{"id":6723,"date":"2022-10-20T05:15:13","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T05:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=6723"},"modified":"2022-10-20T05:15:26","modified_gmt":"2022-10-20T05:15:26","slug":"marigold-and-rose-a-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2022\/10\/20\/marigold-and-rose-a-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Marigold and Rose: A Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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TRUE FICTION<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Louise Gl\u00fcck’s first published work of fiction explores truth, reality, and inner life through the eyes of infant twins.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Marda Messick<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Why do I suffer? Why am I ignorant?
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cells in a great darkness. Some machine made us;
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 it is your turn to address it, to go back asking
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 what am I for? What am I for?\u00a0
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014from Mother and Child<\/i><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In Marigold and Rose, A Fiction<\/i>, Louise Gl\u00fcck imagines the inner life of infant twins in a way that surprises, delights, saddens, and subverts our expectations of both literary form and child development. The Nobel Prize-winning poet\u2019s first published work of fiction is unique. Is it a fairy tale, a fable, a meditation on language, time, and change? Is it even a story? This profound and witty little book defies categorization.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

Gl\u00fcck dedicates the sixty-four-page book to her twin granddaughters, Emmy and Lizzy, born during the long isolation of the pandemic. Their father regularly sent videos of the growing babies that Gl\u00fcck watched over and over. This close and loving observation of her grandchildren\u2019s first year inspired her to write and quickly complete \u201ca fiction.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

In a 1989 lecture, \u201cThe Education of the Poet,\u201d Gl\u00fcck told her audience, \u201cThe fundamental experience of the writer is helplessness.\u201d Marigold, the introspective twin sister of sociable Rose, might agree. She\u2019s writing a book, although she can\u2019t yet speak\u2014the twins are less than a year old. But they can<\/i> think and, somehow, communicate with each other. (\u201cWe have inner lives, Rose thought.\u201d) They wonder about their unity and their differences. They speculate about the puzzling behavior of Mother and Father, Grandmother and Other Grandmother. Since they can\u2019t ask questions, they \u201ctake what they could pick up, like pigeons in the park.\u201d<\/p>

Marigold\u2019s own creative process is altogether different from that of her creator. Her book \u201cwas taking shape in her head all day it seemed. How could it take shape without words? Marigold didn\u2019t know. How little we know, Marigold thought.\u201d She waits to hear what the book wants, \u201cbut the book was completely silent in the way of non-existent things. I will wait as long as I have to, Marigold thought. When the book is ready to talk, it will talk.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

Marigold\u2019s persistent trust in her book\u2019s becoming echoes Gl\u00fcck\u2019s description, in the 1989 lecture, of a poem\u2019s manifestation: \u201cIt seems to me that the desire to make art produces an ongoing sense of longing . . . Always there seems something ahead, the next poem or story, visible, at least apprehensible, but unreachable. . . It\u2019s like a lighthouse, except that, as one swims toward it, it backs away.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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A fundamental mystery has already been hinted at: being and non-being, and the corollaries of presence and absence, silence and speech.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Marigold intends for her book to be about what she does know well, her daily life with Rose. But the book is slow in coming \u201cbecause the twins didn\u2019t do anything. They lay in their cribs, behind bars, like criminals.\u201d Marigold hits upon the idea of changing their flower names to \u201cMother\u201d and calling the book \u201cThe Childhood of Mother.\u201d When practical Rose argues that Marigold should tell a true story, Marigold thinks, \u201cIt is true, it just isn\u2019t real.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>

Gl\u00fcck\u2019s \u201ca fiction\u201d is exactly like that. Marigold and Rose are not only fictional; they are not remotely plausible. Real babies (Emmy and Lizzy, for example) don\u2019t develop self-awareness until months past their first year. But Gl\u00fcck\u2019s twins are parabolic. Their overheard thoughts provoke questions about what is true and real for our own existence. It is oddly as if Mother had given birth to triplets, and we are the third baby, a reminder that \u201c<\/i>unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.\u201d<\/p>

A fundamental mystery has already been hinted at: being and non-being, and the corollaries of presence and absence, silence and speech. The twins can imagine a past time when they were not, and a future time when, again, they will not be. As their bodies grow they realize that they are aging. The babies understand \u201chappy\u201d and \u201csafe\u201d only when these feelings are gone. Loss finds them. And, as intimate as they are, their inherent differences are obvious to them. Already they must negotiate the wondrous, vexing mysteries of self and other.<\/p>

Marigold, however, seems to intuit the creative power of Logos<\/i> to hold her in life, just as she holds her book in potentiality. \u201cEverything will disappear. Still, she thought. I know more words now and both these things would continue happening: everything will disappear but I will know many words.\u201d<\/p>

On the night of the twins\u2019 first birthday party, Marigold dreams that she is writing her book, \u201ca real book that people who could read would read.\u201d Now a real book is in the world for us to read.\u00a0<\/p>

Marigold and Rose are vividly present to us\u2014not really, perhaps, but truly.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Marda Messick<\/strong> is a former pastor, accidental theologian and poet living in Tallahassee, Florida on land that is the ancestral territory of the Apalachee Nation. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in\u00a0The Christian Century, Delmarva Review, Verse-Virtual, Radix, Vita Poetica,\u00a0and other publications.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Marigold and Rose: A Fiction<\/strong> was published on October 11, 2022 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, an imprint of Macmillan Children’s Publishing Group. You can purchase your own copy at their website here<\/a>.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Louise Gl\u00fcck’s first published work of fiction explores truth, reality, and inner life through the eyes of infant 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