Thinking about Jarrell's poem, "Next Day"

My friend, Ann, says that women become invisible after “a certain age.” You can’t go shopping anymore and expect anyone to help you, she said. You can’t travel and expect anyone to help you with your luggage, directions, advice. She thinks older women move through the world, ghost-like and solitary.  Whenever she talks about that, I think of Jarrell’s poem, “Next Day.” And then I think to myself that I like being  a ghost.  I don’t usually like it when salesmen hover around, asking what I’d like.

But yesterday, I went shopping at the mall, looking for a dress for my son’s wedding. I wandered around Dillard’s first and then Macy’s, not finding a single thing I could wear.  The sales ladies ignored me, even looked away if I came close.  I felt like some kind of furry animal, maybe a rat or a dog. Finally I went to the Macy’s service desk.  A woman, shaped like a giant pink pill, looked down at me as if I were far away, and said, We don’t have anything for little people like you. Most of our dresses styles start at size 10. We never carry anything under a 6.  She looked so dismissive. I felt like a tiny child being scolded. Before turning away, she added I could look at the Junior dresses, pointing to a selection of frothy Easter dresses in pinks and purples and yellows with matching hats and ribbons and gloves.  I imagined myself wearing one of the dresses, looking like some kind of antique Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. 

Next Day

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook.Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook.And I am wise
If that is wisdom.
Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves
And the boy takes it to my station wagon,
What I’ve become
Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I’d wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children.Now that I’m old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car

See me.It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.
For so many years
I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me
And its mouth watered.How often they have undressed me,
The eyes of strangers!
And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

Imaginings within my imagining,
I too have taken
The chance of life.Now the boy pats my dog
And we start home.Now I am good.
The last mistaken,
Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm
Some soap and water--
It was so long ago, back in some Gay
Twenties, Nineties, I don’t know . . . Today I miss
My lovely daughter
Away at school, my sons away at school,

My husband away at work--I wish for them.
The dog, the maid,
And I go through the sure unvarying days
At home in them.As I look at my life,
I am afraid
Only that it will change, as I am changing:

I am afraid, this morning, of my face.
It looks at me
From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,
The smile I hate.Its plain, lined look
Of gray discovery
Repeats to me: “You’re old.”That’s all, I’m old.

And yet I’m afraid, as I was at the funeral
I went to yesterday.
My friend’s cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,
Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body
Were my face and body.
As I think of her I hear her telling me

How young I seem; I am exceptional;
I think of all I have.
But really no one is exceptional,
No one has anything, I’m anybody,
I stand beside my grave
Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.

Auden Comic, "Musee Des Beaux Arts"

This is an old comic, but it's Auden's birthday today, so I thought I'd revisit it.  And David Lehman's wonderful YOUTUBE on Auden.

Rilke's Duino Elegy: Die Erste Elegie

I love the Duino Elegies.  I particularly love Mitchell's translations. I don't know how Rilke ever wrote them.  But every time I read these lines, I feel happy.  

Sonnet 25

I keep making these love comics out of Shakespeare's sonnets. It's addictive. Also, it's addictive playing with the brush feature on Flash. 

Sonnet 61

I am having so much fun making Shakespeare's sonnets into love comics . . . 

Sonnet 94, comic

Sonnet 47, comic

Racism

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, comic

 

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 . . . 

Sonnet 3, Comic

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.  

Sonnet 73, Comic

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.

The Craft of the Prose Poem

Diane Lockwood invited me to talk about the prose poem in her Poetry Newsletter this month. 

Interview with Sibling Rivalry Press and Denise Duhamel and Maureen Seaton

The interview is live on the Best American Poetry blog. Denise and Maureen do these amazing collaborative poems, and they are collected in their new book, Caprice, published by Sibling Rivalry Press.

Writing Comic

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. 

Writing Comic

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. 

Writing Comic

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! 

Of Course Men Suffer From Vagina Envy--a few thoughts on political poetry

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.

Ben Jonson Comic

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. 

Yeats comic

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."  

Coleridge Comic

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.