I’ve never really gotten poetry or Ursula K LeGuin. I have nothing against either, they just weren’t for me… until So Far So Good, LeGuin’s last work.
I knew signing up for a reading challenge would take me outside of my reading comfort zone, which is fine. Outside of my comfort zone is rarely uncomfortable (with reading). The worst is usually just uninteresting, the best is a bigger comfort zone. The challenge (storygraph’s 2025 genre challenge) was a nature poetry collection and I have enough experience with poetry and nature to comfortably say “I’ll read it, maybe I’ll even think it’s nice, but I doubt I’ll care tomorrow.”
I chose this collection because it was short and I’ve been wanting to give LeGuin another shot.
Until the end, I did think something like what I expected. They were nice. When I started the final set of poems, called In the Ninth Decade, my reading slowed down. Then, came the last visit.
The Last Visit
In the heart of my memory, that house,
memories overcame me.
Only if I could forget them would I be there, in that house.
There where all I remembered was substance visible, I was my shadow’s shadow, a child, a visitor, a ghost.
I don’t know what emotion this is, but I’ve felt it. It’s like she was writing about my nightmares and made them okay. In less than 50 words, Ursula K LeGuin did what prazosin does. I guess the emotion is relief.
I wish that I borrowed the physical item from the library so I could have held them. I want to buy the book and put the poems on my wall. I probably will.