Saturday, February 27, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Starting Today Anthology Now Available!
on Amazon.My poem "I Didn't Buy It" is in there, and a recording of it should be up on the original Starting Today blog in the coming weeks, alongside those by Laurel Snyder, Diane Wald, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and others!
See the full table of contents.
See the full table of contents.
Many thanks to Arielle & Rachel!
Friday, February 19, 2010
Olena Kalytiak Davis Reading
The benefactresses were stiff-faced, but the rest of us were laughing pretty hard. It's not this often that a poet is so present with her audience, present in a way that lets it all in: talking as if to her friends because half the time she was talking to her friends in the audience. Hear it all -- and some of her best poems, too -- here.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Girls Take 3
One of my favorite quotes about the female adolescent experience comes from the musician Rachel Carns, who said in an interview that "girls have this private thing about themselves—diaries, your room—that is really isolated and you don't share it with anybody else." If the second wave of feminism was about getting wives out of the kitchen, then maybe Riot Grrrl was about trying to get girls out of the bedroom and into something more like action.
--Marisa Meltzer, author of Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music, on DoubleX's "Exile from Grrrlville"
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Teenage Girls Tell the Truth
I finally had some time to think about Kate Durbin's provocative (sexy & thought-provoking!) piece at Delirious Hem, "A Teenage Girl Speaks as a Melodramatic, Hysterical Demon," and here are my thoughts:
First, I'm really struck by the idea that your piece seems to suggest (in a bunch of different ways) that girls are the purgers (of vomit, gold coins, etc.) because the culture feeds them THE MOST SHIT. I think that is right on. It would be cool if we could convince bulimics to puke all over magazine stands, to connect the effect back to its source. That one is public and one is private makes it difficult to link them back up.
And then, of course, the other difficulty is that girls can wield the content of those publications (for magazines, insert all media outlets) in a way that you seem to have done and still do, Kate. The "arty girl" way, la via de Lady Gaga, Taking Fashion Back, highlighting the artifice of selfhood, putting the fashion back into self-fashioning. (This is when the purge goes public again??)
The other idea here that really interests me, and is something I've tried and failed to write about in a way that really captures it, is that TEENAGE GIRLS CAN ACTUALLY DO MAGIC. I mean, I'm sure some people are reading your Ouija and levitation details as the cutesy images of sleepovers, but I'm reading them like so: "Hmm, yeah, I remember when my friends and I had these powers, and then we grew up and traded them in for Lady Skillz." And of course this sounds crazy to you, reader, but that is the whole point. Nonrational powers that get buried, shoved down, when girls grow up, because they are not valued by the larger culture. They are scoffed at; you are a Crazy Lady if you still believe in or practice them. You are a nut if you teach a class on The Goddess, etc. I feel this every time someone tries to police my speech -- every time I turn back into a superstitious, crass, full-o-wonder teenage girl and dare to say something out loud in that voice, I turn around and someone's shushing me. We can't say that shit in this big bad world ruled by Logic, Reason, Progress: in most public places, there is someone there to stop us.
First, I'm really struck by the idea that your piece seems to suggest (in a bunch of different ways) that girls are the purgers (of vomit, gold coins, etc.) because the culture feeds them THE MOST SHIT. I think that is right on. It would be cool if we could convince bulimics to puke all over magazine stands, to connect the effect back to its source. That one is public and one is private makes it difficult to link them back up.
And then, of course, the other difficulty is that girls can wield the content of those publications (for magazines, insert all media outlets) in a way that you seem to have done and still do, Kate. The "arty girl" way, la via de Lady Gaga, Taking Fashion Back, highlighting the artifice of selfhood, putting the fashion back into self-fashioning. (This is when the purge goes public again??)
The other idea here that really interests me, and is something I've tried and failed to write about in a way that really captures it, is that TEENAGE GIRLS CAN ACTUALLY DO MAGIC. I mean, I'm sure some people are reading your Ouija and levitation details as the cutesy images of sleepovers, but I'm reading them like so: "Hmm, yeah, I remember when my friends and I had these powers, and then we grew up and traded them in for Lady Skillz." And of course this sounds crazy to you, reader, but that is the whole point. Nonrational powers that get buried, shoved down, when girls grow up, because they are not valued by the larger culture. They are scoffed at; you are a Crazy Lady if you still believe in or practice them. You are a nut if you teach a class on The Goddess, etc. I feel this every time someone tries to police my speech -- every time I turn back into a superstitious, crass, full-o-wonder teenage girl and dare to say something out loud in that voice, I turn around and someone's shushing me. We can't say that shit in this big bad world ruled by Logic, Reason, Progress: in most public places, there is someone there to stop us.
"won't you celebrate with me" by Lucille Clifton (1936-2010)
won't you celebrate with me
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
what i have shaped into
a kind of life? i had no model.
born in babylon
both nonwhite and woman
what did i see to be except myself?
i made it up
here on this bridge between
starshine and clay,
my one hand holding tight
my other hand; come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Gurlesque Anthology Available for Pre-Order!
GURLESQUE: the new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics
edited by Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Saturday, February 6, 2010
This Is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like #2!
Delirious Hem announces: This is What a Feminist [Poet] Looks Like #2, where each day this week you will find new responses.
Featuring:
Monday February 1: Ching-In Chen, Jennifer Bartlett, & Kate Durbin
Tuesday February 2: Juliet Cook & Kate Schapira
Wednesday February 3: Kirsten Kaschock & Michele Battiste
Thursday February 4: Michelle Detorie & Stephanie Strickland
Friday February 5: T.A. Noonan & Theodora Danylevich
Saturday February 6: Amy King & Kirsten Kaschock 2
Saturday February 6: Amy King & Kirsten Kaschock 2
Friday, February 5, 2010
There's been no parking on my street all week
because they're filming Black Swan, the new Darren Aronofsky (The Wrestler) movie. I don't drive, so it's not that annoying, but the guys they have guarding the doors to the Turner Towers next door (where all the blue "SET -->" signs lead) like to give me the stinkeye when I'm walking home, like I'm trying to sneak onto the set or something. At USC they let us go right up to the camera guys during Felicity filming. Anyway I thought you might like to know in case you are a Natalie Portman and/or Winona Ryder paparazzo. Yeah, I just wanted to write paparazzo. Busted.
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
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