Perfect, beautiful, so much love.
I did so much crying.
I have so many feelings.

This book is stunning, it’s so beautiful, I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed reading it. It is Mary Malone Cook’s photos, paired with Mary Oliver’s writing about their life together, some journal entries of Molly’s and some poems of Mary’s. I could have read it in a sitting but I lingered, I read paragraphs over and over again and looked at the photos as deeply as I could because I did not want it to end. 

And first of all, it’s so loving, so raw, I mean it is the most beautiful tribute to someone Mary loved, the humor and love she writes about Molly with, the way she writes about their life with such gratitude and reverence and joy and all of that, yes, none of it is sugary but it’s so sweet and deep and full of care, it is so full of grief, too, every page, her describing going through old photos and journals after Molly’s death, it’s so raw and so beautiful and yeah, I just. The tribute. 

But mostly what I’m thinking about is the burden of closet that she got put into and I can’t let go of this now. Like Mary did not make herself a “queer poet” though of course she was, because her love for Molly is in all of her poems, her queerness is there even if you can’t see it. 

But the other thing this book made me realize is what a deep act of love and care it was that she didn’t write about her relationship. Like, so protective in this beautiful way. It’s not like she pretended they didn’t live together or that people in town didn’t know. She dedicated all her books to Molly. I don’t think there is an argument you can make that she was in the closet, except that the world put here there because she didn’t write blatant queerness into her poems. And it makes me so angry, not at her, never at her, honestly it feels like this profound act of love, the fact that she was so quiet about it and then this beautiful book, full of love. But angry at the world for loving her more because they could ignore her queerness. Angry at the world for celebrating her in an easier way because what she chose to write about was not overtly queer. Like I am just seething right now. 

I’m thinking about if some straight poet just hadn’t written love poems or written about his wife. And how no one would accuse that poet of hiding or being in a closet. And it’s no different here. She lived her life and wrote her heart and wrote her queerness they way all queerness gets written, in everything she did, and the world took that beautiful protective act of love, that refusal she made of herself, her determination to love and live as she chose, and said, okay, well, in that case, we can celebrate you because you haven’t said the word gay. 

Ugh. There’s just so much going on with closets and how they are made by straight people and we queer people honestly just have nothing to do with them. 

I loved reading about her quiet life in Provincetown, loved reading about the neighbors, the bookshop and photo studio that Molly ran, about how they foraged for clams and did their work as best as they could. And the talking. I also can’t get over this, how she says, “it was a forty year long conversation” and I’m thinking, well, that is why you wrote so many poems. 

Anyway, I love this book with the fire of a thousand suns.