I don't usually write about politics on this blog. I try not to.
But this morning, like so many mornings, I went swimming at the Y. After I was done, one of the women I often see at the pool entered the locker room with a bee in her bonnet. She often arrives with a bee in her bonnet. She usually blames it on Obama.
Today was no exception. Can you believe it? she asked me. Obama wants to let all the Muslims into our country.
I ignored her, and she kept talking. This is the way we often relate. She knows I disagree with her. We’ve had conversations before.
Do you know in Israel they profile people. They racially profile them. That’s why Israel is safer. You know Israel is safe, don’t you? We should profile people, too. But thanks to Obama, we don't do that.
I still didn’t say anything. She kept talking and talking. By this time a few other women were joining in with a variety of anti-Obama views.
But this one lady kept directing comments at me. You think I’m racist? she finally asked. She folded her arms and stared at me.
I paused. I didn’t want to engage. But she was demanding a response. So I finally said,
What do you want me to say? I mean, take the question of profiling. I think we are all profiling all the time. But who do you profile? I, for example, am much more likely to profile the white male because I’ve had three frightening experiences with white men—one in a parking lot, one when running on a back country road, and one when bicycling. They happened ages ago, but I am still always looking back in parking lots and country roads. I never feel entirely safe. I resent the men who make me afraid.
When I read the news, I see white men as the perpetrators of many crimes. White men like Timothy McVeigh. Like Adam Lanza. Like George Zimmerman. I think—I might be wrong—but most of the gunmen who enter schools and movie theaters and other public places in this country are white. But that doesn’t mean to me that white men are more dangerous. Or that the danger is race specific. I know, despite my experience and prejudice, that psychopaths come in all colors and religions. I think terrorists are psychopaths. They are like members of the KKK. I don’t think Obama can get rid of them, any more than Bush could or Putin can.
As to the question of racist, I think it’s the way the world is. We categorize people. We make some into enemies. We blame others. But just because someone looks like us doesn’t mean they are.
The woman looked at me and blinked. Can you help me with my goggles? she asked.
SONNET 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st;
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
This has to be one of my dumbest comics yet! Oh well . . .
I love reading poems literally, or rather-- hyper-literally. I was thinking of Zeus when I drew this but of course, Athena burst from his forehead in a full suit of armor.
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
Diane Lockwood invited me to talk about the prose poem in her Poetry Newsletter this month.
You would think after all these years that I'd get used to giving readings, but I always feel slightly sick on the days I am going to read. But it's always nice to read with friends as I am today-reading with Robert Miltner andKaren Schubert at Macs in Cleveland.
It's hard not to think of Keats' ode "To Autumn" at this time of year. For some reason the poem always reminds me of Mom--maybe because she read it aloud to me (she had this way of reading poetry--she sounded just like Katherine Hepburn), maybe because she loved fall so much, and because she survived TB. I think of Keats writing this poem when he was ill with the disease.
I've spent the week trying to polish off some poems and a manuscript for a chapbook. I finally sent them along. Now I want to unsend them. It's always like that for me. The worst is when a book comes out, and I want to rewrite it. I dream of the day I don't feel like this!
I have a rule that I make myself follow. If I don’t like a particular kind of writing, I have to try to do it, at least once. Or twice. That was part of my logic for writing Why God Is a Woman.
Because I used to believe that I disliked political poetry. I didn’t want to listen to anyone pontificating, especially poets. Most political poetry, I reasoned, left me feeling indignant, and I don’t like indignation. I don’t even like the word. It gets stuck in the back of my nose and makes me yearn for cough syrup. It has that Robitussin flavor.
I reasoned, I prefer the personal to the political. Of course, the personal can be very political, but it doesn’t have to be, right?
Maybe I’m not unique in this respect. In the book, Half the Sky, the writers Nicholas Kristof and Sheryly WuDunn describe how general statistics about the plight of girls and women by NGOs do not inspire donations nearly as effectively as personal stories. So telling people that between 600,000 and 800,000 girls and women and boys are trafficked across borders each year, while millions more are trafficked within their own borders, is less moving than telling a tale of a single girl sold into slavery. Especially if you give that girl a name.
Names have such power.
I was thinking about that last night while watching the Democratic debate. I was impressed with O’Malley’s story about gun violence, in part because he told the tale of one family’s fight against the NRA. He took the issue so personally, he looked as if he might break out into tears or rage at any moment. I was actually surprised. He was such a human being up there.
I was also surprised that I enjoyed the debate. What’s wrong with me? I asked myself.
Usually I get this creepy feeling while watching political events or debates—the same feeling I had as a child while watching a circus act. I am not sure what’s real or true. So many facts (or are they lies?) tossed up in the air, the politicians walking on a trapeze they might fall from if they lose their confidence or don’t think quickly enough. Some appear to be clowns. Others magicians. Still others are so glossy, so masked, so well-trained at keeping the ball balanced just-so on their noses. How can they stand the endless charade? For many it goes on for months or years.
The circus quality of politics reminds me of Garcia Marquez, of his One Hundred Years of Solitude in which the political and the surreal are one and same. So the colonel, after years of war, can’t remember why he’s fighting. He longs for death and goes home to make little gold fishes in his studio. The making of gold fishes, he states, is as significant as waging war.
In an interview with WYSU, I was asked if I was thinking of Marquez when I wrote Why God Is a Woman, because the book has elements of magical realism. In it I created my own Maconda or imaginary country, although my imaginary country is an island where women rule, and men are the beautiful sex. I fell so in love with my island, I still dream of it some nights and wake up wanting to add pages to the book.
While many of the prose poems in Why God Is a Woman are not political, many are. What really surprised me was how much fun they were to write. Poems like “Vagina Envy” and “The Token Man” were a pure delight. They were my ice cream and cake. I found myself laughing aloud as if on a sugar high, and thinking that men probably do suffer from vagina envy. Why shouldn’t they? After all, as Eve Ensler points out in The Vagina Monologues, vaginas are something to envy.
I also found myself seeking out and loving political poetry. I realized the obvious, that there are so many political poets and poems I already loved including Carolyn Forche’s “The Colonel,” many of Tim Seible’s poems including “The Debt” and “After All,” so much of Yehuda Amichai’s and Eduardo Galeano’s poetry. I especially love Galeano’s The Book of Embraces. I think of his poem, “The Language of Art” whenever cell phone- users manage to photograph acts of violence. His poem ends: The photo was a coup. Chinolope had managed to photograph death. Death was there: not in the dead man, nor in the killer. Death was in the face of the barber looking on.
And I feel myself looking on.
Now that I'm thinking of food and poetry, it's hard not to mention Ben Jonson (I always spell it Johnson) and his wonderful "Inviting a Friend to Supper." For a long time I wanted to know what Canary wine was. Tom Clark informed me that it's wine from the Canary Islands. Shakespeare talks about Canary wine as well.
It's funny how certain lines of a poem stick in the mind--like "ancient glittering eyes" from "Lapis Lazuli." Or rather, "Their ancient, glittering eyes are gay."
I was reading "Kubla Khan" and actually began to wonder if there were cows in heaven. Or if the milk would be dairy-free. I love being overly-literal.
Art for Art’s Sake
I’ve always liked the term that is a translation of the French, l’art pour l’art, meaning art should be for no other reason than its beautiful, beautiful self. I picture it as a goddess, as Rilke’s angel, as Dante’s Beatrice, as something so intoxicating, it should be illegal. And maybe it is.
I often think art as that place where logic goes around the bend, where the mind doesn’t stay tucked in like a shirt in tight trousers. Where a dream is as important as daily errands. Where the mind wanders and wonders about the humdrum and the absurd in equal proportions.
Maybe that's because I do have a habit of going around the bend.
I’ve always wondered about halos, for example, ever since the day I was told by a Sunday school teacher that I could grow a halo. But only if I behaved like an angel. (I didn’t worry about the “if only” part of the sentence.) Would it be hot? I asked. She said yes. Would I glow like a streetlamp? Would it be dangerous to walk around with a hot glowing head? She didn’t say. I thought about that for years, imagining myself lit up like a lamp all night on the downtown mall in Charlottesville, Virginia. Bugs would flit around me. Random drunks or addicts would stop by to chat, too drunk or drugged to be surprised to see a lady lit up like that.
It was that memory that inspired my poem, “The Woman with the Halo,” that is included in WHY GOD IS A WOMAN. As I was writing the poem, I began to wonder what if the poor woman could never turn off the light? Or dim the halo? What if she tried to lie down and sleep, and her sheets caught fire?
I also wondered, as I often do, what is the value of this kind of thought? Or poem?
Is it enough to say, l’art pour l’art . . . Or should art have a function? Like say, a cup holder?
As a mother, I often heard parents discourage their children from pursuing any kind of art because it has no use. And becasue the arts rarely create any income, which is why I often translate l’art pour l’art as art, poor art.
Years ago I taught with Robert Bly at a prose poem workshop in New Hampshire. One night we were out a restaurant, and he became suddenly angry about how poets let everyone take advantage of them. About how little the world rewards poets for their hard work. He was staying with a painter at the time, a man who sold his paintings for thousands of dollars. When will I ever sell a poem for anything more than a few bucks here, a few bucks there and nothing everywhere else? he asked. Do you know that I give my books away to anyone on the street? I mail them to perfect strangers, too? (It’s true. He not only gave his books away, but he mailed them to everyone and anyone.) I was really surprised because Robert Bly was so famous. He’d written best sellers. I assume his poetry sold well.
An idealist, I argued that money isn’t why we write poems. He looked at me blankly and said, So you don’t think much of yourself? You don’t think you have as much value as a carpenter? A garbage man? A secretary?
I thought of Bly when I was reading an interview with Eileen Myles in the Paris Review https://mail.google.com/mail/#search/paris+review/150249738cb53a5c and I ran across this quote:
“When I took the job at UC somebody came up to me at a reading and said, How does it feel to have sold out? I’m like, What did I sign up for? A life of poverty?”
I also thought of Bly when I met Sienna Oristaglio at the last AWP. Sienna and her co-workers, Noah Bloomenson-Cook, and Karina Vahitova have started the Void Academy http://thevoidacademy.com, which is committed to the idea that art has value. They design websites and teach artists how to connect to the world rather than push it away as I am inclined to do.
After all, how can I write if I am inviting the world into my life? And how can I worry about sales? Honestly, I don't want to get too depressed!
Thanks to that meeting (yes, SOMETHING good came out of AWP), I have this new website. I am getting used to it—having a place where people can easily find me on the web. A place to display my comics. I am still not sure about personal value. I do love their ideas, and I wonder if maybe Bly was onto something. He insisted change begins in our minds.
I thought of this comic when I was reading The Paris Review article by David Orr on "The Road Not Taken," that suggests this often quoted poem is one of the most misread poems in the country.
I was playing with the first line of this poem by Gwendolyn Brooks: THE POOL PLAYERS. SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVEL. We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon.
Watching the debates last night, I thought of Emma Lazarus's famous poem, "The New Colossus." When was our country last that welcoming?