections). I am about to send both authors love letters via my e-mail. This explains everything.

The same friend who recommended Flowers for Algernon for me recommended Racing Hummingbirds. Before reading this collection of poems, Jeanann Verlee’s first, I had never read/listened to any of her work. I began reading this book on my bed, with my head against the wall. I couldn’t stay that way for long. I had to get up and pace. I had to yell.
Jeanann Verlee is a slam poet. If you look her up on Youtube, and there are dozens of videos of her reading her pieces to enthusiastic and lively audiences who hook onto every single word. Her poems read that way as well, the syllables and occasional rhymes bouncing off of each other and continuing. As I read these poems aloud, I whispered. I screamed. I went back, again and again, to the lines that struck me most. There were quite a few. I have already given my friend his book back.
The poems are raw. There is recurring imagery throughout the collection, and certain ones seem to make an arc, though not usually a perfect one. At a few points, Verlee writes that the entirety of her poems are autobiographical, but she writes in the third person, because saying ‘I’ would make it that much harder. The words painted pictures, both in sound and as visuals. Some poems were more violent, more present, more forceful, than others. Each poem had a voice.
The collection is split into sections, and the first few hit me much harder than the later ones. I was constantly wiping my eyes and clearing my throat while reading these poems, because they were alternately overwhelming and hilarious. There is a sort of dark humor in some of these poems that only the most talented writers can manage. The humor maintains the intensity, and the aggression, and the honesty, but also brings a smile to the reader’s/listener’s face. Verlee has mastered this.
Slam poetry fascinates me. Often autobiographical, most of the performers I’ve heard seem to lose themselves somewhere in the reading, in the execution, but I had yet to be lost with them. Reading Verlee’s poems, I got lost. In the past few months, I have had a handful of these experiences, while listening to poets reading their poems, or actually reading them, where I am no longer in my body, in my house, or on a train, but am instead in the pages, or in the throat of the poet. The greatest writers have the ability to uproot a reader- from everything they are comfortable with, from everything that surrounds them- and put them in a different place, not always physically, but certainly mentally.
Jeanann Verlee uprooted me.

I have been stalking Emma Straub via-Internet for many months now. I have read nearly all of her blog posts, and used to frequently visit her Twitter page. Now, I restrict myself to about once a week/day. Even before I bought Other People We Married, her first collection of stories, I knew I was going to love it. Even before I met her in Brookline last month, I knew I was going to love her. And I did. This book was much more than I expected, and I will tell you right now that I had pretty high expectations. I wish I could fit Emma Straub into my pocket, so I could take her around with me and she could read me stories all day. Or just talk. That would work, too.
Other People We Married is a collection of 12 stories, set in 12 different places. Each story is about the same thing, though there is nearly always a different cast of characters. Each story begins and ends at exactly the right point. Emma Straub’s writing is familiar, and unique; welcoming, and shocking; honest.
Each story is about relationships. There was not a single story in this book that I didn’t love. What I love about short stories is their ability to portray everything that a novel does, in a tinier portion. Instead of being spread over the course of weeks, or months, even years, stories are often just one day, or a series of days. Writers hold an imaginary magnifying glass over the worlds they create for their characters and watch them as closely as possible, documenting their actions, thoughts, nuances, weaknesses. Emma Straub’s stories are frank, and sharp, but not in an overwhelming way. Rather, her stories move subtly, and a single line or movement will reappear hours later, and you will think, “Oh. So that’s what she meant.”
I got deeper into this collection the farther I read. I often read stories in one sitting, but forced myself to stop before moving ahead. I had to sit with the characters, with the stories themselves, and wait for them to leave on their own. The characters in these stories ask the questions that we all ask- What are the consequences? Why am I living this way? Who am I supposed to be? The list could go on.
In “Some People Must Really Fall in Love,” a college professor questions moving forward with her flirtatious feelings for a student. For the entirety of the story, the tension builds, and the reader waits for the climax, for the final decision, but it does not come. Or, it is easily missed. Not all of the stories in this collection are resolved, but these is nearly always a foreseeable resolution.
The two stories that affected me most were “Other People We Married,” the title story, and “Hot Springs Eternal.” It just so happens that both stories feature homosexual characters. That certainly played a part. But also, the stories center on relationship dynamics that I am constantly thinking of- the relationship between friends, or lovers, or friends as lovers, over time. Most of these stories explore that, the effects of time, and emotion, on both the inside of a person and the way they interact and perceive the outside.
Each of the stories showed me something. I wasn’t reading them; I was living them. Straub pulls her readers inside of these stories similarly to Verlee- always mentally, and often physically. The dark humor from Verlee’s collection is also present here, though not as aggressively. Instead, the significant lines are carefully placed, and they surface slowly.
There is not always a beginning, middle, and end to these stories, but there doesn’t need to be. The stories in Other People We Married are about life, and life does not always have place-marks. Often, we place them subconsciously, so we at least have somewhere to refer back to. Emma Straub understands this. And though each story has a different setting, those are not at the forefront. They simply play a part.
In my book, she wrote that I have the best hair in all of Boston. I will never forget this.