Reading Like Love is akin to entering Nelson’s workroom to look at her maquettes, her conceptions in development, before we see them fully realized ... Throughout Like Love, Nelson is herself a poet of the question spirit.
The writing isn’t consistent, any more than her books are. But I like to take my thinkers and writers whole, as she does. The essays offer a kind of composite self-portrait, and illustrate how she thinks, sometimes painstakingly, sometimes with casual jubilance, about some of the central dilemmas of our time.
A scrapbook of still-fresh memories — miscellaneous, uneven, and indispensable ... Throughout the collection, Nelson risks imprecision to preserve her subjects’ ability to stay in motion, even if that means they elude her grasp.
Insightful as they are, I’m not sure the essays and conversations in Like Love offer the same feelings of risk and vulnerability that characterize Nelson’s more well-known books ... But I don’t expect it to have the same level of personal exploration as The Argonauts or Bluets ... It’s a credit to Like Love that its essays and conversations consistently recognize the nature of these roles and play them so well.
The variety of subjects and styles will hold readers’ attention, and few will be unmoved by Nelson’s soulful elegy for her friend Lhasa de Sela ... This is a masterful showcase for Nelson’s wide-ranging intellect and critical prowess.
