When British poet Amy Key was growing up, she envisioned a life shaped by love--and Joni Mitchell's album Blue was her inspiration. Now single in her forties, Key explores the sweeping scales of romantic feeling as she has encountered them, using the album Blue as an expressive anchor: from the low notes of loss and unfulfilled desire--punctuated by sharp, discordant feelings of jealousy and regret--to the deep harmony of friendship, and the crescendos of sexual attraction and self-realization.
A courageously honest meditation on her partnerless life, and her inward and outward search for all the things a soulmate was supposed to deliver ... There is plenty of catharsis in Key’s language, but there is celebration in her discoveries also.
Key ruminates on society’s tendency to treat romance as a luxury in much the same way that certain people view tampons ... Key gives herself grace, recognizing the utter humanness of her own thoughts, which in turn extends grace to any reader for whom her words resonate.
Key uses Mitchell’s seminal work as a magnifying glass for her emotions and experiences as a single woman ... By embracing a vulnerability that matches Mitchell’s, Key reveals the full spectrum of human feeling with words honed as carefully as poetry ... It’s a window into the way one woman has moved through a world that’s quick to define women by their relationships.
