"So what can we really do for each other except--just love each other and be each other's witness?"

When I finished Another Country, it brought tears to my eyes. There's so much suffering exquisitely depicted alongside glimmers of love and beauty, such whole, flawed characters. Like the recently read The Fire Next Time, a nonfiction work by Baldwin, it might have been written today. Again, this is both a compliment to Baldwin's art and his powers of observation but also a lament that so little has changed, particularly regarding race but also gender and sexuality.

Nothing is easy about this book except its gorgeous, lucid prose. It's not afraid of the dark things in people, the mistakes we make, and what holds us back. I felt deeply for these characters, but the book doesn't give in to despair, which, at the end, is what made me cry in relief.

I was surprised to be reminded of Virginia Woolf as I read. There are passages where a character's inability to express "it" or oneself or story are noted. There's a suicide. There's also something about the way both Baldwin and Woolf capture fine states of emotion or the way our feelings and attitude can change so quickly, from seemingly small things. And, when we learn Cass's real name is Clarissa (her husband is Richard), I knew I wasn't crazy to make these connections!

The book is a landmark queer text, and Baldwin clearly knows how to write sex, the act itself--between men and women and between two men--and desire. Its queerness affected its reception at the time; I'm sure many would prefer Baldwin stick exclusively to race and racism. The quote above is spoken by Vivaldo to Eric, and it is a beautiful and simple idea even as the story proves it may be impossible to live by.

However, Baldwin does privilege love between men and the homosocial above all. Nearly all the central male characters are queer or explore their sexuality with one another; at the very least, platonic love between them is a source of comfort and hope. This is not the case with the women. Women's sexuality and power emasculate or cannot be known. There appears to be no escape or solution for women and their pain and oppression, whether white or black. If there is one flaw or problematic issue in this book, in my mind it's that. The love and act of witnessing in the quote seem to be for men only.

I had no idea Cherie Currie had been through quite this much shit. She's most famous as the singer for '70s all-girl rock band The Runaways (also featuring Joan Jett and Lita Ford). I knew a smidge about her story from seeing the film made from this memoir (titled, simply, The Runaways, and starring Dakota Fanning, Kristen Stewart, and Michael Shannon). Obviously the movie only covered a bit before she joined the group and a bit after. As "seedy" as life on the road as a teen girl is portrayed in the film, as drug-filled and rife with mental abuse from Kim Fowley, there's a lot more where that came from in the book.

Yet this is, for the most part, not a depressing book. It maintains a personable tone and depicts events and feelings as if the author were just now experiencing them rather than looking back on them as an a wiser adult. I found this a little troublesome when it came to descriptions of her drug use as a teen, especially given that Currie later became a drug counselor for young people (or worked with them in some capacity). But ultimately this offhandedness fits with how the book is structured, particularly when we see just how harrowing things get when in her adult life she starts freebasing and her life crumbles. She just manages to save herself, but it's not an easy, movie-of-the-week road.

There are some great moments where Currie discusses her persona and how it was formed and evolved (or personae), her relationship with music, David Bowie in particular. Writing about the band, Joan Jett in particular, is fascinating, scary, and sometimes sweet. The same can be said for her family life and relationship with her twin, Marie.

I'm glad she made it through to tell the tale. How many all-girl rock bands have there been? How many women can show us that perspective?

I am not much for reading biographies or memoirs (unless obsessed with the subject/memoirist), but this book made me wish that there were more biographies in verse, or certainly made me think to seek out more.

The multiplicity of voices and forms and the way they construct the narrative is much more engaging and, for me, trustworthy in interesting ways than works of biography in prose. The poems themselves are wonderfully crafted in terms of musicality and form. And in the end I had to listen to some Leadbelly immediately. :)

I must say no one can write the sort of sensual poems Smith does. Sensual and sensuous, and not just in terms of sex but dance and murder and living on the streets. The voices and rootedness of these poems are what most draw me to them. The final, titular section or sequence is a stunner.

If I were rating the poems individually, they'd be four stars all the way, but as a collection this is simply too long. The poems' brilliance gets lost and they blend into one another. At the beginnings of sections I'd be re-energized in my reading but soon find myself on auto-pilot. I understand the short-lines and short stanzas Young chose to write many (most) of the poems in, but a shorter, more selective book would have allowed for those poems in different forms (or those that are longer) to give the book more shape. Maybe I'm not this book's ideal reader, but I wish I could have given individual poems their due.