Mariela Castro continues to speak on behalf of Gay and Lesbian Equality

A good article about it in the International Herald Tribune.

Beyond Masculinity

Two things interest me about this website/book. First, Beyond Masculinity seems to be filled with good thinking about the intersections of queerness and gender and I always appreciate a good read on that intersection. Second, I am interested in the publishing and distribution of it. The website is very well designed. It offers a huge variety of ways to access the information and the book. It seems easy and intuitive. I wonder if this is a future vision of book publishing. What do you think?

More on Elizabeth McFarland

There has been a very thoughtful and substantive response by Kathleen Rooney and others on the McFarland review at the Contemporary Poetry Review over on Joan Houlihan’s blog. It is well worth the read.

Final Paper of my MFA Degree

Today I turned in my final paper in completion of my MFA at the University of Maryland. What a feeling! (With all of the self-consciuos reference to the great Irene Cara.)

The paper is titled:

Lesbian Identity as a Conversation with the Imagined Sappho:
Apostrophe and Dramatic Monologue
in the Construction and Imagination of Lesbian Identity

and as has become my practice, I’ve linked it as a PDF here at the blog.

As always, I have lots of new ideas about how to revise this paper and what to do with it next. This one in particular is part of a much broader argument I am putting together about lesbians and poetry. There will be more over the next three and four years on this as I write toward my PhD dissertation.

Stay tuned for photos from graduation this week as well as some insight into the summer plans and goals and objectives.

Elizabeth McFarland and the Work of Writing Reviews

There has recently been a wonderful and spirited conversation over at the Wom-po list serv about a review in the Contemporary Poetry Review about a new book of poems by Elizabeth McFarland. Below is my response to the discussion. Joan Houlihan has also written about it with great thought at her blog.

I'm the person who used the word "catty" and so I feel I need to try and respond in some sort of way, with the caveat that I wrote my original email hastily while traveling. Still, here are my thoughts and why I felt initial peevishness about the CPR review. Rooney actually begins the review with an important question, and perhaps the question of all reviews:

Why should we bother reading this poem or care who wrote it?

I approach all reviews with that question in mind (though I tend to think of it as a first person I and not a plural we, but that my just be stylistic). In fact, as Claire's comment indicates, I don't think that the review really answers that question fully.

One of my first reactions to the review is exactly that, why review this book at all if indeed it is as the reviewer presents it to be. I think one of the first and important questions for a reviewer is why spend this time and energy writing about a book. When I invest time and energy in writing about a book, I do it because there is some exigent reason to read the book or at least know about it. I felt like some of that was missing from Rooney's review - and I think there is an editorial responsibility to answer that question about reviews run.

Also when I encountered the review, the language that Rooney used to describe McFarland's poems was language embedded in gender roles and sexism. I challenge you to find a review of a book by a man in which the words "prim" "quaint" "winsome" and "romantic" are used, particularly all piled atop one another. In addition, the entire paragraph about McFarland's attire while on it's face I take issue with (again when is the last review of a book of poetry by a man talked about his attire) but in addition if the attire is going to be discussed at such length, it seems to me it deserves to be contextualized in a particular time and place for which it may be, actually, quite appropriate! That simply wasn't done.

To add insult to injury (at least to this reader) there is a substantial paragraph about McFarland's marriage. Again, why isn't her work taken as autonomous? Why is it important to contextualize her (for what there is of that) in light of her husband ? Again, I think about this as a question of parity. When you read reviews of male poets, is there a paragraph or two discussing their husbands? Some perhaps, but I would argue those are anomalous.

Those were the things that I found peevish and lead me to say that the review was "catty." And by that I mean, the easy "fight" or tousle was picked. I take the point made on Wompo that "catty" is a word with sexist connotations, but I do think that the tone is "catty" and not say "combative" or "negative".

As I have reread the review and have been mulling it in the back of my mind, the other things that bothers me most about it is the complete failure to contextualize McFarland's poetry either with peers at the time or to consider it in relation to other poetry in other historical contexts.

Rooney mentions McFarland in comparison to Sexton, Plath, and Lowell. It's an easy statement, but I just don't think that it takes McFarland's work on her own terms. From what I know of her poetry, I think that the comparatives to consider are more along the lines of Stevie Smith, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edith Sitwell or Letitia E. Landon. Reading the poetry and biography of McFarland against any of those would, I think, make a much more interesting and illuminating review and put McFarland's work into relief to answer the question that Rooney poses at the beginning of it.

Ultimately, I think that CPR, from what I have read of it, is invested in judging "excellence" as though it were a term not bound by time and changing standards of reading and understanding poetry, and I think that underlies Rooney's review. Though I haven't read the new book, I don't think McFarland is a poet who I will love and who will change my life, but I do think that she deserves a fair appraisal and one that contextualizes her work on her own terms and in conversation with others who would be sympathetic with her project.

Happy Birthday, Adrienne Rich

From The Writer’s Almanac:
It's the birthday of poet Adrienne Rich, (books by this author) born in Baltimore, Maryland (1929). Her first collection of poetry, A Change of World (1951), came out when she was only twenty-one years old. She has gone on to write many books of poetry, including Diving into the Wreck (1973) and The Dream of a Common Language (1978).

A literary way to celebrate GLBT Pride Month

Beltway Poetry Quarterly and Split This Rock present: "GLBT Poets of Washington," a guided walking tour of the Dupont Circle neighborhood, June 21, 10:30 am to Noon. Led by Dan Vera, the tour costs $5 and advance reservations are required. 
 
Celebrate Gay Pride Month and learn how gay literary culture has flourished from the 1970s to the present in the Dupont Circle neighborhood, with the influence of such writers as Essex Hemphill, Ed Cox, Tim Dlugos, Michael Lally, Lee Lally, Richard McCann, Andrew Holleran, and many others.  Stops include Dupont Park, Lambda Rising Bookstore, the site of the Community Bookshop, and writer's homes.  This is an expanded version of the tour first developed for the Split This Rock Poetry Festival in March 2008.
 
The tour takes approximately 1.5 hours and will run rain or shine.  Limited to 25 participants.  Please wear comfortable walking shoes and carry water.  The tour starts outside the Starbucks Coffee where Connecticut Avenue and New Hampshire Avenue intersect with the northern part of Dupont Circle.
 
Dan Vera is Managing Editor of White Crane, a gay men's quarterly magazine, and co-publisher of Vrzhu Press, which publishes books of fine poetry.  He co-curates two monthly public reading series, the Brookland Reading Series, and the OutWrite Series. His blog, "Wondermachine": http://wondermachine.org.
 
To register, please send your name, email, and phone to beltway@mac.com.

From May 3rd: Poem by May Sarton and her Birthday

Below is the information from the Writer’s Almanac of May 3rd. I recently read Margo Peters’ biography of May Sarton which was delightful though I don’t think that I wrote about it in a substantive way. Peters does a thoughtful assessment of Sarton’s work and a well-researched biography. I consider it now a model for some things that I want to do.
"Fruit of Loneliness" by May Sarton, from Encounter in April. © Houghton Mifflin, 1937. (buy now) 

Fruit of Loneliness 

Now for a little I have fed on loneliness
As on some strange fruit from a frost-touched vine—
Persimmon in its yellow comeliness,
Of pomegranate-juice color of wine,
The pucker-mouth crab apple, or late plum—
On fruit of loneliness have I been fed.
But now after short absence I am come
Back from felicity to the wine and bread.
For, being mortal, this luxurious heart
Would starve for you, my dear, I must admit,
If it were held another hour apart
From that food which alone can comfort it—
I am come home to you, for at the end
I find I cannot live without you, friend.

(1930)

It's the birthday of poet and novelist May Sarton, (books by this author) born in Wondelgem, Belgium (1912), the daughter of science historian George Sarton and artist Mabel Elwes Sarton. When she was four, her family fled Belgium to escape invading Germans and eventually settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Sarton attended the progressive Shady Hill School and learned poetry from Agnes Hocking.
She graduated from high school, declined a scholarship offer to Vassar, and moved to New York City to be an apprentice at Eva Le Galienne's Civic Repertory Theatre. She moved to Paris when she was 19, then returned to the States and wrote poetry, supporting herself by teaching in Boston, writing film scripts for the Office of War Information, and lecturing on poetry at various college campuses.
Her first book of poems, Encounter in April, came out in 1937 and included a series of sonnets that had been published in Poetry magazine when she was just 17. Over the course of 60 years, she had an incredibly prolific career, publishing about 50 books, including 19 novels, more than a dozen poetry collections, several volumes of journals, and two children's books.
One of her most influential works was Journal of a Solitude (1973), which became important reading for feminists and a primary text in woman's studies courses. Critic Carolyn Heilbrun said, "I would name 1972 as the turning point for modern women's autobiography … the publication of Journal of a Solitude in 1973 may be acknowledged as the watershed in women's autobiography."
Even after a stroke in her mid-70s, she continued to compose and publish; she recorded onto a tape cassette Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year (1992) and dictated Encore: A Journal of the Eightieth Year (1993). In her final book, At Eighty-Two: A Journal (1995), which was published the year she died, she said she felt like a "stranger in the land of old age."
She said, "One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being."

A Great Day at the Writer's Almanac

"April in Maine" by May Sarton, from Collected Poems: 1930-1993. © W.W. Norton & Company, 1992. (buy now) 

April in Maine 

The days are cold and brown,
Brown fields, no sign of green,
Brown twigs, not even swelling,
And dirty snow in the woods.

But as the dark flows in
The tree frogs begin
Their shrill sweet singing,
And we lie on our beds
Through the ecstatic night,
Wide awake, cracked open.

There will be no going back.


It's the birthday of expatriate writer and literary confidant Alice B. Toklas— (books by this author) the partner of Gertrude Stein—born in San Francisco (1877). In 1907, she went to Paris and there she met Stein, whom Toklas described as wearing "a large, round coral brooch, and when she talked &$8230; I thought her voice came from her brooch. It was unlike any other else's voice — a deep, full velvety contralto's, like two voices." She immediately thought Stein was a genius.
The two became lovers and on a trip to Tuscany a few years later, Stein proposed to Toklas. They returned to Paris and moved into 27 rue de Fleurus, dislodging from the apartment Stein's older brother. The place became a social center for various artists and young writers, and Toklas regularly prepared elaborate meals for Picasso, Hemingway, Matisse, and Fitzgerald. She later included some of her recipes and stories in The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook (1954), in which she wrote, "In the menu, there should be a climax and a culmination. Come to it gently. One will suffice."
Stein proposed that Toklas write an autobiography and suggested that it be called "My Life with the Great" or "My Twenty-Five Years with Gertrude Stein." But instead, Stein herself wrote the book she called The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933). In the book, Stein writes in the voice of Alice:
"I am a pretty good housekeeper and a pretty good gardener and a pretty good needlewoman and a pretty good secretary and a pretty good vet for dogs and I have to do them all at once and I found it difficult to add being a pretty good author."

It's the birthday of Annie (Doak) Dillard, (books by this author) born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1945). After writing a master's thesis on Thoreau's Walden, she moved to a cabin along Tinker Creek in the Virginian Blue Ridge Mountains. There she wrote poetry and also kept a daily journal of her observations of nature and her thoughts about God and religion. She wrote in old notebooks and on four-by-six-inch index cards, and when she was ready to transform the journal into a book, she had 1,100 entries. The result, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, was published in 1974. It became a Book of the Month Club selection that year and received the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction in 1975; she was only 29 years old.
She has published collections of essays and of poetry, as well as an autobiography. Her most recent work is a novel, The Maytrees (2007).

Publishing Triangle Awards announced

The winners of the Publishing Triangle Awards were announced last night:

The Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry: Joan Larkin, My Body (Hanging Loose Press)

The Thom Gunn Award for Gay Male Poetry: (tie) Steve Fellner, Blind Date with Cavafy (Marsh Hawk Press); Daniel Hall, Under Sleep (The University of Chicago Press)

The Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction: Myriam Gurba, Dahlia Season (Manic D Press)

The Ferro Grumley Awards for LGBT Fiction: (tie) Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); Ali Liebegott, The IHOP Papers (Carroll & Graf)

The Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction: Janet Malcolm, Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice (Yale University Press)

The Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction: Michael Rowe, Other Men's Sons (Cormorant Books)

Also awarded, and previously announced:
The Publishing Triangle Leadership Award: Richard Labonte and Carol Seajay
The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement: Katherine V. Forrest