{"id":2201,"date":"2020-06-21T19:43:39","date_gmt":"2020-06-21T19:43:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=2201"},"modified":"2020-06-21T19:44:58","modified_gmt":"2020-06-21T19:44:58","slug":"flowers-and-monsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/?p=2201","title":{"rendered":"Flowers and Monsters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn recent months I have been intent on seizing happiness.\u201d  So wrote C.D. Wright, my guiding star right now.  If you\u2019re naturally happy, you don\u2019t make declarations to be happy.  You throw out an idea, a wild proposition and follow it passionately to see where it goes. If your arm is strong, you toss that net far and wide to pull in both flowers and monsters. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sitting at Wright\u2019s feet now to gauge those monsters and flowers, but also to hear how, in her poetry, she navigated extremes. She wrote that she was pulled by extremes, as am I, and her selves swing wildly, as do mine.  Mine has a kind of \u201cpessimistic optimism\u201d or \u201coptimistic pessimism\u201d or \u201cradical realism.\u201d I feel that I\u2019m carrying battling twins around on these humid summer days.  Where can I put them except on a page in form that doesn\u2019t have to be resolved? Their form and spirit overseen by kindred spirits that I\u2019ve pulled from my shelves? How lucky I am to have a way that keeps me human.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Returning to Wright, what follows her opening line in the poem”Crescent” about intending happiness is \u201cto this end I applied various shades of blue.\u201d\u00a0 She then hauls in all kinds of fierce and ironic material examples. She works up into a fierce lather that seems to reflect a sexual fury, a restless rage.\u00a0 No one lives in a world of our making.\u00a0 Yet fury at the \u201csystem\u201d is freighted with an unabated wonder.\u00a0 Her material world crackles with straight-ahead fierce wonder at what is.\u00a0 As she moves through her world, she softens or careens to a kind of balance that places her outside herself, into selfless love and community.\u00a0 In her final great phrase, she delivers a profoundly earned mantra of illumination, for the road has been exhausting and exhilarating: \u201cdraw nearer my dear: never fear: the world spins nightly towards its brightness and we are on it”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Crescent,” from Steal Away, Selected and New  Poems (Copper Canyon Press)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIn recent months I have been intent on seizing happiness.\u201d  So wrote C.D. Wright, my guiding star right now.  If you\u2019re naturally happy, you don\u2019t make declarations to be happy.  You throw out an idea, a wild proposition and follow … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[644,958,984,983,138],"class_list":["post-2201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-c-d-wright","tag-coronavirus","tag-crescent","tag-illuminations","tag-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4D5qU-zv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2201"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2205,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2201\/revisions\/2205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.jillpearlman.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}