Month: February 2021

       Number 46 of Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself helps us identify and understand Helen from Judy Grahn’s The Work Of A Common Woman. Together, they reveal the sacrifices that Helen has made in order to live the life of a successful woman. Most importantly, 46 helps us understand why those sacrifices leave her dissatisfied in the end.

       The seventh stanza of #46 in Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself contemplates the meaning of success and fulfillment in life. The speaker questions their spirit: 

       “… When we become the enfolders of the those 

       orbs and the pleasure and knowledge of every thing in them,

       shall we be filled and satisfied then?”

To which the spirit replied: “No, we level that lift to pass and continue beyond.” In these passages, the speaker questions if striving to be the best and desiring to have the most knowledge will give our life satisfaction. With the word “then” the speaker questions if only with greatness will we feel fulfillment in life. The spirit answers the speaker by denying these assumptions – they advise that we don’t need to have everything in this life, that it is impossible to have “knowledge of every thing” so we “we level” and “continue beyond.” It suggests a message to be satisfied with what you have and implies fulfillment of one’s life is not defined by how much you have accomplished.

       Using Whitman’s question of fulfillment and success, we are able to better understand one of Grahn’s common women, Helen. Helen defines herself as a woman who has found success in her occupation, a “boss” who “[wears] trim suits and spiked heels.” She is a woman of authority, “pitting the men against each other / and getting the women fired.” In her position, she holds authority over both men and women – revealing the power that her position allows her to have. If success were defined by society, Helen lives a successful life and she believes she does. However, as the poem makes explicit, “ she doesn’t realize yet, that she’s missed success, also.” The word “yet” greatly implies that Helen has defined success as becoming one of the greatest and accomplishing more than any other woman has. The word “missed” reveals to us that this is not how we should define success. As Whitman outlines, greatness and accomplishments do not guarantee success in living life.

       The seventh stanza of Whitman’s 46 reveals to us that fulfillment and satisfaction in life cannot be found by measuring your accomplishments or by continually striving to be the best. Helen, to be in her position, has sacrificed parts of herself. She becomes “stiff” as she “tries to make it in a male form.” This line reveals to us that she feels, in order to be successful, she must act as men do in society. That in order to be successful in this male-dominated society, she cannot be herself. She “[wears] trim suits” and says “‘bust’ instead of breasts” just as men do. Most unfortunate of all, in her successful life, “she misses love and trust” and in her “grief” she acts in “fits of fury.” These lines reveal that she is not satisfied with the life that she has chosen to live, that she is unhappy in her successful life. Just as the spirit of Whitman’s 46 tell us, satisfaction is not defined by our successes. By living a life where she continually sacrifices parts of herself for the promise of success, she unknowingly chooses a life that is not full or satisfactory. 

“Detroit Annie, Hitchhiking” in The Work of A Common Woman presents Annie’s state of being, history, and her womanhood through the symbolism of liquids and the solid matters that contain such liquids.

Annie’s interiority as a woman is first represented by blood and “the reddest wine.” This interiority of hurt and façade, respectively, arises from the discontent of her female upper-class background. She is (dis)placed by others in the ostentatious appearance of a “velvet hat with great/dangling black feathers.” She is as “common/as the reddest wine,” another signifier of her supposed bourgeoise taste. Her mind, at first, is equated to “cut-glass,” a crystal solid matter that is chiseled into, to fit the constraints of her background. Annie “carelessly handle[s]” her glass-chiseled mind, which results in her words pouring out like blood from a “broken/artery” (literally broken here by the enjambment; artery likely broken by the “carelessly handled” glass). Her “cut-glass” mind becomes the shell that holds both the “reddest wine” (her upper-class façade) and the blood of her words (her pain caused by being female and bourgeoise). The red hue of blood and wine is indistinguishable, which constitutes her abject womanhood.

Then Annie seeks to change: by removing herself from her “frozen” status quo, by going “to the docks and dances” into more vast and clearer water, and by “hitchhiking.” This hitchhike takes place on a large body of water as well, like the sea, where “fishermen” find themselves looking for fish. They think Annie is fish because of her intimate relationship with water. These men become “danger” and predators, who seek to capture her. But they are “fools” and unable to, because she is constantly “in motion” and has learned to fend for herself by transforming into another form of liquid: “gasoline.” Gasoline is clearer, more diluted from the thickness and from the red hue of blood and wine; it is also more flammable and so people must be careful with it, with her. While her interiority changes into a tougher, defensive liquid of womanhood, it still requires a shell to protect it, i.e. fire. She must “light” the gasoline that is herself to effectively enact the fireful defense before “danger,” before men. Fire doesn’t burn the gasoline or with it but burns on top of it.

Finally, the hitchhiking in the open water has once more transformed her liquid into seawater, freer and vaster womanhood. Having fended off the fishermen, now she leaves the taste of “salt and iron” under “your tongue.” This second person “you,” or us the readers of the poems here, has witnessed their false illusion of Annie to her metamorphoses,  from her literal “shav[ing] her head” to the taste of her saltlike interior and iron exterior.

Nonetheless, Annie’s altering forms of liquids do not separate from one another but all connect together like a body of water, for the tense of the poem remains the present tense throughout all these metamorphoses. Her interior state moves and merges blood, the reddest wine, with gasoline and seawater, moves and merges hurt, constraint, with defense, with the vast interiority of “salt” water. However, all these different interiorities cannot exist on their own but shielded by glass, fire, and iron. The poem still begins and ends with her blood and wine state as a frame that still constrains her. Annie cannot achieve complete liberation from her background or the persecution of her womanhood. She must always keep guard of herself by imposing a shell to protect her womanhood.

Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself is an American classic. The poem’s attention to the various iconographies of America, its natural beauty and its people alongside Whitman’s own reputation have cemented it and him as a centerpiece of classic American literature.

Yet it cannot go without saying that Walt Whitman’s attempt to condense the American experience into a singular monolith, as portrayed in one of the most famous lines of the poem — “I am large, I contain multitudes” (Whitman section 51) — creates an odd, paradoxical singularity of America. Walt Whitman’s whiteness in an era where segregation and slavery was still legal cannot go without saying. Whitman’s poem references many comparisons to slavery, such as

“The hounded slave that flags in the race, leans by the fence, blowing, cover’d with sweat,
The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck, the murderous buckshot and the bullets,
All these I feel or am.” (Whitman section 33)

So when we revisit the “I contain multitudes” line, we are made aware of how Whitman attempts to not only contain his own identity, but the identity of other Americans, including the enslaved into a uniform line representing them all.

In The Work of a Common Woman , a poetry collection from Judy Grahn we are treated to a different experience of America. Grahn’s poems about common women are anything but common— in direct opposition to Whitman’s singular multitudes we are treated to the unique common experience, poems about specific people and their specific lives and personalities. We get names of women like Helen, Vera and Ella. We are told they and others Grahn writes about are the common women, yet we also get lines that emphasize anything but common. Ella’s poem has a line that goes “Once she shot a lover who misused her child. Before she got out of jail, the courts had pounced and given the child away.” (Grahn 63).

It is lines like this that make us wonder what ‘common’ here is to mean, when Ella’s experiences aren’t the same as the next poem’s subject Nadine, “sitting on the doorstep counting/rats and raising 15 children,/half of them her own.” (Grahn 64). Common here is anything but common, and Grahn brilliantly avoids the same trap Whitman set for himself trying to lump America into one bubble. One might feel like this is Grahn’s answer to Whitman’s famous line, her own way of trying to inform Whitman that his experience isn’t representative of everyone, and that each person is their own unique identity, even with similar experiences and commonalities this uniqueness makes them their own individual being and they deserve to be seen as such. Grahn’s poems end up thus affirming America, and America’s women as a nation of different peoples, alike but never the same.

Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself examines themes of identity and nature. I was compelled to analyze section 46, where Whitman details a “perpetual journey” (p 48), because the meaning of his travels are deeper than physical movement through space. In the lines from this section that I focused on, Whitman writes,
“Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself./
It is not far….it is within reach,
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know,
Perhaps it is every where on water and on land.”
The “road” that must be traveled on one’s own could be interpreted as an emotional voyage to find happiness or self-fulfillment. However, I read these lines to be about coming out and the queer experience. Walt Whitman was known for being gay or bisexual due to the implications of his writing and his close friendships with men. With his sexuality in mind, it is fair to read the poem with special attention to sexuality.
The word “you” is repeated five times throughout these five lines, which leads me to believe it is significant to the truth of the poem. Identity is expressed through “you”. The author is telling the readers that they must look inside themselves in order to reach the end of the road. It is something that only they can complete because sexuality is a personal matter. No one can tell you how you feel or who you love. That finish line could anywhere or “every where”, according to Whitman. If the end goal is so broad, what could it be? I interpreted it to be coming out to both yourself and the world, but it could also be seen as the journey of living your life as a queer person.
Another line I found interesting was the fourth line, “Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know,”. Realizing that you are a part of the LGBTQ+ community takes a great deal of time and introspection. Being queer is not a choice, it is who you are, therefore, it is only natural that the journey of queerness has been going on from the time one was born.
Whitman’s depiction of the experience many in the LGBTQ+ community go through as a private journey makes me question if the journey he described could be relatable to every person, or if it is too simple to encompass the experiences of an entire group. On the contrary, his poem could also be broad enough to fit in the lives of any queer person and their journey.

(Carol, in the park, chewing on straws)

This poem was particularly striking to me because of the external dialogue that starts the poem and later returns in the second half. The quotes are about how Carol has taken a woman as a lover and how it’s seen as such a misfortune. These quotes also are some of the only forms of perfect rhyme within this poem (do, you, say, day). The rest of the poem details Carol’s day and the things she does in private as well as how she appears outwardly. There is an interesting play between hard and soft motifs within lines 5-9. During the day she smiles and pretends to be shy and meek. But then when she gets home she pounds her own nails, fixes her car and makes bets. But at the end of line 9 Carol does this all “with her friend”. To me I see this as societies denial of lesbian couples as passing them off as friends and invalidating their relationship.

Carol tries to stay as far away from men as possible. The poem doesn’t seem to elaborate on this further but it could be due to a previous bad experience with men. She often daydreams of being different things or animals. Within the imagery of the second half of the poem has lots of connotations with freedom and being light or airy.     The end of the poem is how she is full of this electricity and passion, which can be found in every woman. Even if it isn’t surface level.

The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke features the main character Edward, who is a woman in therapy with Dr. Merlin Knox following her problems with using public bathrooms. Her problem was something that is still a common occurrence with gender nonconforming people today – she did not feel as though she could use the men’s bathroom because she was not a man, but did not feel safe in the women’s bathroom because other women viewed her as too masculine to be there. The ideas of gender in this poem are interesting to look at when considering chapter two of Susan Stryker’s Transgender History. On page 48, Stryker shares that crossdressing became a controversial issue in the mid-nineteenth century after the urbanization that made queer communities more popular. Crossdressing became a topic in first-wave feminism when feminists began arguing that their gender presentation of dressing in long skirts was a form of oppression; antifeminists countered this because of how it represented “threatened loss of distinction between men and women” and could be seen as “tantamount to cross-dressing” (51).

The Work of a Common Woman by Judy Grahn was not written until about a hundred years after the regulation of crossdressing began, but the treatment of Edward because of her wardrobe is strikingly similar to that of the 1850s. In the introduction to her poetry collection, Grahn states that she wrote The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke to criticize the “mistreatment of women in the hands of medical professionals” (24). This alone is a very feminist argument to show how women were treated as hysterical under so many circumstances in this time period. However, Edward’s gender presentation provides an interesting look into the problems faced by women who did not conform to normalized gender expression. At one point in Edward’s session with Dr. Knox, she is speaking of dressing up in a highly feminine manner. When he asks if this made her feel truly feminine, she responded with “I felt truly immobilized. I could no longer run, walk bend stoop move my arms of spread my feet apart,” (Grahn 29). Following this, Edward tells about how she was physically stuck in place by her shoe going through the carpet when she wore heels. This idea of immobilization through feminine clothing relates back to Stryker’s analysis of first wave feminism and how women argued that pants were a way to “free them” of the oppression of dresses in which it made it harder to move or even breathe for them. In this poem Dr. Knox also echoes the idea of antifeminists at the time who compared gender nonconformity to cross-dressing through deciding that Edward was hysterical and had “penis envy” and wanted to “possess her father” (Grahn 30). When it is considered through the lens of first wave feminism, The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke goes from being a bizarre poem that explores problems in the medical field at the time to showing how queer people have been oppressed through noncompliance with gender expression. Although gender nonconformity and cross dressing are not the same thing and are done by people for very different reasons, they have been equated as being the same for centuries to further stigmatize people who do not follow gender roles – in some cases even to the point of oppressing them or convincing them they are crazy, as was the case in this poem.

The miscommunication is seen in many different ways in The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke by Judy Grahn, but I think the most significant moment of this miscommunication between Edward and Dr. Knox is seen on page 30.

First, I should explain what I mean by miscommunication in this context. Throughout this short piece of writing, it is evident that Edward and Dr. Knox are not on the same page in any respect during this meeting. Dr. Knox continually does not listen to Edward when she tries to explain how she feels or what she believes her identity to be. It should be stressed that the miscommunication is not the fault of Edward but Dr. Knox in this context because it is clear that he could really care less about how Edward feels, as seen at the end of the story when he draws a picture of his bank. He is only really in this for the money. 

The miscommunication in this piece stems from the idea that Dr. Knox isn’t listening to Edward even though she explains her worries and problems. This unwillingness to listen to Edward connects to the larger concept of people in the LGBTQ community in the past and now, unfortunately not always being heard, specifically by the medical community, even when they are expressing the issues they are having while trying to embody who they believe they authentically are. 

Grahn uses many different words and examples in this story to emphasize the miscommunication between Edward and Dr. Knox. However, I would argue that on page 30, when Edward starts to say words that seemingly don’t connect to what Dr. Knox is saying, it emphasizes this conflict significantly. 

Dr. Knox states, “‘This oral eroticism of yours is defiantly rooted in Penis Envy, which showed when you deliberately castrated your date by publicly embarrassing him.'” 

Edward responds by moaning, “‘But strawberries. But lemon cream pie.'”

This same pattern continues with Dr. Knox accusing Edward and Edward responding with random words. By choosing these seemingly random words that don’t really make sense, Grahn indicates that what Edward is saying to try and defend herself against these allegations just doesn’t make any sense to Dr. Knox because he isn’t listening to her. No matter what she says, even if it made sense in this context, he still wouldn’t listen to her. Grahn appears to be indicating that even if she says random words, Dr. Knox will always not listen to her or really try to help her. 

This whole interaction on page 30 circles back to the idea of LGBTQ people not being listened to or understood by the medical community. Grahn uses this story to indicate the frustration and humiliation that occurs for many people in the LGBTQ community when dealing with medical professionals. By illuminating this miscommunication in the story, Grahn is calling out the medical community for all of the things they have done to hurt the LGBTQ community. She does it funnily and heartbreakingly at the same time, almost as though to indicate just how ridiculous it is that she has to be writing this kind of story in the first place.

Walt Whitman views himself as the poet of America; in “Song of Myself,” he uses his poetic voice to embody different minorities and tell their stories. Whitman asserts his right to existence without explanation or compromise in the line: “I exist as I am, that is enough/ If no other in the world be aware I sit content/ And if each and all be aware I sit content” (Whitman 413-415). In this quote, Whitman claims his very being as worthy; this worthiness is independent of standards of societal acceptability. The sentiment that individual worthiness should be something that one does not have to prove, and something that others cannot take away, is echoed in a sentence from Qwo-Li Driskill’s Introduction to Sovereign Erotics: “Sovereign Erotics is for those who- like so many of us- had no role models, no one to tell us that we were valuable human beings just as we were” (Driskill 1). Driskill claims in their book, published over 150 years after “Song of Myself,” that queer and two-spirit Native Americans have not had the freedom to internalize the ideas Whitman embraces in his poem. This forces us to call into question Whitman’s authority as the true American voice, and as someone who can speak for minority groups such as queer Indigenous people. The distinction between the two quotes also brings to attention the nuances that come along with race and self-acceptance in queer communities.  

The differences in the pronouns used in each quote reveals further differences between Whitman’s version of queer self-worth and Driskill’s version. Whitman states, in regard to his self-worth, “if no other in the world be aware I sit content” (Whitman 414). Whitman addresses his audience from a first-person perspective, continuously declaring his individual worth; he does not need others to be accepting of him and draws his feelings of value from a place inside of himself. In contrast, Driskill uses the pronouns “us” and “we” in the quote. Driskill directly states that the intended audience for their book are people who have shared the lived experience of being Native and queer; this address to the audience about shared worthiness is purposeful. Driskill claims that providing others with a source of self-worth is not only important, but the reason that they contributed to the book. Whitman does not need anyone to recognize his worth, but Driskill asserts the necessity of providing a community of role models as a source of worth for others. 

Within the collection of poetry of “The Work of a Common Woman” by Judy Grahn, “The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke” really stands out to me as a unique poem. Written more like prose, the poem is a satirical story which points out the ridiculousness of the medical community’s treatment of transgender people, and LGBT people more generally. There was a lot of overlap between this story’s themes and Susan Stryker’s second chapter of “Transgender History,” in which Stryker talks about some of the prejudices LGBT people face in getting the medical treatment they need. Because these two pieces of writing are in such strong conversation with one another, I thought it would be worth examining how they compliment each other, in order to understand why Grahn’s poem is so effective in shedding light on some of the unfortunate realities that Stryker points out in “Transgender History.”

As Stryker notes in the section “The Social Power of Medicine,” the advancement of surgery so that it was not a death sentence was very significant to transgender people who felt compelled to physically change their bodies to better reflect their identities. However, in the middle decades of the 19^th century, there was really no concept of these “elective surgeries” as we may call them today. As such, surgeries at this time required a pre-requisite of “sickness.” This created a dilemma among transgender people, where they had an opportunity to receive the operation they needed, but in order to do so needed to accept the medical (and societal) diagnosis that transgender people were “mentally ill” in order to receive treatment, a diagnosis that was absolutely false.

Though the later research of Ulrich, Kertbeny, and Hirschfield have contributed to a better understanding of the biological realities of transgender people, many of the prejudices and generalizations still remain. The prejudiced psychoanalysis of Edward by the doctor within the story is meant to represent a long-standing trend for not just transgender/LGBT people, but other minorities as well. The poem is characterized by the doctor’s shortness and quick generalization of Edward without listening to the whole story, treating her more as a case study than as a person. His diagnoses are not painted by his evaluation of Edward, but by his views of LGBT people based on long standing stereotypes, like when he assumes that Edward has multiple lovers, that she has penis envy, and that she exhibits the Freudian idea that she wants “to kill her mother.”

The fact that these attitudes could still be held by medical/psychiatric professionals when Grahn wrote her poetry collection in the 1960’s and 1970’s, well after the origins of widespread transgender medical prejudices that seemingly began in the middle of the 19^th century or perhaps even earlier, shows just how deeply systemic discrimination can impact minority livelihoods. Though her poem is obviously slightly exaggerated for satirical effect, what Grahn is trying to get at is just how much these prejudices can persist in a community even after they’ve been disproven, and how harmful these prejudices can be towards LGBT people who are trying to discover their unique identities. This is brought home by Edward’s declaration towards the end of the poem about herself that she is “vile,” because whenever she turns to someone like the doctor in the poem for help, they tell her she’s suffering from a “deadly affliction” and that she’s “sick.” Taken within the context of the LGBT history Stryker examines, Grahn is shedding a light on the systemic issues that have persisted over time for LGBT people that need to be rectified.

While initially reading “IV. Carol, in the park, chewing on straws,” by Judy Grahn, I envisioned the woman of focus within the piece, as disinterested with her life, putting on a persona to please others. After re-reading and pairing it with Adrienne Rich’s poem “Diving into the Wreck,” I believe both speakers in each poem, ironically, have a desire to face hardships, in order to grow and reach a sense of purpose. In particular, the narration is in third person, therefore it directly shows not only an outside perspective of Carol but also her inner monologue. This is ultimately examined in lines 13-21, where the speaker states,

On weekends, she dreams of becoming a tree;
A tree that dreams it is ground up
And sent to the paper factory, where it
Lies helpless in sheets, until it dreams
Of becoming a paper airplane, and rises
On its own current; where it turns into a
Bird, a great coasting bird that dreams of becoming
More free, even, than that—a feather, finally, or
A piece of air with lightning in it (1).

Grahn gives the reader an insight in this specific excerpt, where Carol’s deepest desires are unveiled. Line 13 begins her inner monologue as she dreams of becoming another, in particular, something that is inanimate. The tone of the speaker in line 13 is almost nostalgic, yet in line 14 it is drastically different. She then wishes that she was “a tree that…is ground up.” The switch of her tone from holding a positive connotation to a more gruesome one is quite shocking. From this immediate juxtaposition, I believe that Carol has an inclination towards death and suffering. Furthering this desire for suffering, in lines 15-16, it states, “And sent to the paper factory, where it lies helpless in sheets.” However, I do not firmly believe that this desire for suffering results in her ‘end,’ but instead, her personal growth. Directly shown in the following lines, the speaker shows Carol’s longing for change and growth. It states, “…until it dreams of becoming a paper airplane, and rises on its own current. Not only does this line show her desire for newness, but also her ability to be independent. By having the paper airplane form and be able to “rise on its own current,” Carol will not be at anyone’s disposure. The final three lines of the excerpt are riveting, as the speaker explicitly shows Carol’s longing for freedom and her ultimate means to do so. It is stated, “…where it turns into a bird, a great coasting bird that dreams of becoming more free, even, than that—a feather, finally, or a piece of air with lightning in it.” The overarching transformation of a tree to a feather heightens the amount of change Carol wants to have within her life. The smaller changes within, of tree to paper, paper to paper airplane, airplane to bird, and bird to feather, show the hardships and steps of changing, enveloped within the larger transformation.
Rich’s narration of “Diving into the Wreck” is similar, as the speaker gives the reader an insight into a wreck she discovers, and ultimately keeps going back to. In my blog post prior, I made a connection between the wreck itself and the speaker’s feelings regarding the wreck. I believed that the ‘wreck’ meant the speaker’s past and that the speaker wants to use the wreck as a learning experience for growth.

In the seventh stanza, Rich states,
The thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty (102).
If the reader were to assume that the ‘wreck’ means the speaker’s past, then the disregard for the story of the past only heightens the speaker’s distaste for being stuck within the past. Through the metaphor of “the drowning face always staring,” the reader can infer that the past is always lingering. By positioning the face “towards the sun,” this demonstrates how the speaker has the ability to use the past to their advantage. However, this has not been done yet and the reader can assume through Rich’s explanation of this image, being “the evidence of damage.” Both Rich and Grahn depict their speakers as longing for change and ironically, wanting to face hardships along the way, in order for their ultimate growth.