{"id":72004,"date":"2014-05-30T13:00:14","date_gmt":"2014-05-30T17:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=72004"},"modified":"2014-05-30T12:30:25","modified_gmt":"2014-05-30T16:30:25","slug":"id-like-to-make-you-smile","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019d Like to Make You Smile"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"the<\/a>When the poet William Meredith passed away seven years ago today, Poetry<\/em> published the third and final stanza from his \u201cAccidents of Birth\u201d in memoriam:<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But it\u2019s not this random
life only, throwing its sensual
astonishments upside down on
the bloody membranes behind my eyeballs,
not just me being here again, old
needer, looking for someone to need,
but you, up from the clay yourself,
as luck would have it, and inching
over the same little segment of earth-
ball, in the same little eon, to
meet in a room, alive in our skins,
and the whole galaxy gaping there
and the centuries whining like gnats\u2014
you, to teach me to see it, to see
it with you, and to offer somebody
uncomprehending, impudent thanks.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

It was a beautiful move on the magazine\u2019s part, taking Meredith\u2019s wonder and gratitude for his beloved and letting those words refer to the poet himself. When the verse is turned to epitaph, it becomes Meredith who teaches us to see; his lucky appearance in the room of our lives demands that we bow our heads, or else lift up our eyes, and stammer what thanks we are able to articulate.<\/p>\n

I met Meredith nine months before he passed away, at Bread Loaf\u2019s annual writers\u2019 conference, to which he\u2019d been invited as a special guest and at which I was a student. He\u2019d taught on the mountainside campus in the late fifties and sixties, first in the English program and then at the conference, and now he\u2019d returned to read for us in their Little Theater, a long, skinny rectangle of a room, the walls white, the chairs wooden, the light\u2014admitted through banks of mullioned glass doors to either side of the audience\u2014everywhere. It was more like a chapel than a theater.<\/p>\n

Meredith read only a few poems, supported at the podium by his partner, Richard Harteis. For the remainder of the event, he sat in the front row, audience to a tribute whose meaning no one could have missed, while Harteis, Michael Collier, and Thomas Sayers Ellis offered up anecdotes and praise and read their own selections of Meredith\u2019s work. Here was a dying man, a man who was loved. <\/p>\n

He\u2019d come close to death before, decades earlier. In 1983, when Meredith was just sixty-four, he suffered a stroke that left him immobilized for two years, and after that still saddled with expressive aphasia, a condition that, in a cruel irony, impaired his ability to translate thoughts into speech and writing. Only slowly, by way of intensive therapy, did he work his way back to the land of language, speaking again and even, eventually, continuing to write poetry.<\/p>\n

That day on the mountain, I\u2019d never heard of William Meredith. Against my expectation\u2014of nothing; I\u2019m always expecting nothing\u2014here was something like awakening: I sat up when he read; I leaned in. Now I was listening.<\/p>\n

Despite his Pulitzer and his National Book Award and his Guggenheim Fellowship, despite the fact that his first collection, Love Letters from an Impossible Land<\/em>, was selected for the Yale Younger Poets series, Meredith doesn\u2019t seem to have sustained readers\u2019 attention the way his contemporaries have\u2014poets like Robert Lowell, John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, and Muriel Rukeyser, with whom Meredith was close and to whom he is frequently dedicating his verse.<\/p>\n

Why? Meredith was mannerly at a moment when raving and confessionalism were at the fore. He found his voice in form; he spoke composedly. And there\u2019s a modesty to the character of his poems that makes him, perhaps, hard to lionize. He\u2019s too polite to be showy, too interested in the world outside to cast himself as the star of the show.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the first half of \u201cAccidents of Birth\u201d:<\/p>\n

\n

Spared by a car or airplane crash or
cured of malignancy, people look
around with new eyes at a newly
praiseworthy world, blinking eyes like these.<\/p>\n

For I\u2019ve been brought back again from the
fine silt, the mud where our atoms lie
down for long naps. And I\u2019ve also been
pardoned miraculously for years
by the lava of chance which runs down
the world\u2019s gullies, silting us back.
Here I am, brought back, set up, not yet
happened away.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There\u2019s a lot of \u201clooking around\u201d in Meredith. In his 1983 interview with Edward Hirsch for The Paris Review<\/em><\/a>\u2014conducted, by chance, shortly before his stroke\u2014Meredith characterizes poetry as \u201cthe engagement of a mystery that has forced itself to the point where you feel honor-bound to see this mystery with the brilliance of a vision. Not to solve it, but to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Life\u2019s astonishments come hand in hand with its malignancies, he wants us to remember. Still, he isn\u2019t interested in fetishizing misfortune. \u201cIt\u2019s our style now that a poet is taken seriously in proportion to his tortures,\u201d he tells Hirsch, \u201cparticularly if his tortures can be blamed on himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Meredith doesn\u2019t want to wallow. He refuses to use the world\u2019s suffering (or his own) as an excuse to ignore its abundant wonders. In the face of what troubles us, he wants us to look life in the eye, to make that near-impossible effort at speech. \u201cMorale is what I think about all the time \/ now, what hopeful men and women can say and do,\u201d he writes in \u201cIn Loving Memory of the Late Author of Dream Songs<\/em>,\u201d a poem that appears, along with \u201cAccidents of Birth,\u201d in his 1980 collection The Cheer<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In that book\u2019s title poem, addressing the reader as his friend, he puts it more bluntly:<\/p>\n

\n

Frankly, I\u2019d like to make you smile.\u00a0
Words addressing evil won\u2019t turn evil back\u00a0
but they can give heart.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Giving heart, persuading us to smile, this is Meredith\u2019s modest work. And this, I think, is what he means by \u201cthe cheer\u201d: that which sustains us as we struggle toward our own articulations of anguish and awe and gratitude. \u201cThe cheer is hidden in right words,\u201d he says. And, like finding the right words, it\u2019s no easy panacea.<\/p>\n

Toward the end of that Art of Poetry interview<\/a>, referring to Roethke\u2019s remark that \u201cIn spite of all the muck and welter, the dark, the dreck<\/em> of these poems, I count myself among the happy poets,\u201d Hirsch asks Meredith if he, too, counts himself among the happy.<\/p>\n

Meredith replies, \u201cI would like The Cheer<\/em> to seem like someone who would say, \u2018Yes. Without any reservations, I say yes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Kate Brittain lives in Brooklyn. Her writing can be found at Vol. 1 Brooklyn and Tin House\u2019s blog, The Open Bar.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the poet William Meredith passed away seven years ago today, Poetry published the third and final stanza from his \u201cAccidents of Birth\u201d in memoriam: \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But it\u2019s not this randomlife only, throwing its sensualastonishments upside down onthe bloody membranes behind my eyeballs,not just me being here again, oldneeder, looking for someone to need,but you, up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":702,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2157],"tags":[14114,9158,7599,1132,165,14113,14112],"class_list":["post-72004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-poetry","tag-accidents-of-birth","tag-birthdays","tag-happiness","tag-interviews","tag-poetry","tag-the-cheer","tag-william-meredith"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nI\u2019d Like to Make You Smile<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Kate Brittain on the legacy of the poet William Meredith, who passed away seven years ago today.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"I\u2019d Like to Make You Smile by Kate Brittain\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"May 30, 2014 \u2013 When the poet William Meredith passed away seven years ago today, Poetry published the third and final stanza from his \u201cAccidents of Birth\u201d in memoriam:\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-05-30T17:00:14+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/the-cher.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"438\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kate Brittain\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kate Brittain\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Kate Brittain\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/44296afa9339cafc326d7162039915e0\"},\"headline\":\"I\u2019d Like to Make You Smile\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-05-30T17:00:14+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/\"},\"wordCount\":1108,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/the-cher.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Accidents of Birth\",\"birthdays\",\"happiness\",\"interviews\",\"poetry\",\"The Cheer\",\"William Meredith\"],\"articleSection\":[\"On Poetry\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/\",\"name\":\"I\u2019d Like to Make You Smile\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/the-cher.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-05-30T17:00:14+00:00\",\"description\":\"Kate Brittain on the legacy of the poet William Meredith, who passed away seven years ago today.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/the-cher.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/the-cher.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"I\u2019d Like to Make You Smile\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"description\":\"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\",\"name\":\"The Paris Review\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png\",\"width\":696,\"height\":696,\"caption\":\"The Paris Review\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview\",\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/44296afa9339cafc326d7162039915e0\",\"name\":\"Kate Brittain\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7c25ffe2ca921dd67f64186e5eae9c310cb048953727d19cd53110f4b2903207?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7c25ffe2ca921dd67f64186e5eae9c310cb048953727d19cd53110f4b2903207?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Kate Brittain\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/kbrittain\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO Premium plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"I\u2019d Like to Make You Smile","description":"Kate Brittain on the legacy of the poet William Meredith, who passed away seven years ago today.","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"I\u2019d Like to Make You Smile by Kate Brittain","og_description":"May 30, 2014 \u2013 When the poet William Meredith passed away seven years ago today, Poetry published the third and final stanza from his \u201cAccidents of Birth\u201d in memoriam:","og_url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/","og_site_name":"The Paris Review","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","article_published_time":"2014-05-30T17:00:14+00:00","og_image":[{"width":300,"height":438,"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/the-cher.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Kate Brittain","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@parisreview","twitter_site":"@parisreview","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Kate Brittain","Est. reading time":"6 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/"},"author":{"name":"Kate Brittain","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/44296afa9339cafc326d7162039915e0"},"headline":"I\u2019d Like to Make You Smile","datePublished":"2014-05-30T17:00:14+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/"},"wordCount":1108,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/the-cher.jpg","keywords":["Accidents of Birth","birthdays","happiness","interviews","poetry","The Cheer","William Meredith"],"articleSection":["On Poetry"],"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/","name":"I\u2019d Like to Make You Smile","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/the-cher.jpg","datePublished":"2014-05-30T17:00:14+00:00","description":"Kate Brittain on the legacy of the poet William Meredith, who passed away seven years ago today.","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/the-cher.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/the-cher.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/05\/30\/id-like-to-make-you-smile\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"I\u2019d Like to Make You Smile"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","name":"The Paris Review","description":"The best prose, interviews, poetry, and art. Since 1953.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization","name":"The Paris Review","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-square.png","width":696,"height":696,"caption":"The Paris Review"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/","https:\/\/x.com\/parisreview","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/parisreview"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/44296afa9339cafc326d7162039915e0","name":"Kate Brittain","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7c25ffe2ca921dd67f64186e5eae9c310cb048953727d19cd53110f4b2903207?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7c25ffe2ca921dd67f64186e5eae9c310cb048953727d19cd53110f4b2903207?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Kate Brittain"},"url":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/author\/kbrittain\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/702"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72004"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72034,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72004\/revisions\/72034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}