Sherry Chandler

The induction ceremony for the 2005-2006 Kentucky Poet Laureate, Sena Jeter Naslund, will be held at the Louisville Free Public Library on April 15.

I was raised a Southern Baptist and, before everybody starts to boo and hiss, all I want to say here is that the Pope has always been pretty irrelevent to any religious life I may have had both in and out of any church. Baptists (are supposed to) have only one doctrine – that no one stands between the individual human being and God (and that includes the Southern Baptist Convention). So I took that in with my baby formula and, for good or ill, it informs the way I live my life today.

But John Paul II has been a difficult Pope to ignore, and I can’t help but notice that during this week when his dying and his death have been the only news there is, that the American right has pretty much claimed him as an ally. I don’t think Karol Wojtyla was that easy. For a (long) look at another side of John Paul II – the side that opposed the death penalty and the war in Iraq, the side that found laissez-faire capitolism as evil as Stalinism – I recommend this article by Juan Cole at Informed Comment.

Joanie DiMartino, another feminine and feminist poet I met in Jim Hall’s 2000 master poet workshop, is also a historian. Her day job is Adult Programs Coordinator at the Kentucky History Center. Joanie is a fellow member of Mosaic and is currently exhibiting a holographic poem, “Carousel in Winter,” at the Sideshow exhibit at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning for which there is a companion painting by Jill Plaisted.

Joanie’s poems, naturally, have a strong historical theme, often emphasizing the women’s perspective. “Anne of Bohemia Invents the Sidesaddle” is one of my favorites. I use it in my workshop on ekphrastic poetry because the visuals are so strong. You can just see the painting this poem was written from. But there is no painting (the graphic here is from a tapestry called Tres Riches Heures de Duc de Berry). The poem was written from a note in a timeline at the International Museum of the Horse at the Kentucky Horse Park.

Anne of Bohemia (1355 - 1394 ) came to England in 1381 to be married to Richard II in 1382. She was a popular queen of an unpopular king but she did not have issue. The heirless Richard was forced to abdicate by Bolingbroke (Henry IV) in 1399 and died, probably of starvation, in the Tower of London in 1400, the same year Geoffrey Chaucer disappeared. Anne did invent or at least popularize the sidesaddle in England. Before that women rode pillion behind men, sometimes astride in split skirts. “Anne of Bohemia Invents the Sidesaddle” was originally published in Wicked Alice poetry journal.

Anne of Bohemia Invents the Sidesaddle

With closed thighs Anne prepares
to enter London.

In poised witchery,
she floats atop her gelding:

twisted regal at the torso,
feet demure inside her shoes
on the oak planche.

Anne balances in a mild chair
with brocade skirts fanned over her knees
and red ribbons
glimmering in late morning.

A Queen-to-be is never spread
astride, her robes
rimpled or wrinkled,
calves pressed
against a horse: shivering,
sweating.

London perches
in the distance; its citizens
not meant to glimpse Anne’s legs,

from between which England’s heir
will emerge.