Birth, not death, is the hard loss. I know. I also left a skin there.
Birth, death, war, grief, abortion, trauma, abuse, bottled-up violence, domestic cBirth, not death, is the hard loss. I know. I also left a skin there.
Birth, death, war, grief, abortion, trauma, abuse, bottled-up violence, domestic claustrophobia. The emotional landscapes Louise Glück explores in in her 1968 debut collection are grim and desolate. Her poems evoke a dark and inhospitable world in which tension, friction, absence, loss, hopelessness define life and relationships . Raw, stern, often angry and unheimlich, Firstborn is a collection on which she herself tried to look back “with embarrassed tenderness”. Nonetheless, thinking of what I remember from reading some of her later collections (Meadowlands, Averno, Winter Recipes from the Collective), I have the impression some of those later themes, motifs (flowers, stars, mythology, the natural world) and moods are incipient in these early poems, which lean more on the use of rhyme than the later poems. Many lines of the poems didn’t disclose themselves yet when reading them for a first time. Hopefully, when continuing to read my way chronologically through her oeuvre this year, more light will shine through their opacity and further insights will grow.
Some of the poems that spoke to me most: .
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Late snow Seven years I watched the next-door Lady stroll her empty mate. One May he turned his head to see A chrysalis give forth its kleenex creature:
He’d forgotten what they were. But pleasant days she Walked him up and down. And crooned to him. He gurgled from his wheelchair, finally
Dying last Fall. I think the birds came Back too soon this year. The slugs Have been extinguished by a snow. Still, all the same,
She wasn’t young herself. It must have hurt her legs To push his weight that way. A late snow hugs The robins’ tree. I saw it come. The mama withers on her eggs.
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Cottonmouth Country
Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras. And there were other signs That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us By land: among the pines An uncurled cottonmouth that rolled on moss Reared in the polluted air. Birth, not death, is the hard loss. I know. I also left a skin there.
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Firstborn The weeks go by. I shelve them, They are all the same, like peeled soup cans… Beans sour in their pot. I watch the lone onion Floating like Ophelia, caked with grease: You listless, fidget with the spoon. What now? You miss my care? Your yard ripens To a ward of roses, like a year ago when staff nuns Wheeled me down the aisle… You couldn’t look. I saw Converted love, your son, Drooling under glass, starving... We are eating well. Today my meatman turns his trained knife On veal, your favorite. I pay with my life....more
They both stared out at the parking lot. They didn't say anything. But they seemed to feel each other's insides now, as though the worry had made themThey both stared out at the parking lot. They didn't say anything. But they seemed to feel each other's insides now, as though the worry had made them transparent in a perfectly natural way.
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As soon as I started reading A Small Good Thing and recognized Ann Weiss at the bakery ordering the birthday cake decorated with a space ship for her son Scotty for next Monday morning, I realised I had read this story before - and even if I didn't want to continue because I was all too aware of what was coming, I was lost anyway, my memory hastening toward bringing it all back - the car accident, the hospital, the impotence of the doctors, the parents, the hard-working, purposeful baker, the phone calls. The begging for and make-believe reassurance, ever weaker, ever less confident, that everything will be fine and the child ok.
Yes, it is a heart-breaking story. Yes, it is even worse so the second time around.
A Small Good Thing is a powerful story touching on the fragility of life, cutting deep into the devastation of fear, guilt, grief, helplessness, pain and loneliness, showing how a shared experience of the sense of loss nevertheless connects people, ultimately thawing in some comfort coming in the shape of a simple, kind gesture that soothes the anger and the numbing pain, if only for a short time, on a moment the world seems to stand still, in a way that reminded me of the poem of Joy Harjo:
Perhaps the World Ends Here
The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.
A multi-layered story about involuntary sibling rivalry which reminded me of the times this wa[image]
(Grandmother's Quilt, Anacostia Community Museum)
A multi-layered story about involuntary sibling rivalry which reminded me of the times this was slowly growing into an issue colouring my own life, finding a certain comfort in the film song Miss Celie's Blues (Sister) in the film based on Alice Walker's The Color Purple - giving my own reading to it which was not connected to the film (not watched) or book (not read yet), still cherishing the illusion that a less conventional way of life was the right choice after all:
Oh sister, have I got news for you I´m somethin' I hope you think that you´re somethin' too
About thirty seven years later, it strikes me as quite ironic we used to quarrel not about a quilt or another keepsake from our grandmother, but a book. A book from our father about Karl Marx. How symbolic.
While I was unware of the ongoing fight for dominance and parental appreciation - probably I was reading and not paying attention - my sister won - and is still winning. In the end it will make no difference. I am still alive.
Why. It was a whistle of wind in a crack, a knife thrust, a window thrown open on emptiness. The waiting white face was gone, the darkness was f'Why?'
Why. It was a whistle of wind in a crack, a knife thrust, a window thrown open on emptiness. The waiting white face was gone, the darkness was featureless....more
She lay awake, gazing upon the debris that cluttered their matrimonial trail. Not an image left standing along the way. Anything like flowers had longShe lay awake, gazing upon the debris that cluttered their matrimonial trail. Not an image left standing along the way. Anything like flowers had long ago been drowned in the salty stream that had been pressed from her heart. Her tears, her sweat, her blood.
If the universe is reluctant to settle scores, Zora Neale Hurston is willing to do the job instead....more
The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is inThe trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain.
This allegorical and troubling take on moral choices and the price society is willing to pay for happiness reminded me of the teachings of our professor of ethics. Instead of presenting the thoughts of other philosophers to us, he went on a mission to raise our consciousness on what he called the ugliness of de backside of things: what is happening at the outskirts of our towns, in the slaughterhouses; the messy extensions to houses built in the back garden without permission which one cannot guess from the well-tended, flower-filled front gardens and whitewashed facades. He pointed out how people like to turn away from the origin of the cutlets on their plate, the meat that once was a breathing creature like themselves, slaughtered out of their sight by others so they don’t have to associate it with murder and suffering anymore.
[image] (Illustration by Sabien Clement)
In Ursula Le Guin’s city of utopian joy and happiness, no one can claim to be ignorant of the suffering their happiness relies on. Children are introduced to the ugly truth at tender age. The only available options seem to be to take it or leave it – to stay or to walk away into the darkness of the unknown. What is the freedom of us all against the suffering of the few? If only one’s choices would be enough to prove that question for what it is worth: wrong.
Outside, the fire-red, gas-blue, ghost-green signs shone smokily through the tranquil rain. It was late afternoon and the streets were in movement; thOutside, the fire-red, gas-blue, ghost-green signs shone smokily through the tranquil rain. It was late afternoon and the streets were in movement; the bistros gleamed. At the corner of the Boulevard des Capucines he took a taxi. The Place de la Concorde moved by in pink majesty; they crossed the logical Seine, and Charlie felt the sudden provincial quality of the Left Bank.
Babylon revisited is a semi-autobiographical story in which Charles ‘Charlie’ Wales after a couple of wild years of living in Paris marked by loads of booze, partying and big spending returns to the city from Prague, where he went to live after the death of his wife, the stock market crash of 1929 and his own collapse. He humbly attempts to persuade his late wife’s family that he distanced himself sufficiently from his old life and is solid and sober enough to regain the custody of his nine-year-old daughter Honoria.
Babylon is a moniker for the immoral and roaring Paris catering to vice and waste as lived rambunctiously by Charles Wales and his late wife with their circle of American expat friends during the Jazz Age - the Babylon of perpetual temptation and sin.
It is a wistful story on the longing for and (im)possibility of redemption for missteps made in the past in which Scott Fitzgerald shows how the drink-demon wrecks and ruins dreams and lives. Once sobered up everything what drinking helped to forget viciously and mercilessly belches up: loneliness, anxiety, boredom – and the damage done. Whether Charlie Wales will manage to start afresh and bond again with his daughter and leave the loneliness, the past and the feelings of guilt behind without is not sure, but never the lustre of Paris in the old days will return. It is hard to bid farewell to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.
It is monstrous to confuse love with revolution, night with day, life with death.
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From the title I assumed that Flowering Judas would be a It is monstrous to confuse love with revolution, night with day, life with death.
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From the title I assumed that Flowering Judas would be a story on betrayal – it brought to mind Judas Iscariot, the archetypical traitor – and there are a few allusions to that biblical figure, from the eponymous Judas tree that is associated with him to the suicide of one the characters in the story.
Told from the perspective of Laura, a young American woman who gets involved in the Mexican Revolution of 1910-1920, it turned out a story of small and large acts of betrayal, ranging from a forbidden indulgence in lace and silk to the major ideals of the Revolution itself, personified in the nasty revolutionist leader Braggioni, who not only cheats on his wife and is greedy, vain and arrogant, but also doesn’t lend any hand to help the comrades that ended up in prison because of him.
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Swapping one religion – the Catholic faith – for another – socialism – Laura gradually perceives the same hypocrisy, corruption and flaws – whether in the leaders and in herself.
Katherine Anne Porter, politically involved in Mexico following the Mexican Revolution herself, seems to suggest that the path to a new world cleansed of cruelty and injustice, ruled by benevolent anarchy is as illusionary as the one to heaven – it is simply a road to nowhere, because of human nature.
The moonlight spread a wash of gauzy silver over the clear spaces of the garden, and the shadows were cobalt blue. The scarlet blossoms of the Judas tree were dull purple.
In their different ways, the twins were beginning to remember. They remembered different things. Or they remembered the same things differently. It seIn their different ways, the twins were beginning to remember. They remembered different things. Or they remembered the same things differently. It seemed to Marigold that you remembered things because they changed. You didn’t need to remember what was right in front of you. And the twins were still too little to have much behind. But Marigold wanted to be prepared for change, which meant you had to learn to remember before you needed to remember.
On the evening of the 13th October the news that Louise Glück (1943- 2023) had died, popped up only a few minutes after I had put Marigold and Rose in my handbag to take with me to read on the train when I would be travelling back home after taking a test for which I had been preparing for a couple of weeks. The news added a sense of timeless and intensity to a couple of themes and ideas that Louise Glück explores in this prose piece.
It is a small book – a mere 52 pages – on big themes (memory, loss, consciousness, family dynamics, siblings, bonding, being (still) wordless and locked-up in oneself but dreaming anyway ) seen through the prism of the reflections of two infants.
Marigold and Rose are infant twins, but as marigolds and roses are a different kind of flowers, they are not the same. They are different kinds of personality – one is introspective, turning inwards, one is more outbound and reaching outwards. Nevertheless the twins might be one as well, two souls in one person, one persona deduplicated in two bodies, showing that every person is a multifaceted creature, defying facile and reductionist labelling in extravert or introvert personalities or other predominant features that do not represent the multiplicity of reality.
[image] (Gustave Klimt, Bauerngarten, 1907)
I was surprised how much I enjoyed reading this piece despite the infant angle, a perspective that I presumed would rather irritate me (as it apparently did some other readers). Indulging in the prospect of having a miniature break from a diet of technical textbooks for studying, this naturally came along as a little treat, a welcome dollop of beauty refreshing my mind after weeks of hard work in which I had to steer clear of the temptation of words that were not directly functional.
As the last published work of Louise Glück before her death, it is tempting to look at this tale from the perspective of a circle that is completed, the fulfilment of the cycle of life, connecting the infant phase and to the end, particularly when connecting this piece with the last poetry collection that she published in 2021, Winter Recipes from the Collective.
While Winter Recipes from the Collective was, as obvious from the title, a wintry book, focussing on old age and death, Marigold and Rose, with its flower symbolism and focus on the baby time is devoted to the beginning of existence. Yet, like in Glücks poetry, childhood doesn’t obfuscate death which is present from the onset on, from the beginning the awareness that everything will disappear is a leitmotif that cannot be unheard.
Thank you so much Jennifer for drawing my attention to this tiny gem....more
Recitatif is a suggestive, powerful and deceivingly simple short story that offers the reader a richly filled dish with food for thought. Toni MorrisoRecitatif is a suggestive, powerful and deceivingly simple short story that offers the reader a richly filled dish with food for thought. Toni Morrison hands over some sharp ammunition to question one’s own assumptions and innate biases which seem hard to avoid in the struggle to make sense of the world and comprehend one’s place in society. We seem to need clues, social codes and categories to navigate in the world. The social need to feel part of a whole or a group to know who we are, not to lose ourselves in the amorphousness of the masses collective is a strong one – the flipside of such need to belong however that clinging to collective identity creates a dynamic of insiders versus outsiders and can capsize into cognitive distortion, leading to a generalisation and categorisation and ultimately labelling of people, making one overlook what binds and connects rather than divides, possibly opening a road to cruelty.
Twyla and Roberta encounter each other as roommates in a children’s home at the age of eight. Unlike the other children, they are not orphans but end up in t-Bonny’s for four months because their mothers cannot adequately take care of them: one girl’s mother dances all night, the other girl’s mother is sick. One of them is black. One of them is white. Does it matter? One of them will thrive and live in luxury, one of them will struggle to make ends meet. Later in life they coincidentally will bump into each other again a couple of times, unable to bridge the widening gap between them as the differences between them become as visible as the different colour of their skin. Yet their bond from the past yields common ground, rooted in their shared experience of being disposed of as children and being haunted by a faltering memory of how and why they (mis)treated Maggie, mute and mocked by everyone – and what they both attempt to forget.
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Toni Morrison masterfully conveys how black and white, dichotomous thinking comes in many different shapes and forms, whether related to the colour of the skin, social class or physical (dis)ability. The experiences of Twyla and Roberta show how differences and similarities can both divide as well as unite because social life consists in a dynamic and complex interplay implying the unending and unpredictable shift of power, collective identities and changing affinities, change the only constant we know....more
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