From: Sersch, Michael J
Sent: Monday, January 31, 2000 10:00 PM
To: Thamert, Mark
Subject: 1 Rilke // Children, Animals and Ghosts
"And yet they, who have passed away long ago, still exist in us, as predisposition, as burden upon our fate, as murmuring blood, and as gesture that rises up from the depths of time" (Rilke, Letter 6). In some way, I think this passage creates a bridge from the passage we read in class about the experience necessary to create "maybe ten good lines" and John's strong belief in the poetry of naivet1. While I was traveling this J term, I had the opportunity to see many disadvantaged children. One stands out in my mind: a little black girl from the south side of Chicago, we can call her Vanessa. She grew up in Cabrini green, a notorious housing project, but a situation that was better than she presently was in (just got off the streets). Within her eyes, where you might expect to find the glitter of a mischievous imp, or maybe the sadness and hardship she has gone through, instead was a stoic hardiness that spoke of ancient strength. This little girl was filled with a history that pumped through her blood, even if she has never heard a word of it, she knew it in her muscles. You can be as naive as a child and as experienced as the aged, crushed down by the weight of God.
In fact, Rilke seems to celebrate the child's worldview as the poet's view, as the mystic's. "To walk inside yourself and meet no one for hours -- that is what you must be able to obtain. To be solitary as you were when you were a child, when grownups walked around involved with matters that seemed large and important . . . And when you realize that their activities are shabby, that their vocations are petrified and no longer connected with life, why not then continue to look upon it all as a child would . . . ? (Letter 6).
Why should we be like children? Because children, if in touch with themselves, if immersed in their solitude, can reach a level of connection with that which is before us and after us we as adult-actors can never come close to. Children, like animals, are aware of the ghosts and hobgoblins we have too long ignored. "The fact that people have in this sense been cowardly has done infinite to life; the experiences that are called "apparitions", the whole so-called "spirit world," death, all these Things that are so closely related to us, have through our daily defensiveness been so entirely pushed out of life that the senses with which we might have been able to grasp them have atrophied. To say nothing of God" (Letter 8). This reminds me of a story I read before sleeping last night. A village has been without rain for a terribly long time. They call in the rainmaker, who sets up a little hut just outside the village and lives alone and silently for a month. Soon enough, the rains come.
The villagers run outside in the torrent to thank the rainmaker. He replies to all of their thanks with the repeated statement, "But I did not make it rain". Finally, someone asked him what he means.
He relied, "When I came into the village, I could sense the unbalance. I went into the hut, and spent the month getting myself into balance. When I was in balance, you all slowly came into balance, and from that balance, the rains came" (from the latest issue of a magazine called The Sun). The poet's job is not just to tell us we are out of balance, but to get us back into balance, by bringing his/her self into balance.
From: Sersch, Michael J
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2000 9:55 PM
To: Thamert, Mark
Subject: revision, poet paper
From: Sersch, Michael J
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 9:26 PM
To: Thamert, Mark
Subject: FW: Celan
is this ok to get on transparancies(sp?)? also, lecompte is up, just some fyi
peace
sersch
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From: Schultz, Ryan M
Sent: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 2:07 PM
To: Sersch, Michael J
Subject: Celan
How are these for sources? If you like them, send them to Fr. Mark to make overheads/ copies. I also plan to get a music CD of a fugue for people to listen to.
Ryan
From: Sersch, Michael J
Sent: Thursday, March 16, 2000 1:38 PM
To: Thamert, Mark
Subject: Celan Paper
Mike Sersch
Great Poets
Fr Mark Thamert
The Poem is Lonely:
Paul Celan and the Search for Meaning
Paul Celan is charged with one of the most daunting tasks any of us can be given. He, as an artist, is responsible to not only make sense of his own world, but to do so as a Holocaust survivor. How can one create meaning after the gas chambers? When all of Western culture has lead us to that point, the lowest in all of human history, what are to make of our collective past. Celan response by recreating the world he has been given, turning things on their head, retelling legends that have been darkened by ash.
Black milk. Celan begins his famous "Todesfugue" with this memorable contradiction. As Jeff from our class has put it: "Milk is not black and black is not milk." Celan sets us up with a point of tension: a horrifying image of that which is associated with mother, with growth and health being corrupted, made obscene.
Celan has no choice. The Holocaust: with the genocide, gassings, labor camps, and other atrocities, goes beyond the human imagination. The levels of human depravity boggles the mind, goes beyond our most twisted fantasies. The evil done in that time still remains unexplainable, hence the necessity of metaphor to describe it and its effects on the human psyche. We need the artist to (re)create the world of experience for us in order for the artist to make sense, in order for us to understand, in order to bring order out of chaos. Each reading, in this sense, recreates the poem and recreates the world, maybe necessarily in contrast to all that we had previously held to be true. Any interpretation only goes so far, there are always gaps, openings with which the chaotic (yet primordial and essential) seeps in.
When we read a phrase like "Black milk", a sense of vertigo occurs. We (the readers) need to place ourselves back into a point of perspective. Celan is not just writing of his experience, he is working off of the entire Western history. The title of the poem is "Death Fugue", a sharp comment on art in general:
. . . since 'Art of the Fugue' was the summa of Johann Sebastian Bach, our paragon Meister aus Deutschland . Now Celan's term Todesfugue throws into doubt the acme of music, which is itself the quintessential art. That doubt was already blatant when Bach fugues were heard from the commandant's residence at Auschwitz. . . . Celan's verse undermines any high idea of music ordering our lives (Felstiner 33).
Celan goes beyond just music, he is speaking of all methods of communication. How are we to connect, what value is there within it (certainly there is something essential in communication, that is what makes us alive and human) and how can we do it now? By casting doubt, by undermining music, Celan undermines all of art, his own included.
Within the vacuum that is created by the undermining of art, of communication, and hence of meaning (the world as we know it), Celan sets up his own version of legend, folklore and myth. "A man lives in the house he plays with the serpents he writes/ he writes when dusk falls to Germany your golden haired Margarete" (Todesfugue, lines 5-6.) Margarete, the image of Germanic womanhood in general, is linked to the man who stands for the power of the Nazi's, and in some Satanic (serpents) way he is linked to art, "he writes" and commands the Jews to dance (line 9). Germany, as both male and female (and hence, the whole of Germany, and hence, all of Europe) is linked to this destruction, this black milk.
We come upon the figure of Margarete again in the next stanza. Celan repeats the lines quoted above, and adds after "golden haired Margarete/ your ashen haired Shulamith we dig a grave in the breezes there once lies unconfined" (lines 14-15). Shulamith, the folkloric image of Jewish womanhood, is "ashen haired", the ovens have covered her in a snow of human combustion. She is in direct contrast to the German woman, whose hair is golden. By introducing Margarete first, Celan shows us the beautiful (even though we know it is hollow). He then reveals the true terror that is behind the golden hair, the death camps.
The switch from gold to ash is a theme repeated in the poem "Alchemical". Alchemy, the forgotten medieval art of turning lead to gold, gave birth to modern chemistry. In this poem, Celan criticizes not only our Western past, but our present, our scientific knowledge that did nothing to save the six million Jews (in fact, this scientific knowledge helped the Nazi cause, and when the war was done many of these scientists came over the States).
The alchemist began with lead, a gray, heavy and solid substance that would be turned to gold. Celan begins with a twist:
Silence, cooked like gold, in
charred
hands. (lines 1- 3)
We do not have lead, which is natural, if ugly. Instead, we begin with silence; the silence of the world while the Nazi's first attempted to deport the Jews from within their borders, the silence of those in the camps who had no words to speak of what was happening to them. For a poet to begin with silence is another of Celan's attempts to express the inexpressible, we know that he uses a voice, but we also know that his silence (along with the silence of the dead, "names/ burnt with the rest. So much" (lines 7-8)) speaks much more. Celan is speaking not only from his own experience, but also as one of too many whose lives had been cut short in the terrors of the Holocaust. He speaks from a long tradition, a tradition that had unshy bigotry against his people.
Let us go now to another of Celan's poems, "Tenebrae". The title refers to Matins and Lauds offered on the last three days of Holy Week, done in a funereal setting. As Benedict XIV (Institut., 24), describes this commemoration:
"Lauds follow immediately on Matins, which in this occasion terminate with the close of day, in order to signify the setting of the Sun of Justice and the darkness of the Jewish people who knew not our Lord and condemned Him to the gibbet of the cross" (Catholic Encyclopedia).
Celan is speaking ironically, playing of the institutional anti-Semitism within the Catholic Church. Only in the poem, Celan connects the experiences of the Jewish people during the Holocaust with crucifixion of Jesus (the devout Jew).
Handled already, Lord
clawed and clawing as though
the body of each of us were
your body, Lord. (lines 3- 6).
The Jewish people are not only identified with Christ the victim, they are connected with God in the next stanza.
Pray, Lord,
pray to us,
we are near. (lines 7-9)
Heaven and earth have been switched, the cries of a desperate people are now the objects of prayers, prayers from a Deity that appears unable to offer help. It is not just Christianity that appears at fault, but the Christian God, once thought omnipotent and actively involved in the course of human history, now appears inept and mournful.
Art, science, religion, even God are questioned and undermined in Celan's poetry. Meaning, a sense of purpose or beauty in the world is a struggle when we are still treading on the ashes of the dead. Celan asks the questions, his poetry even lives these questions (as he also did). It is our charge, now, to live these questions, to intake these poems in such a way that we may, as Rilke advises us, "Live these questions into answers."
Bibliography
Celan, Paul. "Todesfugue" ("Death Fugue"), "Tenebrae", "Alchemical", translated from the German by Michael Hamburger in The Vintage Book of Contemporary World Poetry. ed. by McClatchy, J.D.; Vintage Books, New York, 1996
Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven. "Seeking The Meridian: The Reconstruction of Space and Audience in the Poetry of Paul Celan and Dan Pagis." Religion and the Authority of the Past, ed. by Siebers, Tobin, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor; 1993
Felstiner, John. Paul Celan: Poet, Survivor, Jew. Yale University Press, New Haven, 1995
Markwardt, Jeffrey R. "Graves Rising", e mail post on Tuesday, March 14, 2000 8:42 PM
Thurston, Herbert. entry under "Tenebrae" in the Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume XIV. Robert Appleton Company, 1912; Online Edition Copyright 1 1999 by Kevin Knight http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14506a.htm,
From: Sersch, Michael J
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2000 8:52 PM
To: Thamert, Mark
Subject: Family Poem//The watch
The Watch
My father is a great
collector: seventy one shovels sit
inside his bedroom waiting,
lighters spill out from cheap tables onto
floors unswept, knives and pictures
are stacked and kept, torn in piles.
It was no surprise when he gave
me the watch, I have received mounds
of junk from him, heaps that sit
and wait to be thrown away.
The watch was different.
I could keep it on my arm
when I did not know where he was
at night it was carefully placed
onto an old wooden bureau,
silently sitting while father
was in asylum.
The steady time
the soft tick that is
as a heartbeat
keeps me aware
as he teeters and stands
on the curb in traffic
as it whizzes by beyond
his vision.
From: Sersch, Michael J
Sent: Friday, March 03, 2000 12:40 AM
To: Thamert, Mark
Subject: 13 Haki Madhubuti // my malepractice & maleabsense
"Haki Madhubuti (alias Don L. Lee):biography/bibliography
Haki R. Madhubuti (nee Don Luther Lee) was born Feb. 23, 1942, in Little Rock, Arkansas. Lee served in the U.S. Army (1960-63). He attended several colleges in Chicago and graduate school at the University of Iowa (M.F.A., 1984). He taught at various colleges and universities, in 1984 becoming a
faculty member at Chicago State University. His poetry, which began to appear in the 1960s, was written in black dialect and slang and via Lee's influence on the late 60s/early 70s recording group, "The Last Poets" is a strong predecessor of the 90s music style called Rap.. His work is characterized both by anger at social and economic injustice and by rejoicing in African-American culture. His first six volumes of poetry were published in the 1960s. The verse collection Don't Cry, Scream (1969) includes an introduction by poet Gwendolyn Brooks. Lee's poetry readings were extremely popular during this time.
An advocate of independent Black institutions, Lee founded the Third World Press in 1967, and he established the Institute of Positive Education in Chicago, a school for black children, in 1969. He is the author of 19 books. Among his poetry collections published under the Swahili name Haki R. Madhubuti are Book of Life (1973), Killing Memory, Seeking Ancestors (1987), and GroundWork: New and Selected Poems from 1966-1996 (1996). He also wrote From Plan to Planet--Life Studies: The Need for Afrikan Minds and Institutions (1973) and an essay collection, Enemies: The Clash of Races
(1978). Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous has sold in excess of 750,000 copies."
info from:
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/madhubuti-lee/madhubuti_lee0.html
I am only going to tackle the first prose stanza of this poem do to it's length and depth, and my own limitations in endurance:
Men and Birth:
The Unexplainable
(I am, of course, slightly confused in this title . . . what do men have to do with birth? If this is 'unexplainable', how can a poem be written on it? Yet, that is what poetry often is, trying to put to language that which is beyond language. This is the eternal flaw of poetry that makes it truly live. I am reminded of the Muslim carpetmakers who always intentionally place a flaw in their beautiful rugs, because nothing is perfect except for Allah.)
malepractice
What a wonderful play on words, 'malepractice', which is almost read 'malpractice'. I look back on my day and think of how many times I have engaged in just that: how many female friends shared their frustrations and pain, wanting me to express sympathy, and instead I offer advice . . . of course they know how to fix the problem (and most of these problems rest within the self, the shadowy ego-monster), and who am I that I can give advice?- No, these individuals wanted me to express compassion, to share in whatever way I am able their pain
and maleabsence
another gender issue, the missing male . . . looking at Haki's focus, the position of Blacks in the U.S. (or, as the rap artist Ice Cube claimed, AmeriKKKa), we can mourn the epidemic loss of the Black male from the family, caused in part by our cultural obsession with imprisonment (I just got back from Angela Davies' talk, so this is fresh on my mind) and also by a flight from responsibility . . . but this is hardly an issue limited to just Black experience, many families in our culture(s) experience the loss of the male, the absence of the father, he has nothing to give to the family, all he has is crushed in the workaholic corporate culture we have extolled as enviable
issue is loneliness
certainly loneliness is an issue with the absent male, the loneliness and separation the man feels, the pain the child goes through, the loss of the wife (I am sorry, but I am presuming heterosexuality here for convenience sake) . . . but loneliness is also a human trait, I think of Dorothy Day's autobiography, The Long Loneliness, and how she speaks of how we all are incomplete, we are separated, until we discover (a) community, and how that staves off loneliness only for fleeting moments
& limiting to-/morrows.
and here we begin to see how this poem's unique structure works, in strange ways . . . the prose-poem still can keep the line break as important, and when we see the play off of "to", we can read that as referring back to the whole line, and connecting us to our morrows, our next days, which are limited by the male absence and male practice
men need to experience rising screams,
here we are at the birthing, right at the bedside, a place of discomfort
husbands, lov-/ers, fathers, menfreinds should be with their wives, women
this list is very modern, it breaks down the nuclear family (that never really existed anyway, or maybe shouldn't have) and is set up to include all of men who are in a serious relationship to women . . . I am not sure why there is this line break at "lov", it is a question a pose to all of you
before.during & after. helping them weather labor and lonely
this ties the men down, not just to the birth, but to the pregnancy and to the raising of the child, there is no "women's work" in this poem, the men are called to take an active and emotional (the lonely thing again) part in this process
storms.we, locating new climates & seasons working with mid-
I am not sure if the "we" refers to the men, or to the relationship between the individual man (or men) and the individual woman . . . either way, there is an excitement in this line, the potentiality of the future, the collective search for new space, more within the relationship than in physical
wives, doctors & wife allowing them to take you back to school.
because of the line break, we have wife in here twice, and with the doctor added in the men are giving up something, "allowing" involves a ceasing of control, in this case an active engagement that infringes on freedom, and requires a learning of something forgotten, we must go "back to school", we must relearn something, maybe taught by our mothers?
you, who thought that baby delivering was others' work,
oh no, the male is called to active engagement, this birth involves him in a very real way, it is going to require a lot from him as well
stranger's work.
this line on it's own emphasizes the familiarity of this labor, even though it is taxing, it is something we remember
so far I have discussed the poem almost as if it is about actual birth, but certainly the "labor" can also exist as a metaphor, for the relationship, for social change, for the creative process
From: Sersch, Michael J
Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2000 11:05 PM
To: Thamert, Mark
Subject: Ryan and Sersch// Celan
Fr. Mark, I do not know if Ryan got this to you already and it is just not on the public folders, but we were thinking of working on Paul Celan.
peace
sersch
From: Sersch, Michael J
Sent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 9:17 PM
To: Thamert, Mark
Subject: 12. McCarriston // the (in)justice system
To Judge Faylan,
Dead Long Enough
A Summons
Your Honor,
when my mother stood before you
with her routine domestic plea
after weeks of waiting
for speech to return to her body
With her homemade forties hairdo,
her face purple still under pancake
her jaw off, just a little
her holy of holies, healing
her breasts, wrung
her heart the bursting heart
of someone snagged among rocks
deep in a shark pool
No, not someone
but a woman there,
snagged with her babies,
by them
in one of hope's
pedestrian brutal turns
When, in the tones of parlours
overlooking the harbor,
you admonished "That,
for the sake of the family,
the wife must take the husband
back to her bed."
What you willed
not to see before you
was a woman risen
clean to the surface.
A woman who,
with one arm flailing,
held up with the other
her actual burdens of flesh.
When you clapped to her leg
the chain of justice
you ferried us back down
to the Law,
the black ice eye,
the mawl,
the macko that circles
the kitchen table nightly.
What did you make
of the words she told you?
Not to have heard her,
not to have seen her there?
Almost forgivable ignorance,
you were not the fist,
the boot, the blade
but the jaded corrective ear and eye
at the limits of her world.
Now, I will you
to see her as she was,
to ride your own words
back into light.
I call your spirit
home again,
divesting you of robe and bench
the fine white hand
and half-lit Irish eye.
Tonight, put on a body
in the trailer
down the road,
where your father,
when he can't get it up,
makes love to your mother
with a rifle.
Let your name be
Eva Mary,
Let your hour of birth
be dawn
Let your life be
long and common
and your flesh endure.
--Linda McCarriston
I really enjoyed Steph's reading of this poem, and her transcription. In general, I prefer a shorter line (it tends to bring out the word smthy better than a longline) and think there is enough power and pain in this poem that needs space to grow and move. I was moved by this poem (or maybe this poem chose me) in part because it stikes at a recurring phenonomin, why we continue to call it the justice system when it so often it only continues the rule of the rich and the continued subjection of the unbderclass, the poor, the minorities, especially women within those categories. This is a poem of one woman's pain, but it also is a poem for all the victims of our (in)justice system. We , the listeners/readers, are given a voice of the usually voiceless, a unique experience that connects to so many experiences, too many. We have truly been honored,and we are also charged . . . we have heard this story, how does it change us?
From: Sersch, Michael J
Sent: Monday, February 21, 2000 10:32 PM
To: Thamert, Mark
Subject: Jen's 7.2 Martial // Not everyone missed it.
I would like to try and defend Martial's poem "Either get out of the house or conform to my tastes, woman". Before I do, let me place some things on the table. I am a feminist, i strongly believe in woman's lib. and i have placed these beliefs on the line before. Now, the hard job, how to defend this poem. My first repsonse was very similiar to Jen's, my skin started to crawl. But then, I removed myself from the poem, and imagined the poet and speaker also removed.
With that seperation, we need to assume the poet is not speaking literally. The poet may be speaking to a wife who is actually very loving, maybe even a good lover. The poet can use exaggeration to get the point across.
With that said, we should ground the poem in a certain time, which would mean that yes, the poem is from a misognist culture. Although we can criticize the poem from our viewpoint (and rightly so), we cannot expect a liberated woman to come speaking to us. While the criticisms Jenn gave us are right on, we should not let them so completly consume out attention that we miss the beautiful sensual nature to the verse, even if it is disturbing. Ok, maybe I didn't argue too well.
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From: Lindquist, Jennifer M
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2000 12:36 PM
To: Thamert, Mark
Subject: 7.2 Martial // Did everyone miss this????
I want to take a step backward for a moment and recap a poem that we were unable to talk about in class on Monday. I would have brought this up earlier, but I didn't realize that this poem was on our schedule. Luckily, it's now on my hit list. On page 72-72 of 99 Poems in Translation lies the poem called "Either get out of the house or conform to my tastes, woman." This response is guaranteed to qualify as reader response criticism, so if you disapprove of such methods, please do not read further. Before I acknowledge my disgust, which began with the very first line of the poem, I must recognize that this poem was written by Martial between the years 40-104. However, I don't think this means that I have to appreciate what is said in the poem, merely in deference to the century in which it was produced.
First of all, the first line of the poem makes my skin crawl. If we assume that this collection of statements is being spoken aloud to a woman, a woman who seems to be the wife or long time mistress of the speaker, one can feel the insult of the first line to the very roots of being. In the speaker's mind, the woman before him doesn't even value a name, but is rather referred to in the manner one would refer to a misbehaving pet. I hope this made you as upset as it did me.
This poem is all directed and manipulated by the incredible ego of the speaker. This man loves nothing more than himself, which is proven through his references to his own thoughts and emotions, in that he speaks of nothing but personal needs, wants, likes, loves, and desires and also through his driving desire for pleasure at whatever cost to his wife. It has obviously not occurred to him that his wife may dislike having sex with him. Wow. What a thought. If you were in a relationship in which your opinions mattered not at all, would you be interested in intimacy with your ruler? Not I.
One other thing, if this poem is supposed to be funny, I am even more disgusted than before. The situations described, even if intended by the author to be hilarious, are not and will never be qualified as a good joke. In fact, if put in this situation, I would probably laugh my way out the door.
We are on our way to the 22nd century. Hopefully a century of EQUAL partnership in relationship and marriage. At least that is my personal hope. Perhaps those of you who read this poem merely felt that it was out of date and unworthy of a response. I hope that was/is the case. I just felt that I couldn't let this poem slide by unacknowledged in our world, where so much is merely let fall to the floor without concern.
If anyone saw something else in this poem, I would love to hear about it! Maybe it would help me to reconcile Martial in my mind. Thanks for listening!
From: Sersch, Michael J
Sent: Friday, February 18, 2000 11:42 AM
To: Thamert, Mark
Subject: Two poems on wildness, from a woman's POV
TO MY DAUGHTER ON VALENTINE'S DAY,
FIFTH GRADE
You were straight and solid and golden
as bamboo or a length of sugar cane.
Now your body's mass shifts
to roundness like a candy heart,
and when I open a door and catch you
naked, you hunch over, your hands spread
to screen yourself, like the fan of a geisha,
your knees bent to one side, as if by turning
you might disappear from view.
You have always had those plum-colored lips,
shaped like a valentine, those bright eyes,
that yellow hair. You have always been
well contained in your body, sure of the world.
These days you spill over, dissolving
to this and that, tears and talk. You fly out,
your anger whirling about you like bees.
You coil into your quiet, a soft mollusk,
backing in, round and round, to rest at the heart.
You have discovered your insides.
You have begun to furnish a room there.
Today you had a valentine from some boy
the other children teased, one you were kind to.
How do I love thee, he wrote, copying out
all fourteen lines into his spiral notebook,
ignoring the breaks, misspelling "griefs."
I have had a crush on you for three years,
he said in his own words. And, though you cringed,
I loved this boy who formed words like "soul"
and "ideal grace," his slow pencil exalting him,
who for that eternity from third grade to fifth,
was occupied with thoughts of my girl, my once
flat green spear of iris, now plumping and purpling
from her gold-dusted depths, piquant, bruisable.
Jeanne Emmons
---------------------------------
copyright 1998 by Jeanne Emmons. From "Rootbound," published by New Rivers Press (www.mtn.org/newrivpr).
---------------------------------
The woman in three pieces - one
She said she was unhappy and they said they would take care
of her. She said she needed love and so they raped her and
then she wanted to be alone. They locked her into a tiny
cell with one tiny window and took away her clothes,
turning off all the lights as they left. After a long while they
came back and she said, "It's so dark", so they shined a
very bright light into her face and she said "I don't like
that". "What's the matter" they said and she said " There
is nothing to eat, couldn't you please give me some water"
so they brought a hose and sprayed her hard with water.
"Are you happy now" they said and she answered "Please,
I'm so very cold, my bones ache and I shiver all the time."
So they brought a huge pile of sticks and newspaper and built
a very large fire in her cell. She squeezed her body out of the
window and fell a great distance and was killed. "The trouble
with people like her" they said later " is that no matter how
hard you try to please them, they are never satisfied."
The woman in three pieces - two
We said we were unhappy and they said they would take
care of us. We needed love, they said, and so they raped us,
and then they wanted to be alone. They locked us into a
tiny cell with one tiny window and took away our clothes,
turning off all the lights as they left. After a long while they
came back and we said, "It's so dark", so they shined a very
bright light into our faces and we said "W don't really like
that". "What's the matter" they said and we said "Well,
there is nothing to eat, couldn't you please give us some
water" so they brought a hose and sprayed us hard with
water. "Are you happy now" they said and we answered
"Please, we would be, but we're so very cold, our bones
ache and we shiver all the time." So they brought huge piles
of sticks and newspaper and built a very large fire in our cell.
We squeezed our bodies out of the window and fell a
great distance and were killed. "The trouble with people
like them" they said later amongst themselves " is that no
matter how hard they try to please us, we are never satisfied."
The woman in three pieces - three
I said I was unhappy and you said I would take care of him.
I needed love, he said, and so he raped you and then everyone
wanted to be alone.
We locked ourselves into a little cell with one tiny window
and took away our clothes, turning off all the lights as we
left.
After a long time we came back and I said "It's so dark" so
we shined a bright light into his face and you said " He
doesnt like that."
"What's the matter" I said and you said "There is nothing
to eat, couldn't you please give him some water?" So we
brought a hose and sprayed me hard with water.
"Are you happy now" I said and he answered, "Please, you
are so very cold my bones ache and I shiver all the time."
So you brought a huge pile of sticks and newspapers and he
Built a very large fire in our cell.
You squeezed my body out of the window and we fell a great
distance and were killed.
"The trouble with people like us" we said later, "is that
no matter how hard I try to please you, I am never satisfied."
~Judy Grahn
From: Sersch, Michael J
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 10:55 AM
To: Thamert, Mark
Subject: 7 Holm // there is a free spirit within each of us
Joanna, I agree with your analysis of the poem, especially your powerful reading that "If the freethinkers do not challenge those who are in control in our society, then nothing will ever change. Wildness and freedom of spirit are essential to the development and improvement of our society." But, I think we need to look at the gender question a little deeper here. You are right in that the "boring person" who is the subject can be either male or female . . . outside of the poem, the charachter would have diffrent expereinces depending on gender, but within the context of this poem that seems irrelevant. But what is it that liberates the subject in this poem? A woman. If the "He" changed into "she" is a woman, the subject changes dramatically.
It seems ironic, but I find this narrative to go opposite women's liberation. Why? What saves the man is the Other-ness of the woman: "the one with black eyes/ who knows the rhumba/ . . . from the mountains in Bulgaria." The woman in the poem can liberate because she is exotic, it really has nothing to do with who she really is. She is just the sum of her parts, and her parts are diffrent from his mundane world.
Now, does this mean that the poem is untrue? No, in fact, I love it. But it does opperate under a old device of romanticizing the diffrent (Rousseau's noble savage) so we can project our desires onto them, then claim they liberate us. This does a disservice to ourselves and the Bulgarian roots of the exotic woman because we really never listen to what she does have to give us, we just listen to our internal monologue of what we think she can give us.
-----Original Message-----
From: JTSTONE [mailto:JTSTONE@csbsju.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2000 12:09 AM
To: mthamert@csbsju.edu
Subject: Holm // there is a free spirit within each of us
I really liked the poem Advice, by Bill Holm. (Rag and Bone, p.30) It reminds me that we cannot always do just what society wants us to do, and the importance of discovering the wild, free spirit within each of us. Someone dancing inside us / learned only a few steps: We are limited by the roles society expects us to play. Society says we should be responsible and studious and learn our lessons well so that we may go out into the world of work and get a respectable, well-paying job to go to every day for the rest of our lives. The ôDo-Your-Workö in 4/4 time, / the ôWhat-Do-You-Expectö waltz. But this is not necessarily the right path for everyone. It is simply the easiest path to find. He hasnÆt noticed yet the woman / standing away from the lamp, She is a true free spirit; she is not in the limelight or in mainstream culture- she is not in the lamplight. Instead, she remains in the shadows, mysterious and elusive. The one with black eyes / who knows the rhumba, Yes, this woman is truly something different. She has knowledge of art- of something besides the dull daily occurrences in the lives of those who think they are getting ôaheadö in the world. She has experienced life, and knows more than just a few steps. And strange steps in jumpy rhythms / from the mountains in Bulgaria. This woman, this spirit, has not only the wisdom from her own culture, but has traveled to distant lands to learn what she can from the people there and their ideas. We cannot just fall into society like pieces into a jigsaw puzzle, we must challenge ideas and explore alternatives to discover who we really are and become truly alive. If they dance together, / something unexpected will happen, When the unquestioning man meets the freethinking woman, his life will never be the same. She will challenge him through her very existence to think for himself and challenge the roles and ideals placed upon him by society. If they donÆt, the next world / will be a lot like this one. If the freethinkers do not challenge those who are in control in our society, then nothing will ever change. Wildness and freedom of spirit are essential to the development and improvement of our society.
IÆm not really sure what I think about the gender issues implied by this poem. Why is it that the boring person who has ôlearned only a few stepsö is a man, and the free spirit is a woman ôwith black eyesö? Personally, I feel that the roles in this poem could easily be switched, and would change the images of the poems, but not the meaning. I think that if wildness is different for women and men it is only because of the different roles society tells each to play. Because we have different roles to break out of, our wildness may be different at first. But I believe that in the long run, women and men have more in common than different.
Growing as wild women (or men) involves breaking out of cages, boxes, stereotypes, categories, and captivity. It involves standing tall, laughing loudly, and being who we really are.
(SARK, Succulent Wild Woman, p. 176)
From: Sersch, Michael J
Sent: Tuesday, February 08, 2000 1:02 AM
To: Thamert, Mark; Solomon, John P
Subject: 3 Response to John -- Meade, Thomas, Solomon // From the Warrior Poets to the Poets at War
John's statements on warrior poets and poet's at war (with the self) may not touch exactly on what I was thinking, but do have a lot packed into them, issues I am struggling with. One item is the tension that exists between the poem Amergin and Cessair: A Battle of Poetic Incantation, the wonderful Celtic tradition of poetic battles (they still exist in insults given over the radio in verse in Ireland, and have taken on a different social/historical ground in "playing the dozens", the creative insults that have been traded in Afro-American society, carrying over into modern rap, and of course the contemporary poetry slams Jeff has referred to) and Meade's life, including a wonderful story about when he was serving in the military, and the insanity of war struck him. He replied in the way that seemed obvious, he reported to role call completely naked. He was given a dishonorable discharge for psychiatric reasons.
How is the poet to stand in the face of the base absurdity? And then what do we do when faced with historical facts that seem to go against what we believe? What does it mean for a poet who was a consciencious objector to write about poet warriors? How is the modern poet a warrior? How does the modern poet fight the fight that needs to be done?
This last struggle is one I have been struggling with. As Anne has mentioned, many came to the J-Term meeting because of the lack of student voice engaged in a discussion that has a great deal of importance. I have been fairly involved in this "movement", spending a lot of time planning and thinking about how to engage in this. Unfortunately, I have not found the balance some poets, like Dan Berrigan, have discovered between activism and art. When I get done with an 'action' (be it the J-term meeting, or camping at the Dept. of Energy, or outside a military base, or wherever) I am incredibly drained. That is why this response comes so late.
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From: Solomon, John P
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2000 12:20 AM
To: Thamert, Mark
Subject: Meade, Thomas, Solomon // From the Warrior Poets to the Poets at War
(disclaimer: this is a journal in its true sense in that I needed to rant a little, I am not sure if it is useable for the email posts but at least you can see what I am thinking about)
From the Warrior Poets to the Poets at War
the ranting of a new artist
One of the most over used and warn out clich1s is that of the artist at war with himself. It is an image that a 20 year old man (some may say the very man that writes this to you) has a difficult time forgetting. Why is it that an artist must struggle with art. I of course must point out that a clich1 would not be a clich1 if it didn't hold truth. Some of the greatest moments in my life come when I shut out the world around me and I start to work on my music or my poetry. Sometimes I can feel it inside me and I know that I have to shut myself off to find it. Rilke may say that I have to seek solitude, while I on the other hand would not even feel the need to point it out. I can never be at one with my art unless I can truly roll up my sleeves and struggle with it. This requires me to seek out that battle between me and my art that I hold so dear. Herein lies my thought upon these poems.
When is the struggle a clich1 and when is a struggle the truth? I have spent a lot of time the past few weeks dealing with the problem of when I should quite saying I am a student and start saying that I am a musician, a singer songwriter in fact. The words feel clumsy coming out of my mouth because it is only recently that I have decided to put everything aside and embrace my art. What that means for me of course is that I am now looking at college in a whole new way. No longer is it anything that holds me. It is merely the thing I am doing in my free time. I feel liberated now. Dylan Thomas, brother of mine, I hear your voice in my soul saying
"I labor by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart." (Thomas, "In My Craft or Sullen Art")
And I can answer you saying sing on, sing on! Amergin can stand and command the waves with his art, why can't I? I am told it is a near impossible dream to make anything of my art, well I say I too am "Climber through the Needles Eye," (Michael Meade "Amergin and Cessair") This of course is where I draw the knowing looks and the comments from professors such as "I know, I was there once too," or "I can see the same starry eyed look I once had," in their best patronizing voice dripping with unspoken "you'll grow out of it." They see the clich1 and I see the warrior poet battling my modern enemies. Which might just be myself and my paranoid delusions that my professors are out to get me. I must wonder if Dylan Thomas ever had to deal with the same knowing smiles and half hidden snickers. Of course if he did those people would now be running to the nearest tabloid to say I knew him when. So get to know me now so you can make a buck or two in the following years.