Making mistakes as one might make poems, rejecting certainty, deliberately exploring ambiguity and error: this is the optimistic model of wrongness on Ecstasy. It does not truck with (to borrow Carson’s words again) “fear, anxiety, shame, remorse / and all the other silly emotions associated with making mistakes.” I don’t agree that such emotions are silly, but I do agree that they are not a good place to set down our luggage and settle in. Artists entice us past them, into a world where error is not about fear and shame, but about disruption, reinvention, and pleasure. Art is an invitation to
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