lily pad

 

making it

 

Girl, Interrupted at Her Music, Jan Vermeer, 1658-1659.

 

Dear Y'all,

Again, I have read a book that has me asking why haven't I read this already? Where have you been all my life, Girl, Interrupted?  I could really have used this book... but, that isn't to say I am not happy I found it, finally.  As I was telling a pal, this book made me feel seen as they say; it was strumming my pain with its words.  And, you, lucky you, can read it right now!  In fact, take a chair by the light; I'll wait while you read it!  

I especially love to read about women and their brushes with, or even full assimilation of, madness.  Madness, as you know, is just a kiss away.  But, let me cut to the nub of the matter:  there are two types of books about women trying to get what they want.  In the first type, the women are killed for trying to get what they want, or even for daring to ask.  In the second type of book, the women survive.  Girl, Interrupted, is of the second type.

I have lots of evidence of the literary death penalty for women who want.  Here are just a few protagonists that are punished by death: Lily Bart, Daisy Miller, Marguerite Gautier, Catherine Earnshaw, Lilia Herriton, Edna Pontellier. I still haven't finished it, but I think Anna Karenina gets the big sleep, too.  

Take heart, though, reader, because I have just read three other books where the woman is not put to death for asking for something.  Now, Voyager, Butter, and Famesick.  Happily, Charlotte, Rika, and Lena all 'make it' to the ends of their books, against all the odds, and Famesick isn't even fiction!

PS

Another kiss away.  Does the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper make it?  Offred?  The woman in What Kingdom?  Marie Cardinal makes it, in The Words to Say It.  So does Leonora Carrington in Down Below, Therese and Carol in The Price of Salt.

another poetry corner

 

Dear Reader,

Another poem.

Tiny

Today
I woke up

and I was so
tiny.

All of the things I said were so small.
The sounds I heard were not even whispers.
And the things I thought were dust specks,
And the desires I have are wind, that comes from nowhere and blows back there just as quickly.

I was so tiny.   All the efforts, all the work, all the ideas were so very infinitesimal.
I was not all the earth, and all the sky;  I was not the timeless sea.  
I was tiny.  

Tinier than anything that could do anything to aid anyone.
Tiny.

the way I work

 

Dear Fellow Workers,

The title here, 'the way I work,' is a bit of a joke; I don't really work in the normal sense.  I just sort of drift, or bop around, from one project or notion to another.  This is not said as an explanation, or excuse.  Anyway, when I go to write a poem, I don't sit around a desk expecting, waiting for it to show up.  It's more like leaving a door open and hoping a wayward bird flies in.  I am always muttering to myself in my own mind: your people may call it 'thinking.'  And sometimes, all this muttering forms some phrases and lines that seems worth jotting down-  and so they are all over the place, in journals, on scrap paper, on receipts.  They lie around like that for months, or even years before I have some reason to take a look at them and shape them up a bit.  I mentioned a week or so ago that I had sifted through them looking for some to submit to a call for poetry, and I found several I thought you might like.  This is another of them.

The writer of 

There isn’t any time left, of course, but I will
write a song for you and you won’t even
know what it means, and it will hit you
like a ton of bricks, and I will say very
little about it for the rest of my life.  
 
It will feel like a one-room apartment with 
hazy late sun coming in.  It will sound like
dust motes on the air.  It will be a dainty
woman singing loud, and a tough guy
weeping his sad ballad. 
 
It will let the light through, and keep out
the lies and mosquitos.  It will stack up like
bowls in a cupboard.  It won’t leave you alone. 
It will stain you and your whole life, and all
through it, under every overpass,
along every fence line,
at all the stoplights,
you will think of me,
because of the song that I have not yet become the writer of.

 

poetry corner

 

Dear Reader,

I am sending some poems in, for approval or reproval, rejection or exception.  No, that is not one of the poems I sent in.  And this one following isn't either.  They wanted a poem for everyone, you know, a soft, pillowy, kind poem that doesn't let you feel time or sadness.  I like that kind too, and so I gave them some of my shortest, comfiest things.  Although, what do we mean by 'kind'?

This poem I am giving you is not kind, but it could be soft enough to crash into at speed, and it might not even need this title, borrowed from a C. S. Lewis book.  

Till We Have Faces

I once knew a woman who changed her name to Iris.  She once had a huge black dog, large enough that she could have ridden him.  He had the name of a Greek god.

I once knew a woman that the building was killing.  It made an air that depleted her vitality.  She would try not to enter the building; she would send in others, to be damaged unwittingly, one supposes.

I once knew a woman who said “read this book- it is for us.”  I met her again, much later, at another party, and she had a handbag with a telephone handset on it.  You could speak into her bag.

I once knew a woman who dug into her ancestry.  She made large cardboard tombstones for them.  

I once knew a woman whose father was a diplomat.  He built a motorhome out of teak and marble and drove it all over India.

I once knew a woman who played piano with real joy.  She wasn’t anyone you would know.   It was just her and her piano, pleasuring each other.  She came from a time when a lot of people knew how to play a piano.

I once knew a woman who warned me to never yield my position on the sidewalk; stand your ground, she said.

I knew four men:  they had the head of a rhino, a horse, a bear, an eagle.  They had all this confidence that I wanted for myself.  To steal it, of course, if necessary.  They would give it to you, but it wasn’t the real thing, they gave you confidence, they praised you, but only as much as it wasn’t taking anything from them.  They couldn’t really give confidence, they could loan it, like a plastic container with leftovers in it.  I thought they couldn’t give it because of greed, but a poet I know said they didn’t actually have confidence; that I was mistaken.  He said these four men had the same doubts as I did, as he did.  I wonder about that.

rhododendron

 

Dear Garden,

Today I have two songs for you, with the title of rhododendron.  One, two.

 

surf guitar

 

Dear Listener,

I have a nice version here, a kind of surfed up, rockabilly Lust for Life.  It think it is just grand; I hope you do, too.  It's your song for the day!

Well, will ya look at that!?

 

Debbie Harry

Dear Whom it May Concern,

Every once in a little while, upon a time, so to speak, I get so ebullient, so touched by something I read that I cannot bear not to share it; and so I get a little pile of the book* to give to friends, or I email everyone with the essay.  Well, once upon one of these times, I was filled with love and admiration for Helen DeWitt.  Well, no, that isn't quite right, because I am still filled with love and admiration for Helen DeWitt.  I think she is a great, great mind.  I feel my cells changing when I read her books.  I adore her, and when I went to share a thing she'd wrote, on cloud nine with my affection, I said that it wasn't just that I loved her, it was that I wanted to inhabit her, to be her.  One of my friends said:  You cannot be her; she has blonde hair and she smokes!  A pause while we consider.

I still wonder at what that means, that rebuttal.  There is, I think, an irony, in that being blonde and smoking is actually available to anyone with, hmm, say 20 bucks and a few hours?  So, those are not the things preventing me from being Helen DeWitt.  The obvious reason, is that someone is already being Helen DeW.  Namely, Helen DeW.  And all of this is crazy self-evident, so what am I saying to you today, exactly?  I am saying:  what are we doing if we are not trying to be like the humans we admire?  Where else can you go for the teachings?  (And yeah, I will give you cats as role models, as mentors, as idols, and in fact you can take the whole of the fauna, and the flora too, and take geo physical while you are at it, but it seems to me to make a lot of sense to emulate those we admire, in any and every way.  And you know, sure, you can model yourself on the cosmos, too; it seems a good design).

You might wonder, though, what has become of my topic: the impulse to share things I love.  Well, it takes an occasional beating from clumsy responders, but even now, I have three very fine poetry books stacked up and ready to give to what I hope will be a receptive and open heart, and I am so excited about it!  And, if they land poorly, that is fine too, because a book lives a long life** and many other readers will come upon these three specific copies and maybe one of those readers will want to be Sandra Cisneros, Ada Limón, Olivia Gatwood.  They won't even need bleach.

* e.g:  Faux Pas, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, The Hare with the Amber Eyes, Cold Comfort Farm, Cary Grant's Suit. 

** the used copy of Wuthering Heights I read was 76 years old.  I read a copy of The Hunchback of Notre Dame from the library that was 100 years old!  It worked just as good as new.

today

 

Dear May Day,

I expect you are at home, observing the national strike.  As your day unfolds, in solidarity and resistance, you might listen to this wonderful song, your song for the day.  My DJ played it a few weeks back and I was smitten.  You might be smitten, too, but wait until tomorrow to buy it!