Tag Archives: poetry

What Asked to Come Back from the Trip

Posted on December 12, 2021 by jillbpearlman

One charming cliche pops up when you are going on a trip — people ask, can you pack me in your suitcase?  When you’re returning, it’s a moot point.  Or is it?    I wouldn’t have known it when I … Continue reading →

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The Carpe Diem Dilemma

Posted on April 25, 2021 by jillbpearlman

Oh, moralizing culture! Since we have so little understanding of where we are, there will be endless pronouncements of where we are. Certainties about what we’ve learned from the pandemic, and prophetic images of our future.  The more we don’t … Continue reading →

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Eternal Memories in the Eternal City

Posted on April 4, 2021 by jillbpearlman

Eternal memories from the Eternal City, Rome, 2018, from the weeks we were lucky enough to spend in Testaccio. That year, religious holidays fell at the same time — Passover Seder was finishing as Easter bells began to ring.   In … Continue reading →

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Stuck in the Stalls of History

Posted on January 10, 2021 by jillbpearlman

In Roberto Bolaño’s Savage Detectives, his sprawling novel of poets, revolutionaries and Pinochet, I remember most vividly the scene of a poet trapped in a stall of the bathroom as riot police entered her university.   Where else would she … Continue reading →

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Release

Posted on November 15, 2020 by jillbpearlman

I wanted a cheap fix, a release, an anythingbut the present thing, a veering from catastrophe and know as the wind blowsthere is no quick fix but jeez, how little is granted, how stingy reality, how it seeps its goodness,  what … Continue reading →

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THEY

Posted on November 1, 2020 by jillbpearlman

THEY Kafka saw it, part tragedy, part comic. They pulled us off our axisput us in immobilis, the gnawing cellof isolation, of terror who is there, with a hand to catch — to touch us — Time slows down     stands still the top … Continue reading →

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The God-Emperor

Posted on October 9, 2020 by jillbpearlman
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What Augurs, August?

Posted on August 2, 2020 by jillbpearlman

I always feel trapped by August, its thick cluster of vowels.  Clotted.  Lugubrious, made for a lazy tongue.  Made for  limbs given up to the sun.  If it were a kitchen sauce, it would need to be thinned.  If there … Continue reading →

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covid-19, summer-20

Posted on July 19, 2020 by jillbpearlman

—after Inger Christensen Covid exists.  Covid-19 exists, summer-20 exists.  High noon exists.  Heat exists.  Water in rivers, in seas, in showers, from fire hydrants exists.  Coves exist.  Hidden lanes of purple hydrangea exist.  Overturned bones of kayaks.  Smoothness of stones, … Continue reading →

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Flowers and Monsters

Posted on June 21, 2020 by jillbpearlman

“In recent months I have been intent on seizing happiness.”  So wrote C.D. Wright, my guiding star right now.  If you’re naturally happy, you don’t make declarations to be happy.  You throw out an idea, a wild proposition and follow … Continue reading →

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