Month: February 2021

Descriptors found in “Nadine, resting on her neighbor’s stoop”, from Judy Grahn’s Work of a Common Woman, use urban language to portray a queer woman named Nadine. Metaphor and simile peppered throughout this poem indicate that Nadine is both a structure built into and a constructor of her environment. For example, the metaphor “she is made of grease, and metal, with a hard head” could be describing Nadine as a greasy, metallic machine or a construction worker, if “hard head” is meant to connote a construction worker’s hard hat. This is crucial to notice because both interpretations juxtapose one another– while machines are man-made structures that mindlessly work until they break down, a construction worker is an independent person who actively chooses to build. Nadine is soundly built into her society, yet she has influence over how she is built in.

This duality continues to appear later in the poem when Grahn writes “She is a mud-chinked cabin in the slums, sitting on a doorstep counting rats and raising 15 children, half of them her own”. Once again, we see Nadine as a structural part of society. Using “cabin” as metaphor expresses Nadine as an essential element to this community, as no person could survive without shelter. Yet this sentence also depicts Nadine’s personal contribution to the community when Grahn reveals half of the children Nadine cares for are her own. And even more importantly, half the children are not Nadine’s. Whether or not the children are biologically hers, Nadine spends her time constructing childhoods for 15 future adults. Again, there is the trope of construction and constructor. 

After sifting through other queer portraits, I found that Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself greatly contrasts Grahn’s portrayal of Nadine. Whitman uses natural imagery to represent defiance of societal constructs. When he writes of animals he announces “I see them and myself in the same old law.” (Whitman 11). By associating himself to the animal kingdom, he frees himself of a rule-abiding city. Additionally, as Nadine is built into an urban setting, Whitman places himself in a land hardly colonized by urban society and cisgender, heteronormative ideology. As a result Whitman is not woven into any societal construction; he solely constructs. 

Perhaps Grahn was reworking Whitman’s portrayal of a queer life through Nadine’s portrait, as Song of Myself is not realistic for the commoner. Whitman had the privilege to venture west and construct his own norms in a largely uncolonized space. Freeing and joyous as that sounds, opportunities such as that do not appear frequently. Like Grahn writes, “the common woman is as common as a nail”: meaning queer people are systematically and deeply built into colonized structures. However, it is important to recognize that queer people are then also what keeps society held together. They are essential. Grahn writes portraits of queer women that are built into societal structure, yet drawing simile to a nail both recognizes and thanks the work queer women do to strengthen and construct our society. 

 

In the poem “Savage Eloquence,” Chrystos writes about the importance of land to Native Americans. Chrystos begins and ends the poem directly speaking to a mountain by saying “Big mountain/ you big story you big/ thing” (1-3). By starting the poem off like this, speaking to a landmass as if it is a living being, she is establishing the Native American belief that spirits inhabit everything around us. This sets the groundwork for the poem being all about Native American beliefs and customs and how white America views Indigenous peoples.

Chrystos writes, “walls more walls jails more jails agencies thieves rapists &/ drunken refuge/ from lives with nothing left” (18-20). This is succinctly saying that non-natives in America view the Native Americans as walled in drunken convicts that have nothing to live for. However, Chrystos doesn’t care that this is how white people view Natives because at the end of the day, the Native Americans are holding onto their culture as tightly as possible and will not let it go just because a bunch of white people try to take it from them. Instead, she says, “Everything we have left is in our hearts/ deeply hidden No photograph or tape recorder or drawing can/ touch/ the mountain of our spirits” (29-33). She is saying that Native Americans remember their history and will not succumb to white people in power trying to erase their culture and customs. She writes, “Vanishing is no metaphor Big mountain you are no news our/ savage/ eloquence is dust between their walls their thousand deaths” (25-27). This is saying that Indigenous voices are meaningless in the eyes of white people. They don’t care what Natives have to say because whites believe Native Americans are inferior to them and not worth listening to. But Chrystos doesn’t care because by writing “Big mountain you are too big you are too small you are such an/ old/ old story” (57-59), she proves that Native American stories and culture will not be forgotten as long as they remember it.

Throughout the poem, “(Auto)biography of Mad,” Qwo-Li Driskill juxtaposes our conventional notions of historical narrative through their unconventional use of structure. Rather than the typical verse-style poetry (or the atypical, but commonly accepted free-verse style), Driskill mimics the format of an index. Instead of alliteration, there’s alphabetization. Numbers replace words, and the overall effect raises the question ‘Who’s writing our story?’ Perhaps graver, the poem goes further to ask, ‘What will be written once we’re gone?’

The theme of afterthought and identity ring doubly throughout “(Auto)biography of a Mad.” Often it is the case that a person’s biography is written after they have either died or it is deemed that they have already made their major life contribution to society. There are some notable exceptions when it comes to billionaires and politicians, but this is beside the point. This notion of ‘end’ ironically appears in the first line, “Subject Index” (107). Indexes appear commonly in the back of books, but also serve as maps for navigating whole works. Following this book motif, in the case of an autobiography, the author serves as the primary subject. Thus, Driskill draws connections between the poem as a map of their life, and a series of events which have seemingly concluded.

However, the poem does not become academic and dry. While the use of the word “Subject” adds to create a removed and absent tone, through the lack of a definitive noun, the use of numbers in the phrases, “Age 14” (107) and “Age 4″ (107) reintroduce the author into the work. Yet other number, such as “1492” (109) and “1540” (108) have the duel effect of alluding to historically traumatic events that negatively affected Indigenous Americans and building the central irony of the poem. Cross generational trauma affects people in the present just as much as it brings historical events to the forefront.

Given Judy Grahn’s poem, “Edward the Dyke,” which satirizes the treatment of women by medical professionals, I don’t think it’s inconceivable to assume that her collection of poems depicting “The Common Woman” might have been inspired by real case studies written about queer women. Whether or not this is accurate, by putting “The Common Woman” poems in conversation with Robert Latou Dickinson’s observatory notes and case studies of lesbians (presented by Martin Duberman in his novel About Time), there is an obvious pattern of grouping women together in order to prove a point. However, it is in the points they are trying to make and their motives for writing these pieces that Dickinson and Grahn differ.

Dickinson is doing physical examinations on women who have been in erotic relationships with other women to try and locate a common abnormality on their physical bodies that will explain their homosexual impulses and desires. He presents each case study with the heading of the woman’s first name and last initial. For instance, there is “SUSAN K.” “PAMELA D.” “GLADYS H.” etc., (Duberman 140). The text itself, naturally, reads like notes being taken, particularly because of the fragmented statements and where the commas are placed. In describing ALBERTA X., Dickinson writes: “Given to extensive experimentation, intently passionate with women, able to obtain orgasm in two minutes or two hours, at times almost daily for months…” (141). Grahn’s “The Common Woman” poems read in a similarly observatory way, as if the author, too, is studying individual women in order to come to a conclusion about all of them as a whole. Like Dickinson, each woman Grahn is writing about has a title with her name, but unlike Dickinson who only then includes their last initials, Grahn choses to follow their first names with settings, such as: “I. Helen at 9 am, at noon, at 5:15” (Grahn 61) and “III. Nadine, resting on her neighbor’s stoop” (65). By adding a time and/or location in each of her headings, it gives the reader a sense that these are snapshots of who each of these women are at the time Grahn is observing them, but, in addition, that they have existed before and will continue to exist after the poem ends. Dickinson, however, reduces the women he studies to their name alone and continues to do so in his writings of them by only analyzing their sexual histories and physical bodies as a means to understand why they are the way that they are. Even though, Grahn’s texts are equally as split up by commas and written in a fragmentary style that mimics Dickinson’s notes (example: Nadine’s poem begins, “She holds things together, collects bail,/ makes the landlord patch the largest holes.” (62)), Grahn is including such a diverse range of characteristics and behaviors of each woman, and different aspects for different women, that it becomes clear her motive is not to find what makes each woman the same but to celebrate that they are all different.

Dickinson believes he can pinpoint a commonality between women who all participated in homoerotic behavior to explain why they desire such interactions, while Grahn is parodying the medical note-taking style to emphasize that the only definable commonality between any two women is that they exist and therefore have the right to change. Consequently, “the common woman” is always defined at the end of each poem as something different than the woman before and after her. Ultimately, it comes as no surprise that Dickinson’s conclusion to his summary is: “No definite findings could be classified as peculiar to homosexual practices” (Duberman 143).

Judy Grahn and her collected poetry, The Work of a Common Woman, highlights the struggles women, especially those that identify as a part of the LGBTQ+ community, endure in their everyday life. Specifically her poem “IV. Carol, in the park, chewing on straws,” with a seemingly unrelated, futile title. To the outside observer, a woman is doing mundane tasks, going about her everyday life without a thought to her actions. However, the woman is facing conflicts that a passive observer cannot understand, and her actions and tasks are not mundane to her. Grahn’s diction purposefully imitates a feeling of despair ends with triumph. Some of those struggles are about how difficult it is for “women [to] go without protection from men,” the idea that women are not able to be fully independent and need men to survive (67). It is difficult to survive in a patriarchal society that constantly works against minorities; eventually she feels the need to go throughout the day and “she smiles and lies and grits her teeth and pretends to be shy, or weak, or busy” (67). Women constantly feel the need to “dumb themselves down” in order to attract a man or seem incompetent in order to not intimidate men. The problem with being confident or assertive is that it is misinterpreted and women get called bossy, conceited, or even a bitch. Yet, the woman “goes home and pounds her own nails, makes her own bets, and fixes her own car, with her friend” (67). Meaning she has no problem being independent, but only feels comfortable enough to do it in the safety of her home. “Her friend” is her partner who “she has taken [as] a woman lover” which was highly criticized especially given the time period: this was written from 1964-1977 (67). Confidently coming out even now is a difficult task for many to do and feel optimistic to share, so one can imagine the fear of doing this over 50 years ago before same-sex marriage was legal or LGBTQ+ rights were recognized. The illustration paired with this poem can be interpreted in two ways; first, either a duality of two faces or second, two women kissing. Nevertheless, both relate to the poem depending on the perspective one views the image. If one views it from the front it looks like one face with two different sides or viewing it as a side profile it looks like two different people kissing. The duality of faces can refer back to Carol feeling the need to hide her independent side from the outside world and the one she shows publicly which is more timid and quiet. The side profile can represent Carol and her partner in an intimate manner. Yet, at the end she may “she may walk around all day quietly, but underneath it she’s electric;… the common woman is as common as a thunderstorm” (67). This simile is comparing women to a thunderstorm being complex yet powerful in nature, which is a beautiful comparison to highlight the strength behind women. 

Qwo-Li Driskills’ poem Pedagogy, describes the impact of medical abuse endured by Native Americans in our modern age. The history between the United States government and biochemical warfare enacted against Native people is a long one, beginning with intentionally placed smallpox blankets to poverty-induced carbon monoxide poisoning. Redlining and genocide have forced Native Americans to live on reservations that often have restricted access to grocery stores, hospitals, and schools. Reservations began as prisoner camps and now house millions of Native Americans in mostly dilapidated and crowded homes. Driskill writes about these experiences in Pedagogy, while also describing their simultaneous dismissal and usage of higher education.

I worry about the cancer cells on my little sister’s cervix

My oldest sister’s gallstones

The hepatitis C in my father’s liver

The most recent accidental carbon monoxide poisoning that put my mother in bed for days

I am worrying about my friend who can’t leave the house because of toxic air

my partner’s depression and HIV

Through the listing of their loved one’s ailments, Driskill addresses a wide array of commonly experienced illnesses that befall Native communities. Carbon monoxide poisoning and toxic air can both be attributed to poor housing/living conditions on reservations. Native people are often forced to live in overly crowded multi-generational homes that would sometimes be considered inhabitable. The line regarding depression is also a sweeping issue on reservations as mental healthcare, and healthcare, in general, is extremely hard to come by.  This segment of the poem is extremely powerful- Driskill points to the lack of medical care and deplorable living conditions that are literally killing millions of Native Americans.

What does this classroom have to do with you anyway?

What does it have to do with any of us?

You are here because Dad said

or to finally get out of that damn town

or to survive a country whose tongue yearns for your blood

This class will not save you

This class will not save any of us

I pray you take some words with you

like sharpened spoons ferry them away up your sleeves

under your tongues

Throughout their segments regarding education, Driskill describes college as useless but also as a tool for survival. They feel out of place in academic settings, feeling as though their time spent in class has nothing to do with them or their incredibly complicated life. Education will not solve all of Driskill’s very real problems, but as the last line reads, can be used as a tool against the violent oppression that consistently tries to silence Native voices.

This poem powerfully articulates the struggles of young Native Americans who strain under the weight of generational trauma and the pressures of success. Qwo-Li Driskill’s poem highlights this constant battle in a way that poignantly describes Native peoples’ pain through art.

(https://blog.nativehope.org/understanding-the-realities-of-reservation-life#:~:text=Indians%20on%20the%20reservations%20suffered,economic%20development%E2%80%9D%2DKahn%20Academy.&text=Families%20were%20given%20plots%20of,another%20and%20housing%20was%20limited.)

The most prevalent theme throughout Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself 51 and Judy Grahn’s, Ella in a square apron, along highway 51 is “strength” and “individualism” in terms of femininity and masculinity, respectively. Grahn’s collection of poems illustrates the experience of what it means to be a “common woman” during a time shaped by patriarchal values and sexist stereotypes.

Grahn compares the Common Woman (Ella) to “as common as a rattlesnake.”  Ella is dangerous, powerful, and violent; she embodies the animal’s strength, as described in lines 6-7.

“She keeps her mind the way men keep a knife-keen to strip the game down to size.”

Although she puts on a strong exterior, the problem persists as the reader is given specific insight into her abusive past in line 16.

“once, she shot a lover who misused her child.”
“Before she got out of jail, the courts had pounced
and given the child away.”

Although Ella shows her strength as a woman and mother, society wins by entitling men to control even when the situation is their fault.  Ella’s child is taken from her, and she is left alone as a victim of patriarchy.

In Walt Whitman’s section 51, there is the theme of possibility. The poem opens with a new chance by stating.

“The past and present wilt—I have fill’d them, emptied them.And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.”

The speaker is striving for a new future and desires to manifest this experience through self-identity, something that Ella rejects.

Although the entirety of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself is full of meaning and beauty, one stanza stood out to me as incredibly poignant:

“I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand.”

I interpret this stanza as an ode in and of itself, speaking to the overwhelming nature of purely existing in the world, in a body that is both simultaneously containing multitudes and is yet incredibly individual in its consciousness. Whitman alludes to the magnitude of how it feels to simply be in the world when he states, “I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and I am happy”. These words indicate a sense of wholeness that can be felt by using one’s senses to explore the world, and how it doesn’t take much to feel a part of the world; to feel belonging in the world can be experienced with the slightest movement of the body. By indicating this almost effortless existence of experience one has in the world, Whitman speaks to a universal ability for all human beings to have access to experiencing the world, simply because their senses give them this privilege.

By stating that these sensory experiences cause happiness, Whitman further elaborates to explain how happiness is relative to an “other”, a relationship between two individuals. By stating, “To touch my person to some one else’s is about as much as I can stand”, Whitman speaks to the overwhelming sense of not only existing in the world but additionally of existing with another in the world. His use of words, “is about as much as I can stand” indicates the intensity of the human experience of interacting with and simply co-existing in a world filled with fellow humans. Through this, Whitman is able to display how the individual is not only happy to be with others but actually needs others in order to fully experience the world.

In addition, I think Whitman’s use of language in this stanza is also indicative of a message of the beauty that comes with human existence in that he uses several sensory verbs to illustrate the act of doing, of feeling, the surrounding world. The use of the words, “stir”, “press”, “feel”, “touch”, and “stand” are all verbs that help the reader to involve themself with the words and begin to feel what Whitman is talking about. The direction of the verbs is also important because they could be interpreted as actions that build off of one another in relation to how an individual comes into their body and consciousness. For example, the verb “stir” reminds me of the first small movements one makes as they are waking up, the verb “press” reminds me of someone beginning to sense the surfaces around them, the verbs “ feel” and “touch” remind me of more conscious actions to reach out and explore what is around oneself, and the verb “stand” reminds me of the final act of getting up from a state of subconsciousness (such as sleeping) and fully uprighting oneself in the world and finally coming to one’s full sense of awareness.

So, why does a stanza exploring the joy in experiencing oneself, others, and the world matter? These words matter because they illustrate the privilege we all have to rise again, every day, and begin a new exploration of existence in the world around us. When Whitman explains that everyone has the innate ability to experience the world through their senses, he highlights the unity of privilege that all humans have to experience their surroundings. In this way, he places all humans on an equal plane in terms of the privilege of simply existing, as he stresses that this state is so wonderful that he can hardly stand it. The cyclical aspect of life can also be seen on both the macro and micro scale, as Whitman depicts in this stanza, by showing how the world offers constant opportunities for renewal and rebirth. This is seen in the use of his words “stir”, “press”, “feel”, “touch”, and “stand”. This is another example of how we are all privileged to a certain extent, regardless of socioeconomic status, etc. Although it is inaccurate to assume that everyone has the same level of privilege, Whitman’s words in this stanza highlight the importance of looking at things through an optimistic lens and noticing the often-overlooked privilege we all share of existing.

(Auto)biography of Mad was quite possibly the most intriguing poem I have ever read. I shake my head now, to think I initially scrolled by it thinking it was references for the introduction, or for some reason, creatively placed footnotes. The entirety of the selected poems held me with a feeling of intense interest and strangely captivating sorrow, as if I was mourning heavily the loss of someone I never knew, but what drew my eyes so closely to (Auto)biography of Mad was its manipulation of form. The choice by Driskill to formulate a poem around something so sterile and unforgiving seemed contrary to the very goals of poetics itself, so the ingenuity pleased as much as it confused me. As I began to read the poem, I thought that perhaps it was engineered to be ignored, scrolled past without care, as many of the issues it describes are when they take place in native communities. But it was impossible to look away from a particular section, one about fear-

Fear

of being watched, 4, 14,

26, 28;

of bleach, 4, 14, 26-28;

of body, 109;

of fireworks, 1997, 1999;

of flat people who hide under bathtubs, 135;

of hairs on the backs of

hands, 14;

of loud noises, 19-28;

of men, 4, 14,46, 128;

of pencils, ix, 4, 14, 26-28;

of people hiding in

laundry piles, 3-28;

of police, 52, 98;

of snakes, 198;

of spit, 63;

of sudden movements, 19-28;

of unlocked doors, 571

The repetition of ‘of’ at the beginning of each line describing either a feared item, or a moment of fear itself, and how frequent some of the fictitious page numbers occurred for different items illustrated to me that the fear for native people (and perhaps more predominantly two-spirited native people) is ever-present and unchanging. Additionally, the poem on first glance seems akin to the pages found in the back of a textbook, which have possibly been the largest offender concerning the misrepresentation of native issues, cultures, and diversity.

The fears themselves, “of sudden movements, of flat people who hide under bathtubs, of people hiding in laundry piles, of unlocked doors, of loud noises” portray someone living in a constant state of hiding, fearing discovery more than anything else. The impossible nature of “flat people who hide under bathtubs/of people hiding in laundry piles” is crushing to contemplate, as two-spirited people and native people in general are not only living in fear during their public daily life, but cannot escape this paranoia in their private and most intimate spaces. Considering that fear is the most elaborated entry in the poem, it suggests that is it’s the most chronic and withstanding issue to the native community, an issue only heightened to native people who are gender fluid or defy heteronormative expression in any way. Whether this fear of being watched relates to the eyes of the government, the eyes of the ethnic majority, the eyes of their own people, or even the eyes of their partner, we will never truly know, but by placing fear alongside chronic mental illnesses and events of historical trauma, Driskill begs us to elevate fear to being an equally destructive force.

Throughout the years, indigenous and queer people have had to try and survive both in terms of actually living and in terms of representation in a world that does not want them. In Qwo-Li Driskill’s poem “Pedagogy” this sense of survival and trying to move forward is evident in the language used, specifically in the opening of the poem. Driskill opens with two quotes whose central theme is walking, one by Deborah Miranda, an Ohlone-Costanoan Esselen poet, and the other by Chrystos, a Menominee and two-spirit poet. These two quotes are connected through their common theme of walking.

“… I am still learning how to

walk in this world

without getting caught.”

Chrystos’ quote uses walking as how we move through our everyday lives. Specifically, this quote can be representative of what it means to be Indigenous, queer, or any other minority in a society where minorities are not always accepted. They’ve had to hid parts of who they are and learn how to get through live “without getting caught” or face sometimes deadly consequences. It is about survival and getting to the point where they no longer have to hid their full identity.

“We walk

alongside power, or

through it—carrying

our illnesses, fearing all

giving has gone to

grave.”

Miranda begin her passage with the image of walking next to or through power. Walking implies moving forward and leaving the past behind to start fresh. By being beside power, it could mean that they, whoever “we” refers to, is getting closer to being equal to those with power. But what is interesting about this is that the second part of the quote brings in the image of “carrying our illnesses” that part of the past cannot be left behind and travels with individuals even as they move forward. Indigenous and queer people carry with them a long and painful history. They’ve had to carry that burden to get them to a place of power today, however I would not say that they hold equal power yet. They have sacrificed so much, so there is that underlying fear that “all giving has gone to the grave,” that all the sacrifices have led to very little improvement. But That fear has not stopped the walking, as shown by the present tense of the word, meaning that they are still there, not just as an image of survival but survivance.

Driskill chose to begin their poem, not with their own words but with the words of two Indigenous and two spirit activists and poets. Both speak of walk as how people move through life and toward the future. By beginning with these quotes before then leading into a poem that focuses on survival, Driskill is able to show two different perspectives on the future. One looks to merely surviving by hiding. The other acknowledges the difficult past but looks to not just survival but survivance, where the group is thriving.