Women
One Writer's Life (or, Call Me, Andy)
by Eleanor Lerman on Thursday, February 26, 2009 10:34 pm
(A literary sensation and National Book Award nominee at age 21, Eleanor Lerman has paid her dues, been there and back, and has now published a new book of short stories. Here's her story. -- Levi).
Person wanted to sweep up in harpsichord factory. That was the ad in the Village Voice that I answered in 1970 when I was eighteen years old and looking for a job so I could support myself in the city, where I was headed to join the revolution. It also happens to be the first line in Civilization,” a story in my new collection of short stories, The Blonde on the Train (Mayapple Press). The story is fiction, but the ad, the job -- and the way they both changed my life -- are still the touchstones I go back to again and again whenever someone asks, "What made you want to be a writer?"
It was actually reading Leonard Cohen that made me think I could write poetry (until I found The Spice Box of Earth on a drugstore rack in Far Rockaway, the lost and windy peninsula at the end of the earth -- excuse me, I mean, the end of Queens, where I lived when I was a teenager -- I was under the impression that poetry was written by people like Robert Browning and Lord Byron, who didn’t exactly resonate with me). But it was the harpsichord kit factory where I worked, the long-lost Greenwich Village of artists and gay bars and roller-skating queens, along with my neighbor, a film producer, who introduced me to a community of writers, and my boss, Michael Zuckermann, who gave me the job because he said I had soulful eyes (I hope I still do!), which in the psychedelic days was the only qualification you needed, I guess, to make harpsichord kit parts (I graduated from the sweeping up part pretty quickly) that made me believe it was possible to actually live the life of a writer. Thirty-five years later, I’m still trying, but I think I’m getting closer.
At the time, Zuckermann Harpsichords (now a thriving company owned by other people and based in Connecticut -- look them up if you want a nifty harpsichord kit to build in your spare time) was housed in the first floor of a small, quirky 19th century building on Charles Street. Michael not only gave me a job, he gave me a tiny apartment upstairs. The whole operation employed about five girls, who drilled pin blocks, used a table saw and a lathe, but also worked on eccentric machines that Michael had made himself out of sewing machine parts: we used those to wind wire, cut felt and velvet, and make the jacks that pluck harpsichord strings. Sometimes we ran out of parts and I was supposed to write what we needed on a blackboard. Instead, inspired by Leonard Cohen, I used the blackboard to write poems.
The film producer, who lived in a carriage house on the lane behind the harpsichord workshop, had to walk through our space every day to get his mail, and he began stopping by the blackboard to read my poetry. One day, he said something to me like, You know, that’s pretty good. You ought to try to get your work published. It had never occurred to me that was possible until he suggested it. (So thank you forever, Harrison Starr.)
Hettie Jones: Prisons and Poets
by Bill Ectric on Wednesday, May 21, 2008 07:10 pm
Branching Out, a joint project of Poets House and the Poetry Society of America, with funding from the National Endowment for Humanities, presents Hettie Jones on the Beat Poets, Tuesday, May 6 @ 6:00 PM.
In New York’s Greenwich Village from 1957 to 1963, poets Hettie Jones and her then-husband LeRoi Jones (who later changed his name to Amiri Baraka) published a magazine called Yugen, showcasing poetry and writings by Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Philip Whalen, and others. Hettie also started Totem Press, which published poets such as Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder, Frank O’Hara, and Edward Dorn.
Jones is currently involved with PEN American Center's Prison Writing Committee and teaches writing at the New School in New York. She also runs a writing workshop at the New York State Correctional Facility for Women at Bedford Hills. The Bedford Hills workshop has published two books of poetry, More In Than Out and Aliens At the Border. I purchased a used copy of Aliens At the Border and I agree with Bibi Wein of the PEN American Center when she says, “Each of these women has a unique voice, and the writing is luminous, surprisingly lyrical, tender, and hopeful as a candle in the dark.”
You can enter Shelby’s Coffee House from the street, or through the new Downtown Public Library in Jacksonville, Florida. I arrived early, hoping I could meet Hettie Jones in person before she took the podium. It paid off. Hettie arrived an hour before the event was scheduled to begin, accompanied by a guide from the city. I introduced myself and she invited me to sit at her table while library staff rearranged the chairs and tables to face the microphone.
“This is a beautiful library,” she said. “With a great children’s section.”
When I gave her a brief summary of the revitalization projects of downtown Jacksonville, Hettie’s first question was, “Has anyone been displaced by all the new construction?” I didn’t know for sure.
I said I was interested in her prison writing classes, and wanted to if she would be talking about that aspect of her work. Jones said she wasn’t really supposed to talk about anything but the Beats. “That’s what they brought me here for,” she said.
“Will you take questions from the audience later?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said.
“Well, then, if I raise my hand and ask about Bedford Correctional, they can’t blame you for talking about it.”
“True!” she said.
I apologized for being a pest, but I wanted to talk some more, in case we ran out of time later. Hettie is as cool as anyone I’ve ever met. “No, it’s quite all right,” she said. “I like talking about the prison workshop. It’s important to me. The thing about teaching in a correctional facility is, you accept people for what they want to become, not what they have done in the past. I got my start in 1988 when I got paid $50.00 to teach a prose workshop in Sing Sing. It went well, but the funding ran out. Soon after that, I got the chance to teach at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, and I did that for about a dozen years.”
“Is that through PEN?” I asked.
“No, PEN is different. I was elected to PEN in 1984, and because of my involvement with prisons, PEN insisted that I join their Prison Writing committee.”
By now, most of the chairs were filled and it was time for Hettie Jones to speak to the audience. She gave a brief introduction to the Beats, and spoke about several key players individually, reading a sample of each writer’s work.
“I first met Allen Ginsberg,” said Hettie, “When I was 24 years old. Allen needed to hear the Jewish prayer called the Kaddish, to help with the poem he was writing. He had never learned it. LeRoi brought me over to Allen’s place because I knew the Kaddish. And here you have a good picture of how the Beat movement mixed people from different backgrounds together. Here I was, a Jewish girl disowned by my parents for marrying a black man (LeRoi Jones), chanting the Kaddish to a homosexual poet who would later become a Buddhist!”
Speaking of Kerouac’s spontaneous prose, Hettie said that Jack didn’t say that writers shouldn’t rewrite or keep journals. The best thought may be the best thought, and you write that thought in a journal, but you still must “Edit, edit, edit,” said Hettie. “And that is a hard lesson to learn.”
Asked about LeRoi Jones’ relation to the other Beats, Hettie said, “The fact that he was a black man was less important than the fact that he and I were publishing people.”
Someone wanted to know about William S. Burroughs. Hettie said that Burroughs was a loner, didn’t hang out at parties, and was hard to know. “Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, although gay, still had female friends to whom they showed love. Burroughs seemed to have no use for women at all.”
I raised my hand and asked if there were any paid positions for teachers in prisons.
“Nobody wants to pay you to do it,” said Hettie. “You have to raise your own funding, that’s what I did. Prisons are like little fiefdoms. It’s hard to get in the door. Most prisons have an Office of Volunteer Services, and that would be the place to start.
“If you teach at a university, it’s a good antidote to go teach at a prison for a while. The poetry is as good, sometimes better, than poetry written elsewhere. It’s rewarding. You go in with the attitude of accepting people for what they want to become, not what they have done.”
The last questioner asked if their were any writers today that Hettie would compare to the Beats.
“We have one running for President,” she said, to a smattering of applause. I assumed she was talking about Barack Obama because of articles like this, and when I asked her later, she confirmed that I was correct.
“We have many good poets today,” Hettie continued, “And a lot of them are not coming from universities. In New York, we have the Bowery Poetry club run by Bob Holman, a dear friend of mine. We have the Internet. We have Hip Hop. We have Def Poetry on television.”
After the event, I had one more question. A friend of mine wanted to know if there was ever a rivalry between Hettie Jones and Diane De Prima. This was a sensitive subject because both women had been involved romantically with LeRoi Jones during the fifties.
I got up the nerve to ask.
“You should just tell your friend to read my book, How I Became Hettie Jones,” she said. “I tell all about it in the book.”
Hettie Jones, to me, is a reminder that we have to keep improving. An important question for fans and students of Beat Literature is, where do we go from here? We know about the restless few, post-World War II, seeing beyond suburban conformity, crafting fresh free forms of verse, and of course, looking for kicks. But a lot of young writers seem to ride Kerouac’s Mobius road in circles. Hettie Jones is moving forward.
Philomene Long
by Levi Asher on Monday, August 27, 2007 08:46 pmI've just heard that Los Angeles/Venice Beach poet Philomene Long has passed away.
I interviewed Philomene here on LitKicks last year. I was fascinated by the fact that she was a nun before she was a beat poet, and we talked a lot about religion during this interview. Philomene was also a filmmaker, as well as a close friend and creative partner of Charles Bukowski. You can read more about here at this Empty Mirror Books page or this other Empty Mirror Books page. Here's an interview with the Santa Monica Mirror, and here's an early LitKicks review of her movie, The Beats: An Existential Comedy.
But for the best link of all, check out Philomene and her husband John Thomas Philomene reading the great poem "Marriage" by Gregory Corso on YouTube.
I interviewed Philomene here on LitKicks last year. I was fascinated by the fact that she was a nun before she was a beat poet, and we talked a lot about religion during this interview. Philomene was also a filmmaker, as well as a close friend and creative partner of Charles Bukowski. You can read more about here at this Empty Mirror Books page or this other Empty Mirror Books page. Here's an interview with the Santa Monica Mirror, and here's an early LitKicks review of her movie, The Beats: An Existential Comedy.
But for the best link of all, check out Philomene and her husband John Thomas Philomene reading the great poem "Marriage" by Gregory Corso on YouTube.
Grace Paley Against Arcs
by Leora Skolkin_Smith on Thursday, August 23, 2007 11:04 am[Writer Grace Paley died yesterday at the age of 84. I asked her close friend Leora Skolkin-Smith to share some thoughts on Grace's life and work this morning. -- Levi Asher]
* * * * *
Grace Paley was from a post-beat generation. One hears about Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and Philip Roth -- all of whom were dear friends of Grace's. But there was also a strong female counterpoint to these writers. And Grace embodied it. We used to call her "headquarters" because she was the mother of our needy female selves. Heterosexual, a lover of men, she helped us say things which were "feminist" but not hateful of men. And we all needed her maternity so much.
Grace was spurned by generations before her. W. H. Auden was her greatest influence, as well as Joyce's Dubliners (some say she protrayed New York as Joyce had portrayed Dublin, full of multicultural genes and voices and irreverancies). She did not believe in pandering to the "major media", in comforting audiences, in writers becoming "stars" instead of truth-tellers. Writing was not there to make people feel good and sell copies. It was there as an expression of social and personal turmoil, as truth, and even as a disturbance in the skies -- dark, troubling, discomforting.
This is most missed in what we see today, from my standpoint and hers. We had talked often about when the shift into writing as a consumer-pleasing commodity happened. I don't know how to express this without seeming unkind to so many "current" writers, but Grace deeply resented the course writers who needed celebritization of their work were taking these days. Writing was truth. And truth was uncomfortable. And one didn't write for a "consumer", One wrote to live and breathe and because one had to. She was subversive, quietly on this point.
While people often think Grace was a "political writer", what she meant by this was well quoted in a New York Times article written a long time ago (I was with her while she was being interviewed):
Mrs. Paley -- who has made no secret of her support for the peace movement, opposition to the war in Vietnam and her progressive political views -- had come to some non-literary prominence as a member of various demonstrations. Some of the reviews took note of these involvements, and suggested they distracted her from concentrated literary effort, an accusation that irritated Mrs. Paley.
"It was ridiculous," she said. "I mean, in Europe, for a writer not to be political is peculiar, and in this country for a writer to be political is considered some sort of aberration, or time waste. I'm not writing a history of famous people. I am interested in a history of everyday life."
This is quintessential to an understanding of Grace, I think ...
Many other salient parts of her literary vision focused on "personal voice", the personal as it hits against the global canvas, the daily news reports. The personal, small voice of everyday, inconsequential, searching. Not famous and loud.
Artistically, I think there is no better example of Grace's literary theory than the desciption she used in a famous short story called "A Conversation with My Father". It was an anti-linear, anti-narrative-arc policy. She believed it was the dailiness of of ordinary interaction that made fiction, not contrived "arcs".
This, of course, spoke to so many us as women. We had been left out entirely of the tradition which was based on that all-prevalent Aristotlean "narrative arc" principle. A friend of mine and I used to laugh, asking "doesn't anybody see this is a male ejection theory of literature? Come on, an arc? It arcs and ...uh ... ejaculates after penetration?" For Grace, fiction could also be like a feminine sexual experience. She was very sexual about writing. We women, she used to say, have little, multiple spasms of pleasure and truth, very modest. Not arcs!
Of course, Grace loved men. And I do, too! The above isn't meant as a rejection of men. Both Grace and I married two first-class men, and have both been married to the same guys for over thirty-five years! So I always resented people labeling Grace Paley a "male-hater" She loved men and I think this set her apart from the bitterness you will opten find in other "feminist writers" of her generation. She once remarked: "Bitterness only comes when one doesn't take an action, if one didn't exercise choice. I walked out on my first marriage. I took an action and I feel in love again!" So she called herself an "activist"!
Here is her most famous description of an anti-arc narrative approach, told with her initimable sense of humor from "A Conversation With My Father:
'I would like you to write a simple story just once more,' he (my father) says, 'the kind de Maupassant wrote, or Chekhov, the kind you used to write. Just recognizable people and then write down what happened to them next.' I say, 'Yes, why not? That's possible.' I want to please him, though I don't remember writing that way. I would like to try to tell such a story, if he means the kind that begins: 'There was a woman...' followed by plot, the absolute line between two points which I've always despised, not for literary reasons, but because it takes all hope away. Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life."
Grace Paley was from a post-beat generation. One hears about Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and Philip Roth -- all of whom were dear friends of Grace's. But there was also a strong female counterpoint to these writers. And Grace embodied it. We used to call her "headquarters" because she was the mother of our needy female selves. Heterosexual, a lover of men, she helped us say things which were "feminist" but not hateful of men. And we all needed her maternity so much.
Grace was spurned by generations before her. W. H. Auden was her greatest influence, as well as Joyce's Dubliners (some say she protrayed New York as Joyce had portrayed Dublin, full of multicultural genes and voices and irreverancies). She did not believe in pandering to the "major media", in comforting audiences, in writers becoming "stars" instead of truth-tellers. Writing was not there to make people feel good and sell copies. It was there as an expression of social and personal turmoil, as truth, and even as a disturbance in the skies -- dark, troubling, discomforting.
This is most missed in what we see today, from my standpoint and hers. We had talked often about when the shift into writing as a consumer-pleasing commodity happened. I don't know how to express this without seeming unkind to so many "current" writers, but Grace deeply resented the course writers who needed celebritization of their work were taking these days. Writing was truth. And truth was uncomfortable. And one didn't write for a "consumer", One wrote to live and breathe and because one had to. She was subversive, quietly on this point.
While people often think Grace was a "political writer", what she meant by this was well quoted in a New York Times article written a long time ago (I was with her while she was being interviewed):
Mrs. Paley -- who has made no secret of her support for the peace movement, opposition to the war in Vietnam and her progressive political views -- had come to some non-literary prominence as a member of various demonstrations. Some of the reviews took note of these involvements, and suggested they distracted her from concentrated literary effort, an accusation that irritated Mrs. Paley.
"It was ridiculous," she said. "I mean, in Europe, for a writer not to be political is peculiar, and in this country for a writer to be political is considered some sort of aberration, or time waste. I'm not writing a history of famous people. I am interested in a history of everyday life."
This is quintessential to an understanding of Grace, I think ...
Many other salient parts of her literary vision focused on "personal voice", the personal as it hits against the global canvas, the daily news reports. The personal, small voice of everyday, inconsequential, searching. Not famous and loud.
Artistically, I think there is no better example of Grace's literary theory than the desciption she used in a famous short story called "A Conversation with My Father". It was an anti-linear, anti-narrative-arc policy. She believed it was the dailiness of of ordinary interaction that made fiction, not contrived "arcs".
This, of course, spoke to so many us as women. We had been left out entirely of the tradition which was based on that all-prevalent Aristotlean "narrative arc" principle. A friend of mine and I used to laugh, asking "doesn't anybody see this is a male ejection theory of literature? Come on, an arc? It arcs and ...uh ... ejaculates after penetration?" For Grace, fiction could also be like a feminine sexual experience. She was very sexual about writing. We women, she used to say, have little, multiple spasms of pleasure and truth, very modest. Not arcs!
Of course, Grace loved men. And I do, too! The above isn't meant as a rejection of men. Both Grace and I married two first-class men, and have both been married to the same guys for over thirty-five years! So I always resented people labeling Grace Paley a "male-hater" She loved men and I think this set her apart from the bitterness you will opten find in other "feminist writers" of her generation. She once remarked: "Bitterness only comes when one doesn't take an action, if one didn't exercise choice. I walked out on my first marriage. I took an action and I feel in love again!" So she called herself an "activist"!
Here is her most famous description of an anti-arc narrative approach, told with her initimable sense of humor from "A Conversation With My Father:
'I would like you to write a simple story just once more,' he (my father) says, 'the kind de Maupassant wrote, or Chekhov, the kind you used to write. Just recognizable people and then write down what happened to them next.' I say, 'Yes, why not? That's possible.' I want to please him, though I don't remember writing that way. I would like to try to tell such a story, if he means the kind that begins: 'There was a woman...' followed by plot, the absolute line between two points which I've always despised, not for literary reasons, but because it takes all hope away. Everyone, real or invented, deserves the open destiny of life."
Great Chick-Lit of the 70’s (or, the Books That Raised Me)
by Levi Asher on Monday, February 12, 2007 06:52 pmAmerican, Comedy, Fiction, Film, Jewish, Love, New York City, Reading, Southern, Summer Of Love, Women
The industry is buzzing about chick-lit again. I don't know much about this whole phenomenon, except in a strange way I do, because I was raised on chick-lit. As a kid in the 1970s, the first grownup books I read (and really enjoyed) were the racy, funny and wise novels that my grandmother, my mother and my older sister left lying around the house. These books had a big influence on me, and I wonder if the chick-lit of today could possibly be as good.
Jamelah Reads the Classics: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
by Jamelah Earle on Wednesday, January 31, 2007 05:58 pmIn case you were wondering, yes, I am still reading the classics. It's my calling. And Mary Wollstonecraft's polemic A Vindication of the Rights of Woman was next on my list, so here we are. As with many of the writers on my list this time around, I first heard of Mary Wollstonecraft when I was a wee, bright-eyed English major, and, perhaps unfortunately, the main thing I think about whenever I see her name is a statement my professor made that her daughter, Mary Shelley and Percy Shelley consummated their relationship on Wollstonecraft's grave. This naturally led to a discussion of whether or not graveyard sex was creepy and gross (and yes, "creepy and gross" won by an approximately 35:1 margin). This has nothing to do with Wollstonecraft's work, but if I have to think it, then so do you, because I am all about sharing the pain.
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I can move on to the point of this post, which is Mary Wollstonecraft's book-length essay. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a response to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's
Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I can move on to the point of this post, which is Mary Wollstonecraft's book-length essay. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman is a response to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's
Jamelah Reads the Classics: The Tragedy of Mariam
by Jamelah Earle on Wednesday, August 30, 2006 10:01 pmPublished in 1613, Elizabeth Cary's The Tragedy of Mariam is universally accepted as the first drama published by a woman. Cary was a contemporary of Shakespeare, though due to the fact that she was memorialized in a biography by one of her daughters (the exact author is unknown), more is known about her than her more famous Elizabethan playwright counterpart. Elizabeth Cary was quite scholarly, and knew (and translated works from) French, Spanish, Latin and Hebrew. Her play Mariam deals with the story of the wife of Herod the Great, and though it does not appear in the Bible, it was in Antiquities of the Jews by the historian Josephus, whose work was popular in translation at the time. This just goes to show you that people in Early Modern England really knew how to party. Mariam also happens to be the latest in my queue of classics. Very convenient. Here we go...
As a backstory, Herod was a bit of a dirty social climber and married Mariam to gain ties into the Jewish monarchy. To make his ascent to the throne secure, he has Mariam's brother and grandfather killed, which is something that Mariam is understandably unhappy about. He's summoned to Rome to answer to the murder accusations, and at this time, he decrees that after his death, Mariam has to be killed (you know, because if he can no longer have her, then nobody else can, either). After awhile, Herod has to return to Rome, and the play opens with the news that Caesar has had him put to death. Turns out this was untrue, and he returns home to a wife who's not all that happy to see him, and in fact, she tells him off for killing her brother (which makes her a mouthy harpy). Further on, Herod's sister Salome convinces Herod that Mariam has been cheating on him, and he has her beheaded, only discovering that he really shouldn't have listened to his sister Salome after it's too late. This story, at least the "death sentence for unsubstantiated accusations of adultery" angle, bears some similarity to that of St. Guglielma, except Guglielma managed to escape death and live happily ever after in a wasteland with her husband and his brother. Yet the fact that twice in a row I've read of women being sentenced to death based purely on accusations from people who had beef with them raises a serious question: don't these married couples ever talk to each other? Hasn't anyone ever heard of verifying a rumor? "Okay, so maybe you heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from another that you been messin' arou-hound." I guess that means you have to die. Ah, justice. The justice of love.
To a point, the play deals with women's roles and the dichotomy of public vs. private, woman as silent, obedient wife vs. woman with a mind and will of her own, woman as a body vs. woman as a thinker and the struggle to match these things to find a sense of personal balance. Mariam, of course, does not achieve this balance, and it is perhaps telling that Mariam is put to death by beheading, a final severing of mind and body.
Anyway, for those of you who may be hoping that someday there will be Trivial Pursuit: Renaissance Edition, the action in The Tragedy of Mariam: The Fair Queen of Jewry (yes, Jewry) takes place in a single day, thereby following the classical rule of unity of action originally set forth in Aristotle's Poetics. Nice, huh? I know. Also, the play has been compared to Shakespeare's Othello because of the "jealous husband kills wife, then realizes he's an ass" plotline. It was also a closet drama, which means that instead of being staged like a traditional play, it was performed as a reading in private for a small group. It has a lot of long speeches, and though pontificating is swell, it isn't really all that interesting to read. I'm sure it would've been much better to listen to, however, which makes sense because it's a play. So if you attempt this one, it might be best to do it with a group of friends, and all of you can read your parts aloud. I used to do this with plays I was assigned in school, and it always really helped my understanding of the text. It also proves that I am a total nerd and have been this way all of my life. In case the fact that I'm reading the classics on purpose wasn't proof enough, that is.
As a backstory, Herod was a bit of a dirty social climber and married Mariam to gain ties into the Jewish monarchy. To make his ascent to the throne secure, he has Mariam's brother and grandfather killed, which is something that Mariam is understandably unhappy about. He's summoned to Rome to answer to the murder accusations, and at this time, he decrees that after his death, Mariam has to be killed (you know, because if he can no longer have her, then nobody else can, either). After awhile, Herod has to return to Rome, and the play opens with the news that Caesar has had him put to death. Turns out this was untrue, and he returns home to a wife who's not all that happy to see him, and in fact, she tells him off for killing her brother (which makes her a mouthy harpy). Further on, Herod's sister Salome convinces Herod that Mariam has been cheating on him, and he has her beheaded, only discovering that he really shouldn't have listened to his sister Salome after it's too late. This story, at least the "death sentence for unsubstantiated accusations of adultery" angle, bears some similarity to that of St. Guglielma, except Guglielma managed to escape death and live happily ever after in a wasteland with her husband and his brother. Yet the fact that twice in a row I've read of women being sentenced to death based purely on accusations from people who had beef with them raises a serious question: don't these married couples ever talk to each other? Hasn't anyone ever heard of verifying a rumor? "Okay, so maybe you heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who heard it from another that you been messin' arou-hound." I guess that means you have to die. Ah, justice. The justice of love.
To a point, the play deals with women's roles and the dichotomy of public vs. private, woman as silent, obedient wife vs. woman with a mind and will of her own, woman as a body vs. woman as a thinker and the struggle to match these things to find a sense of personal balance. Mariam, of course, does not achieve this balance, and it is perhaps telling that Mariam is put to death by beheading, a final severing of mind and body.
Anyway, for those of you who may be hoping that someday there will be Trivial Pursuit: Renaissance Edition, the action in The Tragedy of Mariam: The Fair Queen of Jewry (yes, Jewry) takes place in a single day, thereby following the classical rule of unity of action originally set forth in Aristotle's Poetics. Nice, huh? I know. Also, the play has been compared to Shakespeare's Othello because of the "jealous husband kills wife, then realizes he's an ass" plotline. It was also a closet drama, which means that instead of being staged like a traditional play, it was performed as a reading in private for a small group. It has a lot of long speeches, and though pontificating is swell, it isn't really all that interesting to read. I'm sure it would've been much better to listen to, however, which makes sense because it's a play. So if you attempt this one, it might be best to do it with a group of friends, and all of you can read your parts aloud. I used to do this with plays I was assigned in school, and it always really helped my understanding of the text. It also proves that I am a total nerd and have been this way all of my life. In case the fact that I'm reading the classics on purpose wasn't proof enough, that is.
Jamelah Reads the Classics: St. Guglielma by Antonia Pulci
by Jamelah Earle on Thursday, July 6, 2006 05:00 pm
Most of the things I've been doing lately have involved not reading the classics, which I think has a lot in common with what many people do most of the time. Be that as it may, I am back, having just finished Antonia Pulci's one-act St. Guglielma
, and I have a few remarks.Antonia Pulci (whose work was translated by James Cook, the translator also responsible for this version of Petrarch and is available in a lovely volume: Florentine Drama for Convent and Festival: Seven Sacred Plays) was a fifteenth-century Italian writer who, after the death of her husband, founded an Augustinian order and lived out the rest of her life in the convent. The type of plays Pulci authored -- sacre rappresentazioni -- are short plays about religious subjects, and in Pulci's case are largely hagiographical (read: about saints) and deal with women and their concerns in society. These plays are convent dramas and as such are meant to be performed by women for women. So, something like 15th-century Lifetime TV, then.
St. Guglielma follows the life of -- wait for it -- St. Guglielma, the daughter of the King of England who, despite a desire to live a life of pious chastity, is married to the King of Hungary. Once married, Guglielma convinces the king to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and take her with him, which he thinks is a swell idea in part, deciding to go on the pilgrimage but to leave Guglielma in Hungary to run the kingdom. Once the king is gone, his brother, who's pining for some hot Guglielma action, tries to seduce the queen but is shot down. Guglielma decides to keep it to herself so as not to cause an uproar at court, but this turns out to be a bad idea because as soon as the king returns the brother falsely accuses Guglielma of being a ho in her husband's absence. The king, kind, wise fellow that he is, has Guglielma imprisoned and sentenced to death, because, you know, why talk to your wife when you can just have her killed?
Exactly.
But Guglielma is saved when pity is taken upon her and the executioner sets her free and burns her clothes to make it look like she was killed. She's lost in the forest (or a wasteland, as the text calls it, so maybe not a forest after all) and it seems kind of Snow White-ish for a little while, but instead of finding the cottage of seven dwarves, she is met by Mary (mother of Jesus) who helps her, and later by two angels who also help her. She's given the gift of healing, and ends up at a convent where she sits at the gate, healing the sick. As luck would have it, the king's dastardly brother is stricken with leprosy, and the king takes him to this miraculous healer at the convent. She heals the brother, the king leaves his kingdom to the barons, and the three of them go to a little place in the aforementioned wasteland to live happily ever after. Because retiring to a wasteland is really the way to go.
So that's the story. It proves, unequivocally, that Guglielma was a lot nicer than I would've been in similar circumstances, since I probably would've let the brother die and then, if it were in my power to do so, put a pox on the king for having me needlessly sentenced to death. Of course, that's just one of the many reasons why I'll never be a candidate for canonization.
Anyway, as a piece of literature, St. Guglielma is a quick, entertaining read, largely due to the fact that its story is so dramatic. (Yes, a dramatic play. What a novel concept. Ahem.) If you've read any literature from this era (like, say, Boccaccio or Petrarch) then you'll know that in literary works, women were objects that were acted upon to further a plot (or in the case of Petrarch, write really creepy poetry), but weren't creatures with their own minds or wills or abilities. In this regard, Antonia Pulci's writing serves as a foil to the popular portrayal of female characters, despite the fact that in this day and age, living a life of religious piety and forgiving one's enemies might seem at worst backwards and at best quaint. So, kudos to you, Antonia Pulci for going against the grain (and being a good writer!). Indeed, kudos to you.
Jamelah Reads the Classics: The Book of Margery Kempe
by Jamelah Earle on Thursday, April 20, 2006 05:11 pmEveryone loves a nutcase. This is, of course, why the modern media can't get enough of crazy Tom Cruise and his couch-jumping, placenta-eating antics. This may also be why I finished reading The Book of Margery Kempe. In fact, that's definitely why I finished reading The Book of Margery Kempe. It was fascinating to watch the crazy unfold like, um, a large, unfolding, crazy thing. Here's the deal:
The Book of Margery Kempe is the oldest extant autobiography in English, though it differs from autobiography in the sense that Margery Kempe, who was illiterate, dictated her book to a priest. She also never refers to herself in the first person, instead choosing "the said creature" to refer to herself. This may or may not be interesting from a literary standpoint, but it sure is annoying to read after awhile. Because referring to oneself in the third person? Irritating. Anyway, Margery Kempe was born to a respectable family in 1373 and married at the age of 20. After the birth of her first child, she experiences a break with reality that would today be considered as postpartum psychosis (though Tom Cruise would say she just needed some vitamins -- I'll stop referring to Tom Cruise, I swear), and has her first vision of Jesus. This vision causes Margery to calm down and return to normal. Later in life, after she has given birth to 13 other children (bringing her grand total to 14, in case you wanted to keep track), she feels persuaded by God to devote herself fully to him, and live a life of chastity, convincing her husband to have a chaste marriage:
That's harsh, Margery. Harsh. Of course, devotion to Christ aside (and regardless of religious hang-ups about sex being nasty), I have to say that this is really pretty smooth. I mean, after giving birth to 14 children, I might consider a chaste marriage too. I'm just saying.
Anyway, Margery's devotion to Jesus grows, and she hears the voice of God telling her all sorts of things. She goes on pilgrimages to several holy places -- Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela -- and manages to get on the nerves of many, many people because she has a gift. What gift? The gift of tears, that's what. Of course, it's not really the gift of tears so much as it's the gift of making a complete spectacle out of herself, but whatever, you know. Details. Had I come up with this idea before I'd already read more than 200 pages of The Book, I would've counted the number of times I read something like this:
But what of The Book of Margery Kempe itself? Well, Margery seemed to imagine herself as a Christian mystic in the mold of Julian of Norwich or St. Bridget of Sweden. Though I've never read anything by the latter, I did read excerpts from the work of the former for an English class once upon a time, and though I'm not well-versed in Christian mysticism as a whole, I think that where Margery Kempe differs from the likes of Julian of Norwich is that Julian's Revelations are about God, whereas Margery's mystic experiences seem to be all about her. It's perhaps telling that Margery says one of her sins prior to turning to a life devoted to Christ was that of vanity, and her spirituality manifests itself in loud weeping, causing everyone to be, as she would say, astonished at her. It's also telling that Jesus is constantly telling Margery how great he thinks she is, instead of it being the other way around, which I think would perhaps be more fitting to one who is overcome with love for God. But maybe I've got that wrong. In any case, Margery Kempe's Book is interesting not so much for the reasons Margery herself thought it was, but because it offers a glimpse into the life of a Medieval woman who, crazy or not, tried to live a life of faith despite many difficulties. In that respect, it's valuable, though not exactly a joy to read, except for that whole insane angle. Because, like I said, everyone loves a nutcase. Margery Kempe definitely fits the bill.
The Book of Margery Kempe is the oldest extant autobiography in English, though it differs from autobiography in the sense that Margery Kempe, who was illiterate, dictated her book to a priest. She also never refers to herself in the first person, instead choosing "the said creature" to refer to herself. This may or may not be interesting from a literary standpoint, but it sure is annoying to read after awhile. Because referring to oneself in the third person? Irritating. Anyway, Margery Kempe was born to a respectable family in 1373 and married at the age of 20. After the birth of her first child, she experiences a break with reality that would today be considered as postpartum psychosis (though Tom Cruise would say she just needed some vitamins -- I'll stop referring to Tom Cruise, I swear), and has her first vision of Jesus. This vision causes Margery to calm down and return to normal. Later in life, after she has given birth to 13 other children (bringing her grand total to 14, in case you wanted to keep track), she feels persuaded by God to devote herself fully to him, and live a life of chastity, convincing her husband to have a chaste marriage:
"Margery, if there came a man with a sword who would strike off my head unless I made love with you as I used to do before, tell me on your conscience -- for you say you will not lie -- whether you would allow my head to be cut off, or else allow me to make love with you again, as I did at one time?"
"Alas, sir," she said, "why are you raising this matter, when we have been chaste for these past eight weeks?"
"Because I want to know the truth of your heart."
And then she said with great sorrow, "Truly, I would rather see you being killed, than that we should turn back to our uncleanness."
And he replied, "You are no good wife."
That's harsh, Margery. Harsh. Of course, devotion to Christ aside (and regardless of religious hang-ups about sex being nasty), I have to say that this is really pretty smooth. I mean, after giving birth to 14 children, I might consider a chaste marriage too. I'm just saying.
Anyway, Margery's devotion to Jesus grows, and she hears the voice of God telling her all sorts of things. She goes on pilgrimages to several holy places -- Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela -- and manages to get on the nerves of many, many people because she has a gift. What gift? The gift of tears, that's what. Of course, it's not really the gift of tears so much as it's the gift of making a complete spectacle out of herself, but whatever, you know. Details. Had I come up with this idea before I'd already read more than 200 pages of The Book, I would've counted the number of times I read something like this:
"When she beheld this sight in her soul, she fell down in the field among the people. She cried, she roared, she wept as though she would have burst. She could not control herself or master herself, but cried and roared so that many people were astonished at her."Since I didn't count, however, the best estimate I can give you is that I read something like that way too many times. And I don't know about you, but I had less sympathy for Margery and more sympathy for the people around her, who often tried to be kind, but sometimes had to get away from her because they just couldn't deal anymore. An example of this would've been when, on her pilgrimmage to Jerusalem, her traveling companions told her to leave them alone (and even her personal maid wouldn't have anything to do with her) because she was annoying. Of course, she saw it as them not understanding her or her love of God, but then, crazy people usually don't know that they are complete and utter basket cases.
But what of The Book of Margery Kempe itself? Well, Margery seemed to imagine herself as a Christian mystic in the mold of Julian of Norwich or St. Bridget of Sweden. Though I've never read anything by the latter, I did read excerpts from the work of the former for an English class once upon a time, and though I'm not well-versed in Christian mysticism as a whole, I think that where Margery Kempe differs from the likes of Julian of Norwich is that Julian's Revelations are about God, whereas Margery's mystic experiences seem to be all about her. It's perhaps telling that Margery says one of her sins prior to turning to a life devoted to Christ was that of vanity, and her spirituality manifests itself in loud weeping, causing everyone to be, as she would say, astonished at her. It's also telling that Jesus is constantly telling Margery how great he thinks she is, instead of it being the other way around, which I think would perhaps be more fitting to one who is overcome with love for God. But maybe I've got that wrong. In any case, Margery Kempe's Book is interesting not so much for the reasons Margery herself thought it was, but because it offers a glimpse into the life of a Medieval woman who, crazy or not, tried to live a life of faith despite many difficulties. In that respect, it's valuable, though not exactly a joy to read, except for that whole insane angle. Because, like I said, everyone loves a nutcase. Margery Kempe definitely fits the bill.
Jamelah Reads the Classics: The Book of Margery Kempe
by Jamelah Earle on Monday, April 17, 2006 07:01 pmEveryone loves a nutcase. This is, of course, why the modern media can't get enough of crazy Tom Cruise and his couch-jumping, placenta-eating antics. This may also be why I finished reading The Book of Margery Kempe. In fact, that's definitely why I finished reading The Book of Margery Kempe. It was fascinating to watch the crazy unfold like, um, a large, unfolding, crazy thing. Here's the deal:
The Book of Margery Kempe is the oldest extant autobiography in English, though it differs from autobiography in the sense that Margery Kempe, who was illiterate, dictated her book to a priest. She also never refers to herself in the first person, instead choosing "the said creature" to refer to herself. This may or may not be interesting from a literary standpoint, but it sure is annoying to read after awhile. Because referring to oneself in the third person? Irritating. Anyway, Margery Kempe was born to a respectable family in 1373 and married at the age of 20. After the birth of her first child, she experiences a break with reality that would today be considered as postpartum psychosis (though Tom Cruise would say she just needed some vitamins -- I'll stop referring to Tom Cruise, I swear), and has her first vision of Jesus. This vision causes Margery to calm down and return to normal. Later in life, after she has given birth to 13 other children (bringing her grand total to 14, in case you wanted to keep track), she feels persuaded by God to devote herself fully to him, and live a life of chastity, convincing her husband to have a chaste marriage:
That's harsh, Margery. Harsh. Of course, devotion to Christ aside (and regardless of religious hang-ups about sex being nasty), I have to say that this is really pretty smooth. I mean, after giving birth to 14 children, I might consider a chaste marriage too. I'm just saying.
Anyway, Margery's devotion to Jesus grows, and she hears the voice of God telling her all sorts of things. She goes on pilgrimmages to several holy places -- Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela -- and manages to get on the nerves of many, many people because she has a gift. What gift? The gift of tears, that's what. Of course, it's not really the gift of tears so much as it's the gift of making a complete spectacle out of herself, but whatever, you know. Details. Had I come up with this idea before I'd already read more than 200 pages of The Book, I would've counted the number of times I read something like this:
But what of The Book of Margery Kempe itself? Well, Margery seemed to imagine herself as a Christian mystic in the mold of Julian of Norwich or St. Bridget of Sweden. Though I've never read anything by the latter, I did read excerpts from the work of the former for an English class once upon a time, and though I'm not well-versed in Christian mysticism as a whole, I think that where Margery Kempe differs from the likes of Julian of Norwich is that Julian's Revelations are about God, whereas Margery's mystic experiences seem to be all about her. It's perhaps telling that Margery says one of her sins prior to turning to a life devoted to Christ was that of vanity, and her spirituality manifests itself in loud weeping, causing everyone to be, as she would say, astonished at her. It's also telling that Jesus is constantly telling Margery how great he thinks she is, instead of it being the other way around, which I think would perhaps be more fitting to one who is overcome with love for God. But maybe I've got that wrong. In any case, Margery Kempe's Book is interesting not so much for the reasons Margery herself thought it was, but because it offers a glimpse into the life of a Medieval woman who, crazy or not, tried to live a life of faith despite many difficulties. In that respect, it's valuable, though not exactly a joy to read, except for that whole insane angle. Because, like I said, everyone loves a nutcase. Margery Kempe definitely fits the bill.
The Book of Margery Kempe is the oldest extant autobiography in English, though it differs from autobiography in the sense that Margery Kempe, who was illiterate, dictated her book to a priest. She also never refers to herself in the first person, instead choosing "the said creature" to refer to herself. This may or may not be interesting from a literary standpoint, but it sure is annoying to read after awhile. Because referring to oneself in the third person? Irritating. Anyway, Margery Kempe was born to a respectable family in 1373 and married at the age of 20. After the birth of her first child, she experiences a break with reality that would today be considered as postpartum psychosis (though Tom Cruise would say she just needed some vitamins -- I'll stop referring to Tom Cruise, I swear), and has her first vision of Jesus. This vision causes Margery to calm down and return to normal. Later in life, after she has given birth to 13 other children (bringing her grand total to 14, in case you wanted to keep track), she feels persuaded by God to devote herself fully to him, and live a life of chastity, convincing her husband to have a chaste marriage:
"Margery, if there came a man with a sword who would strike off my head unless I made love with you as I used to do before, tell me on your conscience -- for you say you will not lie -- whether you would allow my head to be cut off, or else allow me to make love with you again, as I did at one time?"
"Alas, sir," she said, "why are you raising this matter, when we have been chaste for these past eight weeks?"
"Because I want to know the truth of your heart."
And then she said with great sorrow, "Truly, I would rather see you being killed, than that we should turn back to our uncleanness."
And he replied, "You are no good wife."
That's harsh, Margery. Harsh. Of course, devotion to Christ aside (and regardless of religious hang-ups about sex being nasty), I have to say that this is really pretty smooth. I mean, after giving birth to 14 children, I might consider a chaste marriage too. I'm just saying.
Anyway, Margery's devotion to Jesus grows, and she hears the voice of God telling her all sorts of things. She goes on pilgrimmages to several holy places -- Jerusalem, Rome, Santiago de Compostela -- and manages to get on the nerves of many, many people because she has a gift. What gift? The gift of tears, that's what. Of course, it's not really the gift of tears so much as it's the gift of making a complete spectacle out of herself, but whatever, you know. Details. Had I come up with this idea before I'd already read more than 200 pages of The Book, I would've counted the number of times I read something like this:
"When she beheld this sight in her soul, she fell down in the field among the people. She cried, she roared, she wept as though she would have burst. She could not control herself or master herself, but cried and roared so that many people were astonished at her."Since I didn't count, however, the best estimate I can give you is that I read something like that way too many times. And I don't know about you, but I had less sympathy for Margery and more sympathy for the people around her, who often tried to be kind, but sometimes had to get away from her because they just couldn't deal anymore. An example of this would've been when, on her pilgrimmage to Jerusalem, her traveling companions told her to leave them alone (and even her personal maid wouldn't have anything to do with her) because she was annoying. Of course, she saw it as them not understanding her or her love of God, but then, crazy people usually don't know that they are complete and utter basket cases.
But what of The Book of Margery Kempe itself? Well, Margery seemed to imagine herself as a Christian mystic in the mold of Julian of Norwich or St. Bridget of Sweden. Though I've never read anything by the latter, I did read excerpts from the work of the former for an English class once upon a time, and though I'm not well-versed in Christian mysticism as a whole, I think that where Margery Kempe differs from the likes of Julian of Norwich is that Julian's Revelations are about God, whereas Margery's mystic experiences seem to be all about her. It's perhaps telling that Margery says one of her sins prior to turning to a life devoted to Christ was that of vanity, and her spirituality manifests itself in loud weeping, causing everyone to be, as she would say, astonished at her. It's also telling that Jesus is constantly telling Margery how great he thinks she is, instead of it being the other way around, which I think would perhaps be more fitting to one who is overcome with love for God. But maybe I've got that wrong. In any case, Margery Kempe's Book is interesting not so much for the reasons Margery herself thought it was, but because it offers a glimpse into the life of a Medieval woman who, crazy or not, tried to live a life of faith despite many difficulties. In that respect, it's valuable, though not exactly a joy to read, except for that whole insane angle. Because, like I said, everyone loves a nutcase. Margery Kempe definitely fits the bill.
