House of Incest Book

Hemingway once famously said:
"There is nothing to writing, all you do is sit down at a type writer and bleed."
In "House of Incest", Anais Nin has done just that.

For all those who have experienced it, or read about the experiences of creative writers, can see the truth in what Nin says in the opening line. The inspiration, or rather the contention, to write that which lingers between the conscious and subconscious is not easy to deal with, for it is not a neat catalogue of experiences but a rubble of discrepant emotions. So, Nin chose the medium of a Kafkaesque prose-poetry to ruffle through the ambiguities of dreams and reality.

Nin's is a mind as sensitive as it is imaginative. She delves deep into her subconscious and discovers the dichotomies and incongruities of her personality. In this quest, the introspection of her psyches' crisis, she progresses through layer after layer of her identity and sexuality, and punctuates it with a chocolaty vocabulary.

It was enjoyable because it was short, eloquent and imaginative.

Here is a poem that I wrote last night, and I am not sure that it has anything to do with this book or not, but like Anais, I just had to take it out of my system. I just had to sit down, and bleed …




You know, that void
The one poets talk about
Between desire and fulfillment
The cold, quiet abyss
That looms between
Everything and .... Nothing.
I have to tell you
'I am stuck there'
Somewhere between rainbows and darkness
In an eternal twilight
Of love .... And life