Adrienne Rich died a couple of days ago, at the age of eighty, due to complications of rheumatoid arthritis. Why did I think that she was going to live forever? Death is part of life, but the death of someone wonderful always seems to come too soon.The Advocate notes that she had been with her partner Michelle Cliff (a notable feminist writer in her own right) since 1976.
Adrienne Rich was that rare poet who made an impact both in the mainstream world of arts and poetry and among radical lesbian feminists. She had an obituary in The New York Times and John Nichols wrote an analysis of her life and work for thenation.com. My favorite was this remembrance by a woman whose life her work had touched.
For myself, I will always remember Adrienne Rich as someone who pushed the feminist movement to be its best self, who pushed women with privilege to challenge their own racism, classism, antisemitism. Rich was a leader in the best sense--someone who inspired all of us to find and express our own ideas and ideals. She had a broad understanding of feminism as a movement that challenges all forms of oppression.
I will miss her.
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts
Friday, March 30, 2012
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Happy birthday, Ms. Marilyn
I heard on the radio this morning that today is Marilyn Monroe's birthday. Which reminded me of Judy Grahn's poem about Marilyn Monroe, which is one of my favorite poems. I found the full text of this poem on a blog called virgotext.
Here's a sample:
Oooh. And here's a video.
Here's a sample:
the reporters are furiousIt's a lovely poem and not very long. Why not read the whole thing?
they are asking me questions
what right does a woman have to Marilyn Monroe’s body?
and what am I doing for lunch?
ha ha they think I mean to eat you
their teeth are lurid and they want to pose me
leaning on the shovel, nude
don’t squint
but when one of the reporters comes too close
I beat him
bust his camera with your long smooth thigh
and with your lovely knuckle bone
I break his eye
Oooh. And here's a video.
Monday, March 1, 2010
Revolutionary crocuses
Alice Walker has her revolutionary petunias, but if I were a poet, I would write about crocuses. How they bloom where they're not planted. How it matters not how desolate the winter, how wracked with war or fraught with flood, here comes Candlemas and there are the crocuses, shoving up through the mud, pushing out through the snow. I half think they could crack concrete if they had a mind to. I saw one growing once where an old slab had been demolished after maybe 40 years.The flower is fragile. A hard rain will melt it in an instant. But the bulb beneath is tough, and next year she will pour forth her delicate color again.
You might imprison her in your garden, but once she's lost the blossom that you captured her for, she will grow her leaves green and fat for her own pleasure and nourishment. Starting alone, she multiplies and spreads far beyond your established borders. She knows when to hide, when to go underground, and when to rise up singing, by the dozen, by the thousand, for she is related to everything and understands all. She may be crushed by the heel of the mighty, but understand, the flame of a million blooming crocuses will transform the landscape forever.
A careful reader of this poem will notice that it refers to crocuses blooming at Candlemas, about a month earlier than they bloom in Oklahoma. That's because I wrote this poem years ago in Western Oregon.
You might imprison her in your garden, but once she's lost the blossom that you captured her for, she will grow her leaves green and fat for her own pleasure and nourishment. Starting alone, she multiplies and spreads far beyond your established borders. She knows when to hide, when to go underground, and when to rise up singing, by the dozen, by the thousand, for she is related to everything and understands all. She may be crushed by the heel of the mighty, but understand, the flame of a million blooming crocuses will transform the landscape forever.
A careful reader of this poem will notice that it refers to crocuses blooming at Candlemas, about a month earlier than they bloom in Oklahoma. That's because I wrote this poem years ago in Western Oregon.
Monday, February 15, 2010
In memory of the poet Lucille Clifton
Meta Watershed has a tribute to the poet Lucille Clifton, who died on Saturday.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Which Biblical morality are we talking about?
I kind of hate to take potshots at Sally Kern. It's not exactly rigorous intellectual exercise. I would like to say that my mother told me never to undertake a battle of wits with an unarmed person, but my mother never actually said that. OK State Rep. Kern (R. Oklahoma City) may be sincerely bigoted, or she may be your typical cynical politician who knows how to fire up her base, but her statements are so outrageous, and have been so ably dissected by so many commentators, that it seems unnecessary to chime in.
But the recent controversy surrounding her "Oklahoma Citizens' Proclamation for Morality" reminded me of an old poem of mine that I meant to read during OKC pride, but didn't get around to. Kern was not actually so tactless as to refer to Sodom and Gomorrah in her proclamation, but she did opine that "our economic woes are consequences of our greater national moral crisis." She also begged God to "to have mercy on this nation, to stay His hand of judgment." Given that this old story from the nineteenth chapter of Genesis is often used as an example of God's response to homosexuality, I think it bears retelling from a feminist perspective.
So here's the poem. It's a poem about Lot's wife.
Sodomy
Turned to stone
just like that
left alone for all eternity
for all the gawking tourists
to photograph and talk about.
How did she get mixed up with that Lot, anyway?
He, known as the one righteous man in Sodom,
the kind whom angels come to visit.
He was a pillar of the community
before she was.
He wore his righteousness like a shroud.
His neighbors were not so neighborly.
"Intercourse" is a work that also means "to talk"
but the neighbors didn't want to talk with the angels.
"Take my wife, please,"
a phrase remaining to be invented by some much later wiseass.
But Lot was not about to put his own butt on the line.
"Do not be so wicked," he told the neighbors.
"Take my daughters, they are virgins, you can do as you please to them."
He pulled his righteousness around him like a shroud.
He had offered his dearest possessions.
His neighbors, not deterred, tried to break down the door
only to be driven back by an angelic lightning flash.
Those Sodomites didn't care who they fucked with.
This town could not be saved.
Only the family of the righteous Lot could escape with the angels.
But they must trust in righteousness
and not look back.
What was her name, anyway?
Was she not ready to leave behind
the grief and sorrow of this place
or did she know what tragedy lay ahead?
She could not trust.
The river of salt flowed from her eyes.
She knew what was underneath the shroud.
Flowing powerless like a river of salt,
she could go no further.
She could not conceive
how to protect her daughters from righteousness.
She looked back.
Frozen, now, for all eternity as a bad example.
Lot took his righteousness and her daughters
and made camp in the mountains.
Later, he said the daughters were seductive.
He said they got him drunk.
We've heard that excuse many times since then.
The daughters heard it many times before
and blamed themselves as damaged goods
the neighbors would not accept.
Lot's line went on
to prove a paradigm of righteousness.
The daughters wept many bitter tears.
And their mother, whoever she was
stands alone for all eternity as the first bad example.
But the recent controversy surrounding her "Oklahoma Citizens' Proclamation for Morality" reminded me of an old poem of mine that I meant to read during OKC pride, but didn't get around to. Kern was not actually so tactless as to refer to Sodom and Gomorrah in her proclamation, but she did opine that "our economic woes are consequences of our greater national moral crisis." She also begged God to "to have mercy on this nation, to stay His hand of judgment." Given that this old story from the nineteenth chapter of Genesis is often used as an example of God's response to homosexuality, I think it bears retelling from a feminist perspective.
So here's the poem. It's a poem about Lot's wife.
Sodomy
Turned to stone
just like that
left alone for all eternity
for all the gawking tourists
to photograph and talk about.
How did she get mixed up with that Lot, anyway?
He, known as the one righteous man in Sodom,
the kind whom angels come to visit.
He was a pillar of the community
before she was.
He wore his righteousness like a shroud.
His neighbors were not so neighborly.
"Intercourse" is a work that also means "to talk"
but the neighbors didn't want to talk with the angels.
"Take my wife, please,"
a phrase remaining to be invented by some much later wiseass.
But Lot was not about to put his own butt on the line.
"Do not be so wicked," he told the neighbors.
"Take my daughters, they are virgins, you can do as you please to them."
He pulled his righteousness around him like a shroud.
He had offered his dearest possessions.
His neighbors, not deterred, tried to break down the door
only to be driven back by an angelic lightning flash.
Those Sodomites didn't care who they fucked with.
This town could not be saved.
Only the family of the righteous Lot could escape with the angels.
But they must trust in righteousness
and not look back.
What was her name, anyway?
Was she not ready to leave behind
the grief and sorrow of this place
or did she know what tragedy lay ahead?
She could not trust.
The river of salt flowed from her eyes.
She knew what was underneath the shroud.
Flowing powerless like a river of salt,
she could go no further.
She could not conceive
how to protect her daughters from righteousness.
She looked back.
Frozen, now, for all eternity as a bad example.
Lot took his righteousness and her daughters
and made camp in the mountains.
Later, he said the daughters were seductive.
He said they got him drunk.
We've heard that excuse many times since then.
The daughters heard it many times before
and blamed themselves as damaged goods
the neighbors would not accept.
Lot's line went on
to prove a paradigm of righteousness.
The daughters wept many bitter tears.
And their mother, whoever she was
stands alone for all eternity as the first bad example.
Monday, July 28, 2008
The more things change?
To make a long story as short as possible, today an email discussion reminded me of an old Pat Parker poem. So I looked it up. Apparently lots of other people remember this poem, because you can see that the following web search came up with lots of results:
Here's a link to one place the poem appeared on the web:
http://www.pamspaulding.com/weblog/2004/07/daily-kos-features-poem-that-hits-nail.html>
Here is a link to a short biography of Pat Parker:
http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/parker_pat.html>
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