Return of Pleasure — Summary

Anna Wickham’s speaker begins in a dark place, convinced that fear has drained all pleasure from the world. Then she remembers language—not just words but her own skill with them—and that memory gives her courage. The mood shifts from numb defeat to something lively and defiant. She imagines making words dance, clapping hands, shaking feet, and decides to stop rejecting things because of their origins or associations. Why scorn a word for its genealogy, or an ordinary bus in favor of a ship? She even says she has courage to despise form, as if rules and categories were part of the fear. Pleasure returns when she lets herself use what is actually there and put herself and everything she sees onto the page. It feels like a small, stubborn celebration of creativity, attention, and the everyday.