This is a test

This is a test.
It is only a test.
If it were anything other than a test
there would be a poem here
or something else.
A bird maybe,
or an old t-shirt that’s been through the wash
too many times.
Perhaps an old boyfriend,
or a picture taken the day
you returned from the war.
But it’s just a test – nothing more.

 

Emergency Poem

for Kim Wyatt

You asked me about the poem
that I keep in my pocket
in case of emergency.
In it you’ll find long days
filled with sunlight
and the laughter of children
playing after-dinner games.
And because I am an American poet,
my poem has a jazz line,
smooth, soft tones played on a sax,
blades of grass, a white cotton dress,
and a dragon named Custard.

You might think all that would be enough
but it’s a large pocket
so there’s room in my poem
for a thunderstorm, clean sheets,
and a good book;
for the voice of an old friend
on the telephone
(I won’t tell you which one);
for my husband’s kiss
on the back of my neck;
for the moment I began to like myself.

At the bottom of my pocket
among the lint and dog hair
is a final octet that alludes to
all manner of wild things:
Mary Oliver’s geese,
three sisters at their cauldron,
a girl called Scout,
and a boy named Max.

 

Pairing

God gave us laughter
To wash away grief, to prove
We are not alone.

Please don’t take this for
Anything but the plain truth:
I miss you dearly.

 

My lungs are at war

with my body.
My capillaries beg for air
from alveoli held captive
by their own host.

My lungs arm themselves
against me,
they treat even the most
honored guest
with ill grace and suspicion.
They trust nothing and no one,
have very poor manners,
cheat at cards,
stare indecently
at women in short skirts.
Their favorite writer
is John LeCarre.

My lungs defy my body,
treat the most benign stranger
as the infidel,
scream for more air,
more medicine, more
attention, power, money,

my lungs, my terrorists.

 

Slightly obsessed with Wallace Stevens

Like many poets, I have a slight obsession with Wallace Stevens. I blame my fanaticism, in part, on Mr. Stevens himself, but also on the obsessions of several of my teachers; they have successfully shared their enthusiasms with me.

So I include a Stevens-ian poem, for those of you who’ve bothered to drop by, wondering if there’s anything new lately…..

 

 

One of the thin men of

Haddam came today

For tea, dressed in

Jewel-encrusted robes,

Carrying eucalyptus

For a hostess gift.

Just as he sat down

I caught a glimpse

Of his golden slipper,

Its luminous silk

Tattered and frayed.

These long days,

Poverty encroaches

On us all.

 

Currently reading….

…I’ve neglected this blog and my own writing…not a good thing to get out of good habits!

SO, to get back in good habits I picked up a book of essays and a book of flash fiction, thinking that by reading things that require a short time committment, I might get back on track. Part of the problem is that I get paid to read and edit, so my tolerance for reading in my off time has been low.

I picked up a copy of Vintage Didion, a collection of essays by Joan Didion that spans a 20 year time period, and Long Story Short, a collection of flash fiction by NC’s finest writers.

Re: Vintage Didion: Don’t expect the same heartwrenching experience that you got from Year of Magical Thinking (if you read that). But do expect the same clarity of language and observations that are distinctly Didion.

In Long Story Short, so far my favorite short is Orson Scott Card’s “Emperoror of the Air”….Lovely, lovely, language.

 

Really great literary journal

EDGE, published annually by the Lake Tahoe Writing Club, is a collection of fiction, poetry, and art, mostly by Tahoe area folk, but not exclusively. This is a WONDERFUL journal. It is an eclectic mix of competent, meaningful, daring, accessible works. It’s in print only, but follow the link below if you want to send $ and order a copy.

http://www.laketahoewritingclub.com/EDGE2009.html

 

Two online lit journals that I like…

…well, OK, admittedly I have never actually READ any of the fiction or poetry within the pages of the online journal, the Dead Mule School of Literature, at www.deadmule.com.  That’s because I cannot get past the Southern Legitimacy statements that authors/poets provide in lieu of bios. These are completely and utterly entertaining, if not always fascinating.

A journal I HAVE actually read is Prick of the Spindle, www.prickofthespindle.com, and I highly recommend Margaret Adcock’s poem “Making Sense,” which is currently appearing there.

 

Various thoughts

Difficult father’s day today, this being my husband’s first father’s day without his Dad. Quiet day. I am re-reading John LeCarre’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy – one of  my favorite novels ever. I had forgotten LeCarre’s melancholia – or Smiley’s, rather. But that sense of inexorable loneliness is part of the spy character. Not in the same league in terms of literature, but Daniel Silva’s The Confessor, which features the Israeli assassin who’s cover is a master art restorer, is an excellent read.

 

Just a few feminist thoughts….

Recently a female family member who is a novice college professor asked me “What about Joan Didion and Susan Sontag makes them political writers? Why would their articles be featured in the New York Times and similar venues? They’re novelists….”

 

What she, a college professor, was really asking is this:  Why does feminist political thought outside academia matter? Why would one read political articles by someone who doesn’t have the right qualifications?

 

With the exception of the community colleges, only in the last 20 years has academia of the US embraced women in the ivory tower. Even today women in academia risk being marginalized through their use of a language that was created by and for the benefit of its own predominantly male membership; a language which Adrienne Rich might term “the oppressor’s language;” a language which still enjoys wide use in the halls of America’s intelligentsia.

 

It is precisely because women could not speak from the pulpits of the ivory tower that intelligent, well-educated women like Didion, Sontag, Steinem and Smeal (herself a Duke graduate) sought other platforms (for Didion and Sontag these included the New York Times, Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books) and even created platforms of their own (for Steinem and, later, Smeal, Ms. Magazine). These women wanted to speak to other well-educated women who were trying to improve the world, to work and be paid fairly for their work, to live, love, and parent. To do that, they needed to address those women through the venues to which those women had access, not through the frosty windows of the ivory tower. Women of all ages all over the country read Didion and Sontag and the rest, and continued on difficult paths because they were inspired. Some of those women raised daughters who would later become journalists, professors, CEOs, pastors, doctors, and more.

 

These powerfully voiced women have a number of things to teach women of today, but their two most important points are these:

1. Women must continue to create their own speaking platforms and reject as corrupt those platforms that refuse to consider the voices of women. These women and their work continue to emphasize this point (directly or indirectly) despite the ascent of brilliant women academics at any number of universities because
2. Most women today still do not have access to the feminist political voices of academia, regardless of whether or not these voices are female. Indeed the New York Times and its peers are outside the reading ability of many women. As a result, a new source of feminine power has arisen: Anything Oprah, and all of its spin-offs.  These media speak to MANY women’s interests and issues overall, and are of greater value to women in their every day lives than any publication coming out of any university today.

 

Feminist political thought is useless if it goes unheard by other women. The pre-eminent example of this is Michelle Obama, arguably today’s most important and influential feminist. Mrs. Obama goes out and speaks the truth of feminist power to those who need to hear it the most, not to those who’ve already drunk the kool-aid: young women living in the inner cities who think they have no power over their own lives. Mrs. Obama uses her fashion sense and beauty to manipulate the mainstream media’s interest in her to advance her critical, even life-saving agenda in order to increase exponentially the number of women and young girls who have access to it. She more than anyone else proves that feminist political thought, women’s political thought, belongs to women wherever they may be, not in the corridors of academia.