Turning her back

on the toneless expanse,

beyond the window,

she contemplated

the room, which

was the colour of

over-cooked veal."

— from Hotel Du Lac
a novel by Anita Brookner

I love that line, but I don't love the book.

In the same way I sometimes love a stanza but not the whole poem.

Or love a friend but not her opinion.

I am large, I contain multitudes, wrote Whitman.

And so we expand, stretching across the thorny contradiction to get to a single beautiful bloom.