I don't know of any writer, poet, artist, and publisher with more energy than Didi Menendez. I have had the honor of being published by her in MiPoesias and Poets/Artists and on iTunes, and of being a part of her amazing art and poetry shows. Her latest show can be seen here: https://indd.adobe.com/view/3fcc628d-cb92-46f3-93c3-2c8ca64057cc. The website for Poets/Artists is www.poetsandartists.com. You can see the magazine here: http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1075086. And this is book of art and poetry she published of my and Emily Lisker's work. What an amazing force Didi is! So many of us poets and artists have benefited from her passion and hard work!
The opening of Stein's poem, "If I Told Him," sounds like a love comic to me, though of course she is trying to verbally create a portrait of Picasso.
If I TOLD HIM
If I told him would he like it. Would he like it if I told him.
Would he like it would Napoleon would Napoleon would would he like it.
If Napoleon if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if I told him if I told him if Napoleon. Would he like it if Napoleon if
Napoleon if I told him. If I told him if Napoleon if Napoleon if I told him. If I told him would he like it would he like it if I told him.
Now.
Not now.
And now.
Now.
Exactly as as kings.
Feeling full for it.
Exactitude as kings.
So to beseech you as full as for it.
Exactly or as kings.
Shutters shut and open so do queens. Shutters shut and shutters and so shutters shut and shutters and so and so shutters and so shutters shut
and so shutters shut and shutters and so. And so shutters shut and so and also. And also and so and so and also.
Exact resemblance to exact resemblance the exact resemblance as exact as a resemblance, exactly as resembling, exactly resembling, exactly
in resemblance exactly a resemblance, exactly and resemblance. For this is so. Because.
Now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all, now actively repeat at all.
Have hold and hear, actively repeat at all.
I judge judge.
As a resemblance to him.
Who comes first. Napoleon the first.
Who comes too coming coming too, who goes there, as they go they share, who shares all, all is as all as as yet or as yet.
Now to date now to date. Now and now and date and the date.
Who came first Napoleon at first. Who came first Napoleon the first. Who came first, Napoleon first.
Presently.
Exactly as they do.
First exactly.
Exactly as they do too.
First exactly.
And first exactly.
Exactly as they do.
And first exactly and exactly.
And do they do.
At first exactly and first exactly and do they do.
The first exactly.
At first exactly.
First as exactly.
At first as exactly.
Presently.
As presently.
As as presently.
He he he he and he and he and and he and he and he and and as and as he and as he and he. He is and as he is, and as he is and he is, he is
and as he and he and as he is and he and he and and he and he.
Can curls rob can curls quote, quotable.
As presently.
As exactitude.
As trains.
Has trains.
Has trains.
As trains.
As trains.
Presently.
Proportions.
Presently.
As proportions as presently.
Father and farther.
Was the king or room.
Farther and whether.
Was there was there was there what was there was there what was there was there there was there.
Whether and in there.
As even say so.
One.
I land.
Two.
I land.
Three.
The land.
Three.
The land.
Two.
I land.
Two.
I land.
One.
I land.
Two.
I land.
As a so.
They cannot.
A note.
They cannot.
A float.
They cannot.
They dote.
They cannot.
They as denote.
Miracles play.
Play fairly.
Play fairly well.
A well.
As well.
As or as presently.
Let me recite what history teaches. History teaches.
The other day I was reading posts on Facebook by the many poets who admire Mary Oliver’s poem, “Wild Geese.” So I read the poem over, stopping at those lines: Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
I began to wonder. Do you really want to know about my despair? Do I want to know yours?
Because honestly, I’m not sure I like confessing. Or that I like confessional poetry. But I’ve been struggling to write it lately, studying the how, the why. (If I am critical of a kind of poetry, I make myself try it on for size.)
It seems that many confessional poets start with their parents, describing the terrible things parents did to them: the betrayals, the abuse. So that’s where I wanted to begin, too.
I started with my mother who was totally in love with nature. She also admired Mary Oliver. I consider that a serious betrayal.
Once after hearing that same poem, “Wild Geese” on NPR, she asked me why I didn’t write nature poetry. You should write a poem about wild geese, she said. (The truth is she would have liked me to write about anythingbesides orgasms.)
My mother could name every bird, plant, and tree, and when I was a girl, she tried to teach me to do the same. I was a lost cause. I never learned the names of any birds or trees or flowers beyond sparrow and spruce and tulip. Discouraged, my mother begged me go to a nature camp, but I refused. She had sent my older sister, D, the year before, and when D returned, she had two new skills: snake handling and taxidermy.
These two skills are my metaphors for confessional poetry. Snake handling is writing about the living. Taxidermy—writing about the dead. Today, I’d like to expand on the taxidermy metaphor.
Because after her stint at nature camp, D spent our vacation in Maine staring out the car window, looking for a dead animal to stuff. We’d be driving along the freeway when suddenly she would shout STOP at the top of her lungs. My mother would screech to a halt, and D would climb out of the car to inspect a dead deer or dog. My mother called these stops road kill sightings.
Usually D would decide the animals weren’t fresh enough. It’s kind of like selecting vegetables and fruit, she explained. You want the dead to be just right.
Isn’t that just like writing poems about the dead? So often we don’t really do them justice. And something begins to smell bad, at least to us. Or anyone who actually knew the person we are writing about.
Also, a memory can come so quickly, like an image seen from a speeding car. Often it arrives at an inopportune time, maybe when you are swimming or having a drink with friends or drifting off to sleep. And you don’t write it down. By the time you are sitting down at a desk, you can’t recapture the scene, the mood, the excitement.
I remember how once, in frustration, my sister, D, went searching for dead animals along Route 1, and when she returned, she was carrying what she said her teacher from Nature Camp would have called a real fine carcass. (We poets have a few of our own Route 1’s, I think—those places we go again and again for well-traveled sources of inspiration.)
This raccoon hasn’t been dead that long, she assured me before dumping it onto the kitchen counter. Slicing neatly and sliding the raccoon out of its fur, she explained that skinning an animal is as simple as taking off his jacket.See? she said. The insides stay together, just like they’re in a Glad baggy. She held up a shiny sack of entrails up to the light for me to admire.
I suppose I don’t need to explain the analogy here to the experience of writing about those we love, discovering and exposing those choice, glistening moments. But let me expand a little more . . .
Because sadly, D’s raccoon’s head was a bit squished. And my sister wanted to make him look really alive. She dabbed his face with black paint where the fur was missing, and replaced his eye balls with yellow marbles. Then she named him Buddy Boy before posing him on a stand. One front leg was bent, and the other was stretched forward as if he were in full stride. Buddy Boy looked as if he were racing off the platform, still trying to escape an oncoming car.
How many poems have I dabbed and painted over again and again? How many look back at me with yellow marble eyes?
After she’d finished, D wasn’t sure she wanted to sleep in the same room with a dead animal. Neither was I. Buddy Boy was beginning to stink. D stuck Buddy Boy on the flat roof outside her window. Soon a sickly sweet scent wafted through the bedroom. In a few days buzzards circled overhead.
I couldn’t help thinking that maybe we should have left the dead well enough alone. Let its spirit fly away like Oliver’s wild geese.
I picture the dead parents of confessional poets in their afterlife, seeing us still coming after them like an oncoming car.
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.
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.
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.
I am having so much fun making Shakespeare's sonnets into love comics . . .
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.