February: For many of us it’s a cold month during which we’re longing for sunlight and bombarded with cultural expectations related to romantic love, from boxed candies and floral arrangements to candles and lingerie.
One of the things I’ve related to love from a young age (starting with a grade-school Lord Byron obsession)? Poetry. So as I maintained my abstinence from commercial valentines, I determined to read and review a book of poetry this month. Yanyi’s The Year of Blue Water proved to be an excellent choice.
The Year of Blue Water is a phial of medicine for the soul.
As with any prospective remedy, I approached the book with nervousness, which was kicked into high gear as soon as I learned it was written by a trans author. This alone brought up a lot of energy for me. Even as I’ve acknowledged that, like many of us, I was raised in an implicitly homophobic and transphobic environment, I felt the power of those seeds having been buried deep and wondered if I had a place entering into relationship with Yanyi’s work as a reader.
But rather than an opportunity to confront and wrestle with shame, The Year of Blue Water turned out to be a poignant and soothing chance to relate to self, and a reminder that I can become more myself day by day. Yanyi’s openness and ability to document feeling-states in words is a gift given again and again on each page.
As a person who lives in a body that I often feel confused by and extremely critical of, The Year of Blue Water (which I read in a single bathtub sitting) was so relatable. I’m not sure that Yanyi intended this experience for a white, cis-gender woman, but I thank him for it. I also love that, much like a life well lived, the book is simultaneously a lamentation and an artistic rendering of steps taken toward wellness, wholeness, and hope (even if it doesn’t come to blissful resolution).
While one of the book’s official descriptions highlights its presentation of the author’s “long journey self‑guided through tarot, therapy, and the arts,” The Year of Blue Water is just as much about childhood memories, food, and friendship.
The Year of Blue Water will most interest those who want to connect more deeply with self. It will inspire those who want to start or maintain a journaling practice or embrace solitude or begin devoting higher-quality attention to life’s details, from the beauty that surrounds us daily to the intricacies of our memories and dreams. Regardless of what internal energies the reader meets in committing to Yanyi’s words, The Year of Blue Water is a potent reminder that we are all perpetually in progress.
Editor’s Bookshelf is a regular review of soon-to-be-released books that, in the spirit of Iphelia, asks important questions about how the written word—and in some cases, imagery—are used to help readers reconnect with their feelings, themselves, each other, and the world around them.
Iphelia’s editor, Linsey Stevens, answers these questions—chiming in on who will be most captivated by each book’s contents and how it invites readers to return to a heart-centered way of being.
The Year of Blue Water by Yanyi will be available on March 26, 2019 from Yale University Press. For more on his work, check out yanyiii.com or follow him on Instagram. For more on Iphelia: Awakening the Gift of Feeling, visit our books page.
