Sherry Chandler

Journal mining

On this anniversary of passage of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,* I turn the page of my old journal to January 23, 1993, and find that I have made notes about Ursula K. Le Guin’s long essay called “The Fisherman’s Daughter,” in Dancing at the Edge of the World: Thoughts on Words, Women, Places (Grove Press, 1982). [Link is to a re-issue.]

I don’t remember reading this essay and yet, when I see the quotes I’ve written down, I think it must have had a considerable influence on my thinking. It’s the way we assimilate things I guess.

Take for example, this statement from Le Guin:

This sort of many namedness doesn’t happen to men; it’s inconvenient, and yet its very cumbersomeness reveals, perhaps, the being of a woman writer as not one simple thing — the author — but a multiple, complex process of being, with varous responsibilities, one of which is her writing. [p. 231]

And also this quote from Alicia Ostriker from Writing Like a Woman (Univ Michigan, 1983) as quoted by Le Guin:

“We think back through our mothers if we are women,” declares Virginia Woolf, but through whom can those who are themselves mothers . . . do their thinking?

Last year, I was moved to write a cycle of 17 acrostic poems based on the “maiden” names of my grandmothers, insofar as I could establish them, back to the eighteenth century. I thought at the time this was happenstance. I was looking to form to help me write voice poems (persona poems, dramatic monologues) about women who were part of Kentucky’s colonial, agrarian culture. I needed some way to find individual “voices” for these women about whom I knew very little. I tried one acrostic and I like the outcome, so I tried another, and then another.

Friends have asked me why I couldn’t just tell the stories. I gave reasons similar to those discussed by Ellen Bryant Voigt. But these names were important to me and I wonder whether my great desire to write poems based on the very names of my grandmothers may have been influenced by reading this essay sixteen years ago (sort of the amount of time it takes to raise a child, huh?

Speaking of which, Le Guin discusses the ideas of Carol Gilligan (In a Different Voice, Cambridge, 1982) that I know have influenced my thinking. It begins with this statement from Le Guin:

No book by a woman who had children has ever been included in that august list [i.e., the Canon of English literature]. [p. 222]

This may be in part because, according to Gilligan, men are brought up to think in terms of their rights, women in terms of their responsibilities. Men think hierarchically and women do not. Therefore, “Great Artist,” being a hierarchical concept, is not a feminine concept.

Then there is this fragment, taken a bit out of context, that expresses what you might call a female writer’s ethic:

Nobody lives in great isolation, nobody sacrifices human claims, nobody even scolds the baby. Nobody is going to put their head, or anybody else’s head, into an oven: not the mother, not the writer, not the daughter—these three and one who, being women do not separate creation and destruction into I create/you are destroyed, or vice versa. Who are responsible, take responsibility, for both the baby and the book. [p.231]

To which, in 1993, I have written this response:

If Ursula Le Guin doesn’t think this is artist as hero, what does she think a hero is? To take responsibility for anything is hard. To take responsibility for the baby is the most heroic act of all. To take responsibility for anybody else, even my own babies who I made, even my parents who made me, is the hardest thing I can do. It is nearly impossible. To take responsibility for the baby and the book, too — shit, that is superwoman.

I wish I were superwoman. But I am not.

To which Le Guin may have answered:

To have and bring up kids is to be about as immersed in life as one can be, but it does not follow that one drowns. A lot of us can swim. [p. 235]

So could I swim? Yes and no.

At the time I wrote this, my sons were about to turn 14. They were starting a high school career and needed a lot of attention. I also had a somewhat demanding full-time job. I had lost my father about 18 months before.

I was writing. I see poem drafts in this journal. But I wasn’t publishing much, and I didn’t produce anything that could be called a book until my children were nearly finished with college, more than ten years after this journal entry was written. Even now, I haven’t published a full-length book of poems.

So I don’t know. I’d say I didn’t so much swim as tread water.**

But I didn’t drown.
__________
By the way, considering my previous journal mining about Joan Didion, I was amused to find that I had written down a comment that Le Guin had made about The Book of the Dun Cow (which I never managed to finish):

Almost worse than Joan Didion. (I said almost.) [p. 254]

I also like and can identify with this line:

I did not know how to write about women because I thought what men had written about women was the truth. [p 234]

__________
*That odd word suffrage, is from the Latin suffragium meaning “support, vote, or right to vote.” It may look like suffer, as in “to tolerate or allow,” but it has a different root.

**I wonder whether one great argument in favor of academic careers for poets is that such careers allow women their best chance to have both the book and the baby.

Mr. Guthrie has a birthday

and besides it’s Bastille Day, so why not?

“from the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters” is somehow more poignant than it once was.

Here’s Arlo singing it with the Boston Pops, of all things.

And this version too.

Watchin the river flow

Wendell Berry Pulling his Personal Papers from the University of Kentucky

Wendell Berry, perhaps Kentucky’s best-known writer, is pulling many of his personal papers from the University of Kentucky’s archives to protest the naming of Wildcat Coal Lodge.

Berry excoriated his alma matter in a Dec. 20, 2009, letter, saying the decision to name a new dorm for UK basketball players the Wildcat Coal Lodge “puts an end” to his association with the university.

“The University’s president and board have solemnized an alliance with the coal industry, in return for a large monetary ‘gift,’ granting to the benefactors, in effect, a co-sponsorship of the University’s basketball team,” Berry wrote in the typewritten letter. “That — added to the ‘Top 20′ project and the president’s exclusive ‘focus’ on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — puts an end to my willingness to be associated in any way officially with the University.”

I like the statement made by Ernie Yanarell, an outgoing faculty trustee who was opposed to the name Wildcat Coal Lodge

Yanarella said UK violated its own regulations in naming the building. Coal is not a purpose or function of the lodge, Yanarella said, and hence is included in the name for no reason “other than promotional considerations for the Kentucky coal industry.”

From the New Southerner, an interview with Karen Spears Zacharias, author of Will Jesus Buy Me a Double-Wide: (‘Cause I Need More Room for My Plasma TV):

I didn’t write this book because I was offended by somebody. I wrote it because as a 14-year-old girl I had an encounter with the resurrected Christ. In that sacred moment there was no mention of money, no promise of riches, no assurances that my life would get better or that I would move on up to the big trailer soon.

There was just that moment of simple faith when I understood that no matter what, God would never leave nor forsake me. Best life now or worst life ever, He’s never going to abandon me. What concerns me about Golden Calf theology—this notion that God’s promise to us is to “prosper us”—is the exploitation of all things sacred. Corruption and greed have infiltrated the church. Indeed, there are plenty who would very articulately argue that it has always been a big problem for the church.

There was a time in America when the prosperity gospel was considered a fringe movement. Now the teachings are so mainstream they are taught from the pulpit of the largest church in America. That troubles me deeply.

David Cole on The Roberts Court’s Free Speech Problem:

In the Roberts Court’s world, corporations’ freedom to spend unlimited sums of money apparently deserves substantially greater protection than human rights advocates’ freedom to speak.

Via Marie Gauthier, University of Pittsburgh Press is having a half-price sale on their poetry list until August 1.

Also a mid-summer sale at Phoenicia Publishing.

And Salmon Publishing is offering free shipping on their catalogue. Salmon publilshes local poet Ron Houchen.

You never know how good a Dylan performance is until you hear some one else butcher his work. I was reminded of this the other day when I was looking for an acceptable YouTube version of “Watching the River Flow.” I didn’t find one, but I was fortunate enough to run across this. Man, it is clean, clean, clean.

The danger of poets

A bit ago I was discussing David Biespiel’s article descrying the fact that American poets don’t engage in politics. In response, Jeff Hess of Have Coffee, Will Write sent along this link to an article in The Independent, Two men the junta could not silence:

When Burmese authorities sentenced the popular comedian and artist Zarganar to spend 59 years in jail, they must have hoped to silence a man known for criticising the junta. Yet, though the man celebrated for his films, plays and poetry was dispatched to a jail far from his family’s home in Rangoon, it appears that life behind bars has not reduced either his creative powers or his willingness to speak out.

In recent weeks, a newly crafted poem – brief but powerful – has been smuggled out of jail and passed to friends of the 49-year-old artist. It reads:

“It’s lucky my forehead is flat
Since my arm must often rest there
Beneath it shines a light I must invite
From a moon I cannot see
In Myitkyina.”

The poem, which hints at the hardships endured by prisoners in Myitkyina jail in the far north of Burma, was received by Zarganar’s friend Htein Lin. The Burmese artist, a former political prisoner who now lives in the UK, not only translated the poem into English with the help of his British wife, but also produced a compelling illustration to accompany his friend’s lines. The striking image suggests his friend at the bars of his jail cell, his head pressed into his forearms. It is set against a backdrop of hands, reaching upwards.

Jeff is very interested in the question of Burma/Myanmar and has been blogging about it regularly for a long time. He says:

I don’t think the challenge in America is that our poets don’t engage in civil discourse. I think the challenge is that our general population simply can’t be bothered to read poetry.

I notice that Zargana is also a comedian, so that I wonder whether his function is more like that of Jon Stewart than John Ashbery. Or perhaps like Stephen Colbert, who will stoop to having poets on the Colbert Report.

Fifty-nine years is a long time. I wonder how many American poets would be willing to risk that.

Poets for the Living Waters

Via Rocket Kids, Poets for the Living Waters Call for Work — Gulf Coast Poems:

Call for Work – Gulf Coast Poems Poets for Living Waters is a poetry action in response to the Gulf Oil Disaster of April 20, 2010, one of the most profound man-made ecological catastrophes in history.

The first law of ecology states that everything is connected to everything else. An appreciation of this systemic connectivity suggests a wide range of poetry will offer a meaningful response to the current crisis, including work that harkens back to Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing regional effects.

Please submit 1-3 poems, a short bio, and credits for any previously published submissions to:
poetsforlivingwaters@yahoo.com

So far they have poems up by Franz Wright, Evie Shockley, Bill Marsh, and Kate Schapira. Company’s good.

Meanwhile, via Tamiko Beyer at the Kenyon Review blog, David Biespiel writes about poets and politics:

America’s poets have a minimal presence in American civic discourse and a minuscule public role in the life of American democracy. I find this condition perplexing and troubling—both for poetry and for democracy. Because when I look at American poetry from the perspective of a fellow traveler, I see an art invested in various complex, fascinating, historical, and sometimes shop-worn literary debates. I see a twenty-first-century enterprise that’s thriving in the off-the-beaten-track corners of the nation’s cities and college towns. But at the same time that poetry’s various coteries are consumed with art-affirming debates over poetics and styles, American poetry and America’s poets remain amazingly inconsequential to the rest of the nation’s civic, democratic, political, and public life.

This divide between poet and civic life is bad for American poetry and bad for America, too.

This almost seems like a blame-the-victim article to me. As I think I’ve said before here, poets are like every other kind of protester (who isn’t a teabagger) in this country. They’ve been confined to a “free speech zone” and marginalized. The American political powers that be have realized that marginalization works better than suppression. Don’t fight the press, embed it. Don’t use water cannons on the protesters, let them holler themselves hoarse over in the little protesters ghetto. As Tamiko points out,

I find it ironic that Biespiel is, himself seemingly too insulated in his own poetry world to recognize the work of established poets such as Myung Mi Kim, the late June Jordan, Martín Espada, Patricia Smith, Joy Harjo, and Juliana Spahr (yes, mostly women and people of color). Not to mention the rich, exciting work of emerging poets who are unabashedly and unapologetically engaging in the poetics of politics – poets such as Craig Santos Perez, Ching-In Chen, Tara Betts are just a few that immediately come to mind.

. . .

The fact that Biespiel is not aware of – or perhaps does not count – these poets actually proves his point, I think. The truth is, poetry that actively seeks to engage in political dialog is unarguably marginalized by the gatekeepers and tastemakers of the literary establishment (who are, for the most part, white and male).

The question really is not “why aren’t poets more politically active?” as per the headline on the Huffington Post. There are plenty of great poets who are politically active both in their daily life and in their work. The question is “why are politically active poets not more widely recognized and appreciated?”

Anybody got an answer?

I think that we’re back to a question that keeps arising here — is there a way to use the internet to subvert the gatekeepers? Are the tastemakers still in control?

Stuff # 9

Jeff Hess reminds me that it’s Towel Day.

I See Invisible People gives us the quote of the day

“Sometimes I just don’t get Sarah Palin. She sleeps with a guy who worked for BP for eighteen years but accuses Obama of being in bed with big oil. Go figure.”

Which quote comes from here.

Fragments from Floyd envisions a day when we’ll be able to send one another smells via smart phone. I’m not sure I look forward to that.

Over at NY Review of Books, Robert Gottlieb reviews several biographies of Charles Dickens, new and old.

There are a few writers whose lives and personalities are so large, so fascinating, that there’s no such thing as a boring biography of them—you can read every new one that comes along, good or bad, and be caught up in the story all over again. I’ve never encountered a life of the Brontës, of Dr. Johnson, of Byron that didn’t grip me.

Another such character is Charles Dickens.

And I just discovered that, if I search myself on Google Books, my two chaps are listed but have not been scanned. Anybody who would like to go on over there and add a review, I’d be grateful. What also shows up is my poem in the nth position anthology, In the Criminal’s Cabinet. I wrote a letter to the editor of Poets & Writers once, too, that shows up in the search but you can’t read it. Several Sherry Chandlers who obviously are not me also show up, as for example, the one in the Who’s Who in Finance and Banking.

Stuff # 8

Lance Mannion asks What hath Reagan wrought?

. . . the economy has come to depend on two contradictory, stinking processes.

The first is that most American workers have to be paid shit to do jobs they hate but are terrified of losing with minimal benefits and no hope of raises or bonuses or advancement or a secure retirement.

The second is that American consumers have to spend more and more every year not just on the goods and services they need but on useless crap they don’t need, don’t really want, and can’t really afford.

By the way, I include among the useless crap they don’t need, don’t really want, and cant’ really afford big houses on an acre of land in suburbs more than a gallon of gas’s drive to and from anyplace they need to be.

Since I’m about to blame Ronald Reagan for everything that’s wrong with the economy and the American Dream of owning a big house on an acre of land in a suburb several gallons of gas away from everyplace people need to be began in earnest just after World War II when Reagan was still a New Deal Democrat, I should explain why I’m also blaming him for this. And I’ll do that in another post. But for now I can sum it up in three letters—S-U-V.

Meanwhile, writing about The Tea Party Jacobins in The NY Review of Books, Mark Lilla says:

The Reagan revolution was a success, in the sense that it shifted political attention in this country from social equality to economic growth. But like all revolutions that achieve their aims, it is now a spent force.

What then is going on? Something pretty unsettling:

A new strain of populism is metastasizing before our eyes, nourished by the same libertarian impulses that have unsettled American society for half a century now. Anarchistic like the Sixties, selfish like the Eighties, contradicting neither, it is estranged, aimless, and as juvenile as our new century. It appeals to petulant individuals convinced that they can do everything themselves if they are only left alone, and that others are conspiring to keep them from doing just that. This is the one threat that will bring Americans into the streets.

Welcome to the politics of the libertarian mob.

I found this analysis of our current situation thought-provoking in that it made me step back from my own particular prejudices and look at the Tea Party thing — and in fact our whole current political situation — in a slightly different light.

I recommend that you read it.

To pontificate a little, while Rand-Paul bashing is fun, I worry that those of us on the liberal side have too much of a tendency to strike the obvious target, the one that lets us divide ourselves into us good guys and them bad guys. Not saying that Paul is anything but a political opportunist. Just that, like Sarah Palin, he gets way too much attention for what he’s accomplished.

As Lilla says,

We know that the country is divided today, because people say it is divided. In politics, thinking makes it so.

Meanwhile, the modern alchemists of the DNA map have managed to scare me more than Rand Paul: Scientists Create Synthetic Organism

Created at a cost of $40 million, this experimental one-cell organism, which can reproduce, opens the way to the manipulation of life on a previously unattainable scale, several researchers and ethics experts said

But it’s okay. The House is going to hold hearings. They’ll make sure we’re safe.

Here’s from The Guardian:

Craig Venter, the pioneering US geneticist behind the experiment, said the achievement heralds the dawn of a new era in which new life is made to benefit humanity, starting with bacteria that churn out biofuels, soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and even manufacture vaccines.

Somebody send this man a copy of Frankenstein.

From scientists playing God, the God himself — in the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik has written a long review of several books about the historical Jesus: What Did Jesus Do?. I read the article with great interest because I’m fascinated by Jesus scholarship. What I want to pass on here, though, is this rather fascinating passage on the nature of myth-making:

Malcolm X was the very model of a modern apocalyptic prophet-politician, unambiguously preaching violence and a doctrine of millennial revenge, all fuelled by a set of cult beliefs—a hovering U.F.O., a strange racial myth. But Malcolm was also a community builder, a moral reformer (genuinely distraught over the sexual sins of his leader), who refused to carry weapons, and who ended, within the constraints of his faith, as some kind of universalist. When he was martyred, he was called a prophet of hate; within three decades of his death—about the time that separates the Gospels from Jesus—he could be the cover subject of a liberal humanist magazine like this one. One can even see how martyrdom and “beatification” draws out more personal detail, almost perfectly on schedule: Alex Haley, Malcolm’s Paul, is long on doctrine and short on details; thirty years on, Spike Lee, his Mark, has a full role for a wife and children, and a universalist message that manages to blend Malcolm into Mandela. (As if to prove this point, just the other week came news of suppressed chapters of Haley’s “Autobiography,” which, according to Malcolm’s daughter, “showed too much of my father’s humanity.”)