I Will Never Be Beautiful Enough to Make Us Beautiful Together

by Mira González

Mira Gonzalez's brain spans the weird space between bodies stuffed with Ambien and food and light from porn on laptops in an anxious, calming kind of way, one concerned more with what blood tastes like than how the blood got out. It is messed up and feels honest, open, like lying naked on the floor with your arms chopped off. --Blake Butler, author of There Is No Year

I like Mira Gonzalez's 1st poetry collection. It was poignant, intellectually stimulating, funny, interesting to me. The carefulness and precision and control with which Mira describes intense, uncommon, painful, mysterious experiences in her life made me feel very close to another human being (Mira, I think) in a way that is rare for me and that caused me to feel calmer and less desperate/despairing about my life and, I think, to some degree, more inclined to consider and be affected by the perspectives/lives of other people. The words I keep thinking when I think of Mira's book are wise and compassionate. --Tao Lin, author of Shoplifting From American Apparel

Mira Gonzalez is doing her thing. I f*ck with these poems. I felt bad for her when she talked about how that dude said I'm gonna come on your stomach like 15-20 times and then didn't. --Victor 'Kool A.D.' Vazquez

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Mental Health, American, The United States Of America, Contemporary, 21st Century

56 pages, Paperback

First published January 26, 2013

Reviews

[christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

when i first got this book i read it very quickly all the way through. i thought, "i really like these poems."

a couple of days later i was talking to my professor about my manuscript, and she asked me what kind of poetry that i liked to read. i took this book out of my bag and said, "i just read this, i really liked it."

my professor took the book and flipped through it and said, "they'll let anyone publish a book these days."

i struggled writing my manuscript after that and the poems i used ended up being what i felt like were reiterations of wc williams "spring and all" because i knew that my professor would like it.

she read my poems and said she really liked them, she said, "you are writing poems," and "these are poems". she was very encouraging and wanted me to apply to poetry mfa programs and thought, i think, i had a good chance of getting in.

i felt mostly dejected and negative towards poetry after that.

i opened this book later and saw i had written a note in it that said that the poems were "terrifying and sad and sweet and beautiful and tender"

i saw my professor in an elevator months later and she asked if i was still applying to the mfa program and i told her "i dont know" and "i dont think so" and felt free-er and happier than i had in a very long time, and came back home and read this book again.

[dc · Rating 4 out of 5]

2 reasons why this book is awesome:

"he is strong and gentle and you wish he was only one of those things"

"what is the difference between being an independent person
and being a person who is accepting of loneliness."

[Jonathan Lee B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I Will Never Be Beautiful Enough to Make Us Beautiful Together is a cold shower that gets warmer but cold again.

[Michael Seidlinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

[review forthcoming]

Age of "Alt Lit" and "New Sincerity." In my opinion there are plenty of inappropriate categorizations--what works vs. what doesn't work? Well, I'm not going to entertain the current catch-all designations. Rather, I want to focus on what we ARE experiencing in terms of what I'd call a vigilant sensibility, resulting in unabashed writing. How about writing that has no filter, writing that is every bit as intense as it is novel? No one wrote like this, and no one would have until the "hyper-aware" decided to stake their claim. I love these poems because no one has been this honest with me since my last breakup.

[Molly · Rating 2 out of 5]

i'm not sure what other people saw in this. there were two or three interesting images and turns of phrase, but it otherwise read a lot like some relatively well-written livejournal entries. a line break and lack of punctuation do not in themselves make a poem.

[Nice · Rating 1 out of 5]

Banality cannot be made interesting through line breaks.

Alt-lit poets all sound the same. Tone, content, lack of style--they're all the same.

It was snowing and you were kind of beautiful
We were in the city and every time I looked up
Someone was leaning out a window, staring at me
it was late and we were on drugs
my body felt weak or depleted
you were was facing away from me
my hand was barely touching your arm
I told her I’m sorry I’m the thing you like
She touched my ears and poured me coffee
We walked over to my bed and sat on it
She told me I have a lot of beauty marks

Above: A sequence of alt-lit verses, written by three "different" poets. They're droning, pedestrian, non-vibrant, etc. Much like this book.

[Kat Savage · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have a deep love for the raw, confessional style couple with it’s oddness. Each poem paints a wonderfully strange visual.

[jess sanford · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book quite a lot; it's spare and direct, but with associative leaps that explode, but quietly and in sun-faded colors. The writing bears many of the hallmarks of the 'style' usually associated with Tao Lin, but it does so in a way that felt earnest (one nickname among many for this style seems to be the 'new sincerity' movement, which seems bizarre). Emotionally charged but at a remove--the real resonance for me comes from all its strangeness and surprises, the odd and lonely scenes in each poem. The book engages with the paradox of loneliness and closeness better than most that try, as the speaker is constantly hyper self-aware not only in index-like cataloging of emotions and thoughts but even more so with physicality, with frequent lines about desiring to not just engage a physical body with her own but to occupy the exact same space, down to the empty space between each other's atoms.

It's an incredibly smart book, making deft and highly insightful gestures that are subtle and easily misunderstood to be simplistic or banal. There's also a lot of nostalgia and retracing, time becoming an odd thing as past and present seem (like the speaker's body) to occupy / want to occupy impossible spaces. With all this a constant self-reminder that emotional singularity is a lie, that everything felt has been felt before and almost nothing we ever experience is unique outside of our subjective existence. This tightens the emphasis on self, brings added scrutiny to interactions with others, how they perceive us, and how we act with that magnified gaze constantly feeding back.

[Luna Miguel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poesía para esnifar.

Sexo. Adolescencia. Semen en el estómago. Versos que no son versos sino pequeñas historias muy íntimas. En la línea de Megan Boyle, Ana Carrete o Ellen Kennedy (esa pasión por lo anecdótico, por encontrar la flor en la basura, por desnudarse, psicoanalizarse, hablar de tú a tú...). Su primer libro I will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together (Sorry House, 2013) es uno de los mayores exponentes de lo que está haciéndose ahora en EEUU. Una poesía tan distinta a lo que en nuestro país llaman poesía. Un retrato de la propia Mira, tan loco, divertido y necesario.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

i really enjoyed this book because i feel like mira & i have a lot of positive/negative traits in common and thus my review is biased, but i thank her for putting into words the most beautifully meaningless (&meaning'ful') instances of this shit called 'LIFE.' mira has a very unique voice that seems like it could/should be universally pleasing. i was not expecting to like this book as much as i did. i will read it again & again while lying with a stoic face/sad insides stoned & alone. i would criticize mira since she welcomes/desires it, but i cant find anything to criticize...i just wish there were more poems.

[Q · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it in literally one sitting (like I didn't even get up to pour myself a drink in the poems that mentioned drinking/drugs) and kind of loved and hated it. Actually maybe I loved it and I am jealous or maybe I hated it but nonetheless enjoyed it, I don't know. I did think some of the titles were better than the poems. But I found her sort of matter-of-fact numb heartsore style very successful. I felt exhausted by the end. Kind of reads like a mixtape feels, for better or worse. Or like the best parts of Livejournal circa 2003 but in 2013. Actually I am quite sure now that I loved it. Changing from three to four stars.

[Taylor Yardley · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well if I had known I could take my blog posts from high school and become a published poet, I sure would have. I’m not exactly a poetry scholar, but I’m confused about the definition of “poetry” here.

I picked this up at goodwill because it was cute and small and had the word “fuck” in it. I am likely taking it back there because my bookshelf will not allow me to shelve this teeny 1/4” paperback.

[Dom · Rating 5 out of 5]

this poetry collection was superb. i'd read some of mira gonzalez's poems before, and was excited to receive my copy. when i did, i read it right away with a glass of wine. by the end, i felt very connected with mira and enjoyed feeling a closeness to another human being via their work. i strongly recommend this collection to anyone.

[Bryce Christopherson · Rating 5 out of 5]

i think mira will be considered one of the 'greats' of whatever-the-hell literary movement is happening right now if she keeps writing. i read this book on the floor of my room in the dark using my cell phone as a light and i think i cried maybe 4 times and texted my ex girlfriend at least 1 time, so it was one of those kind of books. gj mira.

[Jay Gabler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. On The Tangential, I wrote ten opening paragraphs of a review.

[Mariana Vivas · Rating 5 out of 5]

makes me sad

[Sraah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This made me hurt. I cried so much. I'm not happy.

[Susanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

„dass du nichts erschaffen oder fühlen kannst, das niemand zuvor gefühlt hat“

Eine Bekannte überreichte mir vor ein paar Tagen ein Buch mit Gedichten mit den Worten: „Ich kann damit nichts anfangen. Das hört sich an wie meine alten Tagebucheintragungen aus Teenagertagen. Vielleicht magst Du es ja.“ Ich war mir nicht sicher, ob ich das nun als Kompliment verstehen sollte im Sinne von: „Du bist ja so literarisch. Vielleicht kapierst du, wie die Autorin das meint, ich nicht.“
Oder ob es eher eine Art desillusionierter Feststellung über mich war war, frei nach dem Motto: „Du bist ja dafür bekannt, dass du Teenagertagebücher gerne liest.“
Das Buch hieß „Ich werde niemals schön genug sein, um mitdir schön sein zu können“ von einer offensichtlich in den USA gerade sehr angesagten Autorin, Mira Gonzalez. Ich hatte von ihr noch nie gehört. Das Buch heißt im Original „I will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together“.
Ich werde niemals schön genug sein, um mit dir schön sein zu könnenDas ist wichtig. Denn in dieser sehr schönen, kleinen Ausgabe von Hanser stehen die englischen Originale und die deutschen Übersetzungen sich auf jeder Seite gegenüber. So kann man die Güte der Übersetzung Jo Lendles, der ja auch der Herausgeber bei Hanser ist, sogleich überprüfen. Er hat die Gedichte in aller Regel sehr wortwörtlich übersetzt. Ich finde, das ist ihm bei sehr vielen auch gut gelungen. Obwohl mir manchmal andere Übersetzungen spontan durch den Kopf schossen beim Lesen, gebe ich doch auch zu, dass ich nicht mit Sicherheit sagen könnte, welche besser wäre und ob das wirklich wichtig ist. Denn in jedem Fall ist der Geist der Gedichte wunderbar eingefangen worden. Sie haben Titel wie „Ich habe einen Roman über dich geschrieben und unter Entwürfe gespeichert“ oder „auch Unter Menschen fühle ich mich einsamer, als wenn ich mir alleine das Internet angucke“. Die Gedichte sind schön in einer ruppigen Härte, mit der sie einem das Leben zuweilen beinahe um die Ohren klatschen.
„…Du tröstest Dich selbst mit dem Gedanken
„ich bin näher am Tod als jemals zuvor“…“
Deshalb hat es mir riesigen Spaß gemacht, sie zu lesen. Da entfaltet sich eine Welt, die teilweise fremd, teilweise unglaublich vertraut ist
„In sozialen Situationen verberge ich bestimmte Teile meiner Persönlichkeit
von denen ich glaube, dass sie anderen unattraktiv erscheinen
Ich habe nicht das Gefühl, so zu tun, als wäre ich etwas anderes
Tatsächlich habe ich nicht das Gefühl, etwas zu sein
Ich bin die ganze Zeit sehr müde…“

Hier schreibt jemand Gedichte, die sich in dieser Welt, unter Menschen, ziemlich fremd fühlt und ihre Orientierungsversuche ohne jede Beschönigung, ohne jede Selbsterhöhung (was per se schon wieder eine Selbsterhöhung sein könnte, wenn es mit Berechnung geschieht, was ich nicht weiß, ich kenne Mira Gonzalez ja nicht persönlich) gnadenlos beschreibt. Da passt es auch, dass sie in einem Interview antwortete: dass was sie am Leben am wenigsten möge sei sie selbst. Das hat Tragik, aber auch sehr viel Humor, das ist eine wunderbare Sprache, so knapp, so klar, so aus dem Alltag genommen und doch überaus lyrisch, poetisch, dass ich wirklich vor jedem einzelnen Gedicht begeistert in die Knie sinken möchte.
„…Vielleicht können wir diese besondere Art von Gleichgültigkeit verstehen
die man manchmal auf der rauen Oberfläche eines Kühlschranks bemerkt…“
Ein wirklich wunderbares Buch. Ich danke meiner Bekannten ausdrücklich und ich rate ihr, wenn ihre Tagebücher aus Teenagertagen tatsächlich so sind, wie diese Gedichte, dann sollte sie a) ihre Maßstäbe, was gute Literatur angeht, noch einmal überarbeiten, und b) ihre Tagebücher unbedingt zu Hanser schicken, vielleicht hat sie Chancen auf eine literarische Karriere.

Zum Abschluss noch eines meiner Lieblingsgedichte, es hat einen sehr langen Titel und ist sehr kurz:

Worüber ich nachdenke, wenn ich
über die Zombieapokalypse nachdenke

Ich würde mich sofort umbringen


Mira Gonzalez hat viele Follower bei Tumblr und Twitter und hat vor kurzem ein Buch mit Tao Lin heraus gegeben "Selected Tweets". Sie erhebt Tweets und kurze Statusmeldungen zu einer Literaturform, die in dem Gedichtband mühelos in die Gedichtform hinüber fließen und dieser eine neue, eine unserer Zeit entsprechende, dem Internet freundlich zu lächelnde Form annehmen.

© Susanne Becker
weitere Besprechungen und/oder Texte von mir unter http://lobedentag.blogspot.de/

[Julissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly,
I have been trying to get ahold of this book for over two years and the wait was not worth it. There was about two or three poems that actually had substance. The title of the book has much of nothing to do with what the book consists of. I really was not expecting this collection of poems to be like this.
Personally, best poem was "induced compliance paradigm". This book isn't even long and it took me a month to finish it because I found the writing style tedious and lacked connection.

[Jamie Perez · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's some great ones in here (holy shut the babysitting poem). And in the end I'm let wondering about what should be a book and what should be a flow / stream / blog / whatever. These are questions that won't matter in 10 years, or will be a bit different at least, but no harm in wondering them now.

I wonder what comes next from MG -- I'll look out for it.

[Rudy Garcia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unabashedly shit: never really departs from elementary solipsisms of "I feel bad :(". And 300 dead jelly fish on a highway, cause honestly one wasn't enough. Like, one could be chillin on the side like "aight", but another one could be caught in the glass and underneath cars saying "Man this is pretty shitty"

[Muumuu House · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://muumuuhouse.com/mg.poetry3.html

[Brock Angelle Thibodeaux · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mira Gonzalez is a genius.

[Adrian · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most relatable books of poetry I have ever read

[Cameron Cook]

Not everything works, but what does work is so good it’ll make you stand up

[Zach Werbalowsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

It may seem unfair to compare this to others books in the recommended reading category, but it feels (justified?) to me. Alone with other people (Gabby Bess) deals with a feminine perspective combined with sexual experiences and the insufferable void that is our emotion with attachment to the internet, but does it in such a genuine and stylized way, that reading this fell short of that experience. Mira Gonzalez prose usually begin I, I, I, and although this is her choice, constantly saying I did something, I felt something, I ate something, does not constitute creating empathy (at least in my mind). This these actions could be taken as meaningless, but she constantly interacts with men and shares thoughts that I guess are meant to be vulnerable and become sort of shallow. Even when she talks about sex, its not taken to a raunchy/vulnerable place and it's so disassociated from any emotion the poems force the reader to view her in a sexless, sexual manner. She does not share her life, she takes action so she can have something to share to the reader.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would have given 3.5 if able I think. Had written an entire paragraph working through my thoughts but my phone restarted & it got deleted. Was feeling pushback initially because this type of femininity that’s trying to finding meaning and identity outside of male desire isn’t something I experience and I think to be so dismissive of something I wanted for so long made me feel anger, which is stupid and either misogynistic or sad or both. But I worked through it while reading and was able to just sit with her emotions and let mine go and I really liked the abstractness of the imagery, and the titling of the poems. A lot’s happening in cars! That felt very LA to me. I liked how the descriptions of intimacy felt dissociative and clinical in a way I don’t experience, that felt very interesting. The feeling of being comforted by death was also a persistent undercurrent that is foreign to me but I understand. Overall liked but I think it didn’t speak to a truth I have and have tried to articulate, I was just absorbing someone else’s experience

[Alexander Ermels · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I was younger, this book really meant a lot to me. It felt like it was written specifically for and about me (a 20-something depressed woman from southern california). I was grappling with a lot of feelings about trying to find my place in the world. The simple, odd confessional style inspired me.

I've done a bit of growing since then and I understand that this book isn't for me anymore, but that doesn't mean that it isn't for somebody. There are a lot of somebodies that this is for.

[Lewis White · Rating 3 out of 5]

Idk how I feel about this. There are some incredibly relatable things in here about mental health, relationship to self, social interactions, etc. But I don’t think most of the poems are actually very good. I think this poetry style is very repetitive, and I think the almost random juxtaposition of deep thoughts and mundane experiences is tiring. A few of these are good, but it’s super hit and miss for me

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was fine, and had some really good lines in it, but it wasn't anything I hadn't seen before. It's essentially an "I dread everything and existing and life" sort of book, with some clever juxtaposition.