{"id":8540,"date":"2024-09-12T11:00:35","date_gmt":"2024-09-12T11:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/?post_type=article&p=8540"},"modified":"2024-09-12T15:49:44","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T15:49:44","slug":"review-my-infinity-by-didi-jackson","status":"publish","type":"article","link":"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-my-infinity-by-didi-jackson\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: My Infinity<\/em> by Didi Jackson"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Frenzy to Live: A Review of<\/em> My Infinity, by Didi Jackson;\u00a0Red Hen Press; $16.95; 96 pages; September 3, 2024<\/em>
\nReview by<\/em> Emily Rose Miller<\/em><\/p>\n

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Didi Jackson\u2019s second collection of poems, My Infinity<\/em>, is a quiet, pensive reckoning with life and death by a speaker uniquely suited to discuss such enigmatic subjects. My Infinity follows the speaker of Jackson\u2019s first collection, MOON JAR<\/em> (Red Hen Press, 2020). Readers of MOON JAR<\/em> will recognize that the poems in My Infinity<\/em> continue to grapple with the aftermath of the poet-speaker\u2019s late husband\u2019s suicide. While these books complement and expand one another in delightful ways, My Infinity<\/em> can be read as a stand-alone collection.<\/p>\n

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The book presents poignant, direct moments that meditate on the speaker\u2019s grief, moments as in the poem \u201cAFTER MY HUSBAND\u2019S SUICIDE I VISITED A PSYCHIC IN CASSADAGA, FLORIDA,\u201d which reads, \u201cand I hoped for a way \/ into the dark \/\/ an escape hatch from this world \/ toward his spirit.\u201d Likewise, in the poem \u201cVIGIL,\u201d Jackson writes, \u201cI\u2019ve learned how to keep \/ ashes in the firebox that heap \/ as high as decades. \/ They remind me of \/ his ashes, the ones \/ I keep on my nightstand.\u201d Such lines owe their power to their gut-wrenching specificity. In their specificity, the words become universal, speaking to the grief, the loss, and perhaps most importantly, the living we all experience the world over.<\/p>\n

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My Infinity<\/em> is broken into five sections. The second section consists entirely of poems about and from the point of view of Hilma af Klint, a Swedish artist who lived from 1862 to 1944 and is considered to have made some of the first abstract art in the Western world. Af Klint was heavily involved in spiritualism, namely Theosophy, which informed her art, writing, and life. Jackson\u2019s portrayal of af Klint is a fascinating addition to the collection and begs the obvious question: Why?<\/em><\/p>\n

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It is clear that af Klint\u2019s work fascinates the poet-speaker, and that af Klint\u2019s feelings of grief and inquisitiveness echo the speaker\u2019s own. But the biggest moment of connection arrives with the poem \u201cTHE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE,\u201d which ends: \u201cLike Hilma, I want to decode it all, \/ but I\u2019ll never know why \/ I was left a widow. \/ Only that the two swallows are me, \/ dividing into two selves, my desire reawakening, \/ my sorrow forever rooted.\u201d We see, too, elements in which the speaker finds uncanny connections between af Klint\u2019s life and work and her own, as again in \u201cTHE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE,\u201d when Jackson notes, \u201c[my husband] was only 44. The same age as Hilma \/ as she started the paintings of the temple.\u201d Jackson\u2019s poems surrounding af Klint underscore grief\u2019s universality, as if to say: this may not be a unique struggle, which I take comfort in, but it is as uniquely mine as yours is yours.<\/p>\n

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For all the ruminations on grief in this collection, there is also joy, persistent and worth clinging to. In \u201cTHE LEISURE OF SNOW,\u201d for example, we join the speaker on a quiet day as she witnesses \u201cthe leisure of the snow \/ falling like a Rothko \/\/ over the morning.\u201d Almost prayerfully, the speaker allows the reader to sit with her in this moment of reprieve from the harshness of the world, saying, \u201cI prefer to beat \/\/ the dawn; but this I shouldn\u2019t have to explain: \/ for the morning is naked and beautiful \/\/ and yawns many times before turning \/ on the light. I am there \/\/ to see.\u201d Yet, even here is the hint of hurt with the enjambment of \u201cI prefer to beat.\u201d Such subtle pain is masterfully rendered here and in the rest of the collection. Witnessing the soft beauty of the natural world is enough for the speaker on this morning. In the midst of life, so often filled with loss and turmoil, the quietness of this moment must be enough.<\/p>\n

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Still, the speaker finds joy even in pain. On multiple occasions, the speaker tells us that she suffers from migraines, especially after the exertion of sex. In \u201c\u2018WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU SEE<\/em>,\u2019\u201d she says, \u201cFrank Stella would be proud of my migraines \/ especially those that come after sex\u2014 \/\/ exquisite pleasure, then blindness\u201d \u2026 \u201cUnder this geometric spell \/\/ and pills like wasps beneath my tongue, \/ I am the closest to my true self, \/\/ and I secretly love my agony.\u201d Such lines remind us that life is an amalgamation of every emotion and experience, some good, some bad; without one, we could not experience the other. For the speaker, her \u201cexquisite pleasure\u201d and her \u201cagony\u201d are forever intertwined, a fact she not only seems comfortable with but embraces. And this is the driving truth of My Infinity<\/em>: \u201cso much of living is about death,\u201d yet \u201c[we] too catch the frenzy to live.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Frenzy to Live: A Review of My Infinity, by Didi Jackson;\u00a0Red Hen Press; $16.95; 96 pages; September 3, 2024 Review by Emily Rose Miller   Didi Jackson\u2019s second collection of poems, My Infinity, is a quiet, pensive reckoning with life and death by a speaker uniquely suited to discuss such enigmatic subjects. My Infinity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":8541,"template":"","categories":[9,139,49,1569],"tags":[1975],"class_list":["post-8540","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aquifer","category-book-review","category-literary-features","category-reviews","tag-emily-rose-miller"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nReview: My Infinity by Didi Jackson - The Florida Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cah.ucf.edu\/floridareview\/article\/review-my-infinity-by-didi-jackson\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Review: My Infinity by Didi Jackson - The Florida Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Frenzy to Live: A Review of My Infinity, by Didi Jackson;\u00a0Red Hen Press; $16.95; 96 pages; September 3, 2024 Review by Emily Rose Miller   Didi Jackson\u2019s second collection of poems, My Infinity, is a quiet, pensive reckoning with life and death by a speaker uniquely suited to discuss such enigmatic subjects. 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