Or, what would Phillys Schlafly do?
Obviously, she would arm wrestle Alice Notley. Alice of course would win because Alice could convince everyone that she had.
In a nutshell.
This relates to things having to do with evolution and the Scopes Trial and many a detail in the Piltdown Man syndrome of society. Evolution, feminism, global warming...all have something in common. They are commodities. Some parts of those doctrines are traded on the stock exchanges of the world. They can be manipulated using a variety of techniques that some might refer to as brain-washing. The Piltdown Man is a great example of how human beings took a few bone parts, painted them alot of weird colors and the discovery dominated science for nearly two generations before being discovered for what it really was and that was, a creation created by guilty, self loving men and women who were just threatened enough by certain other doctrines, to literally falsify the evidence.
William Jennings Bryan died because of such astounding mis-construed histories composed of the collision between religious ignorance and religious intolerance (of both types, pro and con). I think he died of a broken heart and spirit. He died of mockery and public shame. To me, there is no better analogy than that to illustrate the way in which we in the West view our past and integrate it into our present in order to use it for the future. The dangerous notion with that is, we have the power to oppress those who disagree with our policies and with our intentions i.e. for the good of all mankind (somehow or another). That our (and I use that term loosely) basis for contention is wholly misguided creates a threat to world peace and if a person didn't know that yet, they should know that now on this horizon of war and conclusion of war. Could go either way you know, nothing is ever for certain.
The commodity of feminism cannot be denied. It is a collection of solicitations from both sides that pulls at women every day. It is the notion of being "with us or against us". Or, as is the case with an increasingly castrated society of men, we'll just kill and maim women instead of taking sides. We'll get rid of the problem and that problem is women in general. Talk back women and sage women like Alice Notley (whether she is or isn't), pretty women and women for hire, High Toned Old Christian Women:
"This will make widows wince. But fictive things
Wink as they will. Wink most when widows wince."
Thank you Wallace, I adore you but all the same, it isn't nice to say such things about us. It isn't like you i.e. evolved and important men who break language barriers through which darlings like Alice and I can wander.
I wonder, am I an high toned old muslim woman? What must that sound like to those accustomed to such established poets and men of greatness like the honorable Wallace Stevens?
It sounds a bit like a roar but in a whisper. It is a highly intelligent view and not many around this place (the West) can comprehend it just yet because they have been rendered deaf by the high toned Christian-ness and Anti-Christian-ness of folks from Stevens to Schlafly.
Thursday, December 25, 2008
How Important Are Poets Afterall
My husband doesn't think so but all the same, he has trended over the twenty-seven years I have known him towards supporting what I am called to do. It wasn't always so and in fact, he woke me up to a startling conclusion about art in general very early on. He dismissed the idea that I was somehow special or knew special things that set me apart and literally, above, others.
It was clear and simple to him and now that I understand him, I have to agree. I didn't agree then and it put a wedge between us for many years. My kidnapper was an artist and a pretty good one albeit, a lazy one. Therefore, my husband's assumption about it, made when he was merely a boy (who originated from peasants in another country, the fellahin) wasn't based on his knowledge about art or artists, but it was a type of jealousy that I didn't understand then. My self esteem was so low that it never even occurred to me that someone might be jealous on my behalf. I was the jealous one I thought.
He was jealous of a ghost that simply wouldn't go live in his netherworld. He was jealous of a crime and a sin that masqueraded as a love affair. Most of all, he knew he had hold of a person who was beautiful and naive, wise beyond all possibility and flukishly so and he knew our marriage was completely out of his ordinary. Not mine of course because I was trending towards being a gypsy anyway. My particular wisdom always was a wisdom. It was bred of the communication of my mother's way of thinking, the Catholic church and my chubby, impoverished childhood. I understood people. I loved people and animals and had a tremendous ability to tolerate defficiency of means and looks, and very little ability to tolerate arrogance and cruelty. I was always the consummate underdog. Still am. Perhaps the reader will at once recognize what I recognized much later on in the story and that is, I was born a Shia. I just didn't know it but luckily, I recognized it just in time. Just in time to hope to make some sense of it to the world which is still in a drowsy and disillusioned state. Still ignorant of the inherent laws of the Creator and how that matters whether one knows it or not or agrees to it.
What would Alice do?
She would have left the situation because it seems to me that whatever Alice doesn't agree with, she leaves aside or behind. I don't know her perhaps, not well enough to say that, but the way she communicates her core beliefs leads me to believe that she would be smarter than to let some dumb guy hold her back. It is a feminist rationale in my opinion. Free the whales, global warming and the inherent laws of feminism that make it essential that a poet have a gender from which to speak.
What does that mean? I'll tell you.
When I began writing poetry in earnest...I say in earnest because I've written poems for more than a quarter century but not like I've written them in the past ten or so years....I knew right away that in order to succeed, a woman could choose a variety of paths. Competing with the menfolk, agreeing with the menfolk, abusing the menfolk, appealing in a sexual way to the menfolk, write only for women or simply close one's eyes to the fact that being a woman stipulates that they are using one of those tactics. In short, I resisted being a feminist and lo! my first actual published poem was published in one of the most feminist of all the ezines during that era. Hurly Gurly of Lunatic Park and the professor soandso poem in which I cite a fake speech given by a fake professor who comments on feminism. I couldn't help but supress my disappointment that the best I could do was a feminist journal. I also harbored a secret criticism of the editor who had selected the poem, that she missed the fact that the word "itch" could mean (to an unfriendly reader) a state of being infected with yeast organisms below in the girl parts of the body. Hurly Gurly though, isn't as self conscious as me apparently.
What is feminism exactly? I have my theories you know, as a muslima. In my estimation and because of my marital history and mostly my in depth study of the Quran, feminism is the unavoidable state of society in which women take control because men are failing in their role as designated leaders. I know this from my own experience as well as having been a witness to society for a certain period of time and in various cultural mileaus. Men are designated by Allah to execute and lead anyone in their care towards pious, knowledgable submission to inherent laws that we cannot change and ought not to ignore. One could say that in the field of poetry, poets like Alice Notley not only deserve praise but would be hard pressed to avoid it because their male counterparts are failing to produce work that makes a difference either historically or currently. Ignoring these laws (and feminism would arch her eyebrows and smack me in the face parts to hear this) doesn't give success to either side, male or female. It simply turns into a never-ending power struggle i.e. the gender gap and gender war we are all so accustomed to dealing with in political speeches (Sarah Palin to Hilary Clinton) and in our daily lives. It is an unresolved tug o'war that has turned not only nasty, but violent (especially in the West).
My husband doesn't think so but all the same, he has trended over the twenty-seven years I have known him towards supporting what I am called to do. It wasn't always so and in fact, he woke me up to a startling conclusion about art in general very early on. He dismissed the idea that I was somehow special or knew special things that set me apart and literally, above, others.
It was clear and simple to him and now that I understand him, I have to agree. I didn't agree then and it put a wedge between us for many years. My kidnapper was an artist and a pretty good one albeit, a lazy one. Therefore, my husband's assumption about it, made when he was merely a boy (who originated from peasants in another country, the fellahin) wasn't based on his knowledge about art or artists, but it was a type of jealousy that I didn't understand then. My self esteem was so low that it never even occurred to me that someone might be jealous on my behalf. I was the jealous one I thought.
He was jealous of a ghost that simply wouldn't go live in his netherworld. He was jealous of a crime and a sin that masqueraded as a love affair. Most of all, he knew he had hold of a person who was beautiful and naive, wise beyond all possibility and flukishly so and he knew our marriage was completely out of his ordinary. Not mine of course because I was trending towards being a gypsy anyway. My particular wisdom always was a wisdom. It was bred of the communication of my mother's way of thinking, the Catholic church and my chubby, impoverished childhood. I understood people. I loved people and animals and had a tremendous ability to tolerate defficiency of means and looks, and very little ability to tolerate arrogance and cruelty. I was always the consummate underdog. Still am. Perhaps the reader will at once recognize what I recognized much later on in the story and that is, I was born a Shia. I just didn't know it but luckily, I recognized it just in time. Just in time to hope to make some sense of it to the world which is still in a drowsy and disillusioned state. Still ignorant of the inherent laws of the Creator and how that matters whether one knows it or not or agrees to it.
What would Alice do?
She would have left the situation because it seems to me that whatever Alice doesn't agree with, she leaves aside or behind. I don't know her perhaps, not well enough to say that, but the way she communicates her core beliefs leads me to believe that she would be smarter than to let some dumb guy hold her back. It is a feminist rationale in my opinion. Free the whales, global warming and the inherent laws of feminism that make it essential that a poet have a gender from which to speak.
What does that mean? I'll tell you.
When I began writing poetry in earnest...I say in earnest because I've written poems for more than a quarter century but not like I've written them in the past ten or so years....I knew right away that in order to succeed, a woman could choose a variety of paths. Competing with the menfolk, agreeing with the menfolk, abusing the menfolk, appealing in a sexual way to the menfolk, write only for women or simply close one's eyes to the fact that being a woman stipulates that they are using one of those tactics. In short, I resisted being a feminist and lo! my first actual published poem was published in one of the most feminist of all the ezines during that era. Hurly Gurly of Lunatic Park and the professor soandso poem in which I cite a fake speech given by a fake professor who comments on feminism. I couldn't help but supress my disappointment that the best I could do was a feminist journal. I also harbored a secret criticism of the editor who had selected the poem, that she missed the fact that the word "itch" could mean (to an unfriendly reader) a state of being infected with yeast organisms below in the girl parts of the body. Hurly Gurly though, isn't as self conscious as me apparently.
What is feminism exactly? I have my theories you know, as a muslima. In my estimation and because of my marital history and mostly my in depth study of the Quran, feminism is the unavoidable state of society in which women take control because men are failing in their role as designated leaders. I know this from my own experience as well as having been a witness to society for a certain period of time and in various cultural mileaus. Men are designated by Allah to execute and lead anyone in their care towards pious, knowledgable submission to inherent laws that we cannot change and ought not to ignore. One could say that in the field of poetry, poets like Alice Notley not only deserve praise but would be hard pressed to avoid it because their male counterparts are failing to produce work that makes a difference either historically or currently. Ignoring these laws (and feminism would arch her eyebrows and smack me in the face parts to hear this) doesn't give success to either side, male or female. It simply turns into a never-ending power struggle i.e. the gender gap and gender war we are all so accustomed to dealing with in political speeches (Sarah Palin to Hilary Clinton) and in our daily lives. It is an unresolved tug o'war that has turned not only nasty, but violent (especially in the West).
In the Beginning
Not really. Actually, somewhere in the late middle when I started wanting to begin it.
I was born...no, no. That won't do. I was reading one of the many, many self-concerned explanations of Alice Notley...one of her more recent ones about how she is intolerant of religion and loitering in the land of the mourning wives of famous poets club...and as is the usual...as it is for anyone given to any amount of thinking about oneself and the world...I thought about who I have known the best in my years on the planet. It isn't me of course. It is the man I married. Just like Alice Notley, I married a person who had a great deal to do with who I've become.
He is a most ordinary man if you ask him. Simple minded and we call him the Savant. He has hardly read any poetry and hardly reads mine at all. He wouldn't know how to. Says alot about people and he represents alot of them. Of our most tender moments were those when he used to read Adonis to me and translate it into English from the Arab News in Riyadh.
Everyone loves him but about that, I am a bit suspicious. He is incredibly facile at control and domination. It is as if he is oblivious to the presence of others...he just ignores what doesn't suit him and in that way, he manages to dominate most situations. He admits to using strategies in that and therefore, my suspicion about the meaning of this love everyone has for him is confirmed.
He leaves them no choice but to love him. The craziest thing about that is...it works. I've loved him for a very long time now and as well, admitted long ago that to live without his presence in my life would be like a death. Perhaps Alice isn't full of hot air afterall.
I had a life before him. I had quite a life before him I should say. I cannot go into detail about it other than to say that if anyone I am acquainted with now were to go into certain circles in this old artsy fartsy town...they could ask about me and would hear about the myth of my life before him. They wouldn't hear about the actual childhood parts, those precious parts in the photos taken with the old Brownie Box camera. A small girl (a friend of mine) posed for me and was sniffing lilacs or some other flowery delicacy. I must say all at once that I'm relatively sure no one had a childhood as grand as mine was. It was loaded with material. Some of that material is found in my work..mostly in the Odes.
He insists that he met me under a tree. I'm not sure of that. We slept together about a week or two after we met. I admitted I loved him on that day. He was startled and returned the favor but clearly, neither of us knew what we were saying let alone, what we were doing. We were married exactly six weeks after our first encounter. I could not question the intuition I had that he was my husband. I simply agreed and we took care of that matter right away. There is an amusing story that goes with that...the arrest and overnight stay in the county jail, the wedding which is connected to that stay and the beginning of my long lived adultery in absentia.
It is a long story that one..perhaps someone else will tell it or perhaps it will become obvious once this memoir gets going. I don't like to think of it as a formative experience because it wasn't. It was an obstacle to my delivery from it. Does that make sense? I didn't understand myself then but I understand it all now, just hate to talk too much about it because I do not want to give it any power in my life. It already took enough away from me before. I guess some people would say that it was a love affair. Many might say that. I say it was a serial rape that lasted nearly two years before my husband and I married. Okay...I'll synopsize here: Lolita.
In fact, much of my earlier writing dealt with that mysterious situation. I've come to realize now that it wasn't so much a mystery. It is the case however that as people go through the events in their life, it is only with a certain amount of age can they begin to see things for what they really were. That some would analyse the situation differently...those that witnessed or took part in that episode...well. Tells you that the illusion was a profound one and my kidnapper was very good at his specialty. He convinced alot of people to believe something was what it wasn't. Perhaps, like HH in the novel, he even convinced himself. You have to love what you are doing you know, to do it.
But why this focus on Alice Notley one might ask. It's not so hard to understand. It is an old illusion of mine that a great poet such as herself actually has something to do with me. Such as herself meaning, few poets have gone on record so deeply or at such length as Ms. Notley and I say that with tremendous respect for her ambition in that regard, about how marriage, feminism, war, poverty have affected them. The "I" in Alice Notley is certainly a very big "I". She was born in the same place as I was although she didn't spend much time here. She was born a day apart (and several years) as me. She spent more than a quarter of her adult years away from the United States. So did I. And she writes poems. And she remembers certain things about ditches and cheap drugstore perfumes like Cachet that could be found in the shops of "our time". She wrote once of topaz, our birthstone. The idea of all of that kept me alive for quite some time when it was that my poetry began to predominate in my life but in no one else's. I owe her a great deal for that one and perhaps one day, I can return the favor to some other poor sod who thinks poetry is a great big deal and they are lonely in that assumption.
And then one day, I actually met her. It was destiny you know. She was scheduled to read up in Tucson. My sister and I were making plans to attend the reading but somehow the plans fell apart and the day before it was to happen, it just evaporated. I knew I was supposed to meet her and then all of a sudden, I couldn't. It made me slightly miserable. I passed by the post office that day and took a few moments to read the notices that are there on a board outside by the bench. And voila! Alice was returning to town that very evening for a reading at the Central School.
She read that night and was mildly entertaining and it seemed to me, a bit nervous and dissociated. I'd say, she is an introvert but if I was feeling ornery, I would say she was a bit snobby. Either way, I imagine I am wrong. Fact of the matter was, she couldn't possibly know how destiny had intervened in her reading and my attendance any more than I could explain it and make it somehow sensible.
The point that I'm getting to here has to do with a core philosophy in her work, one that has resonated with so many women and especially with female poets. It is called feminism. Not that she would call herself a feminist because most likely, she wouldn't. She often says things that lead a reader to believe however that she is one. She views her presence in the hall of fame of poetry as a sentinel event in the history of female poets and poetry.
So do I. I am a sentinel event. I knew that just as much as I knew that one day, I would have to meet Alice Notley in order to exorcise her from my spirit. I am an American Shia female poet. Not many of us at all out there. Some struggling ones for sure and in future generations there will be more of us but no doubt about it, I'm one of the first.
Insert here "Irish Muslim 'lasses from the passes"
I was born...no, no. That won't do. I was reading one of the many, many self-concerned explanations of Alice Notley...one of her more recent ones about how she is intolerant of religion and loitering in the land of the mourning wives of famous poets club...and as is the usual...as it is for anyone given to any amount of thinking about oneself and the world...I thought about who I have known the best in my years on the planet. It isn't me of course. It is the man I married. Just like Alice Notley, I married a person who had a great deal to do with who I've become.
He is a most ordinary man if you ask him. Simple minded and we call him the Savant. He has hardly read any poetry and hardly reads mine at all. He wouldn't know how to. Says alot about people and he represents alot of them. Of our most tender moments were those when he used to read Adonis to me and translate it into English from the Arab News in Riyadh.
Everyone loves him but about that, I am a bit suspicious. He is incredibly facile at control and domination. It is as if he is oblivious to the presence of others...he just ignores what doesn't suit him and in that way, he manages to dominate most situations. He admits to using strategies in that and therefore, my suspicion about the meaning of this love everyone has for him is confirmed.
He leaves them no choice but to love him. The craziest thing about that is...it works. I've loved him for a very long time now and as well, admitted long ago that to live without his presence in my life would be like a death. Perhaps Alice isn't full of hot air afterall.
I had a life before him. I had quite a life before him I should say. I cannot go into detail about it other than to say that if anyone I am acquainted with now were to go into certain circles in this old artsy fartsy town...they could ask about me and would hear about the myth of my life before him. They wouldn't hear about the actual childhood parts, those precious parts in the photos taken with the old Brownie Box camera. A small girl (a friend of mine) posed for me and was sniffing lilacs or some other flowery delicacy. I must say all at once that I'm relatively sure no one had a childhood as grand as mine was. It was loaded with material. Some of that material is found in my work..mostly in the Odes.
He insists that he met me under a tree. I'm not sure of that. We slept together about a week or two after we met. I admitted I loved him on that day. He was startled and returned the favor but clearly, neither of us knew what we were saying let alone, what we were doing. We were married exactly six weeks after our first encounter. I could not question the intuition I had that he was my husband. I simply agreed and we took care of that matter right away. There is an amusing story that goes with that...the arrest and overnight stay in the county jail, the wedding which is connected to that stay and the beginning of my long lived adultery in absentia.
It is a long story that one..perhaps someone else will tell it or perhaps it will become obvious once this memoir gets going. I don't like to think of it as a formative experience because it wasn't. It was an obstacle to my delivery from it. Does that make sense? I didn't understand myself then but I understand it all now, just hate to talk too much about it because I do not want to give it any power in my life. It already took enough away from me before. I guess some people would say that it was a love affair. Many might say that. I say it was a serial rape that lasted nearly two years before my husband and I married. Okay...I'll synopsize here: Lolita.
In fact, much of my earlier writing dealt with that mysterious situation. I've come to realize now that it wasn't so much a mystery. It is the case however that as people go through the events in their life, it is only with a certain amount of age can they begin to see things for what they really were. That some would analyse the situation differently...those that witnessed or took part in that episode...well. Tells you that the illusion was a profound one and my kidnapper was very good at his specialty. He convinced alot of people to believe something was what it wasn't. Perhaps, like HH in the novel, he even convinced himself. You have to love what you are doing you know, to do it.
But why this focus on Alice Notley one might ask. It's not so hard to understand. It is an old illusion of mine that a great poet such as herself actually has something to do with me. Such as herself meaning, few poets have gone on record so deeply or at such length as Ms. Notley and I say that with tremendous respect for her ambition in that regard, about how marriage, feminism, war, poverty have affected them. The "I" in Alice Notley is certainly a very big "I". She was born in the same place as I was although she didn't spend much time here. She was born a day apart (and several years) as me. She spent more than a quarter of her adult years away from the United States. So did I. And she writes poems. And she remembers certain things about ditches and cheap drugstore perfumes like Cachet that could be found in the shops of "our time". She wrote once of topaz, our birthstone. The idea of all of that kept me alive for quite some time when it was that my poetry began to predominate in my life but in no one else's. I owe her a great deal for that one and perhaps one day, I can return the favor to some other poor sod who thinks poetry is a great big deal and they are lonely in that assumption.
And then one day, I actually met her. It was destiny you know. She was scheduled to read up in Tucson. My sister and I were making plans to attend the reading but somehow the plans fell apart and the day before it was to happen, it just evaporated. I knew I was supposed to meet her and then all of a sudden, I couldn't. It made me slightly miserable. I passed by the post office that day and took a few moments to read the notices that are there on a board outside by the bench. And voila! Alice was returning to town that very evening for a reading at the Central School.
She read that night and was mildly entertaining and it seemed to me, a bit nervous and dissociated. I'd say, she is an introvert but if I was feeling ornery, I would say she was a bit snobby. Either way, I imagine I am wrong. Fact of the matter was, she couldn't possibly know how destiny had intervened in her reading and my attendance any more than I could explain it and make it somehow sensible.
The point that I'm getting to here has to do with a core philosophy in her work, one that has resonated with so many women and especially with female poets. It is called feminism. Not that she would call herself a feminist because most likely, she wouldn't. She often says things that lead a reader to believe however that she is one. She views her presence in the hall of fame of poetry as a sentinel event in the history of female poets and poetry.
So do I. I am a sentinel event. I knew that just as much as I knew that one day, I would have to meet Alice Notley in order to exorcise her from my spirit. I am an American Shia female poet. Not many of us at all out there. Some struggling ones for sure and in future generations there will be more of us but no doubt about it, I'm one of the first.
Insert here "Irish Muslim 'lasses from the passes"
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