Why Are Female Poets Nuts?

I came on it in two ways. The first occurred last Sunday, when I was coaching a student on a poem by a poet unknown to me: Jane Kenyon. Paradoxically, the poem is called Happiness:

There’s just no accounting for happiness,

or the way it turns up like a prodigal

who comes back to the dust at your feet

having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?

You make a feast in honor of what

was lost, and take from its place the finest

garment, which you saved for an occasion

you could not imagine, and you weep night and day

to know that you were not abandoned,

that happiness saved its most extreme form

for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never

knew about, who flies a single-engine plane

onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes

into town, and inquires at every door

until he finds you asleep midafternoon

as you so often are during the unmerciful

hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.

It comes to the woman sweeping the street

with a birch broom, to the child

whose mother has passed out from drink.

It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing

a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,

and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots

in the night.

                  It even comes to the boulder

in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,

to rain falling on the open sea,

to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.

Well, it was that image, that “wineglass, weary of holding wine,” that stuck in my mind. So much so, that it wasn’t the name of the poet but her image of the wineglass that allowed me to track Kenyon down.

And if Kenyon knew about happiness, it was hardly the neighbor who dropped every morning for coffee, gossip, and laughter. For Kenyon, happiness was the ghost she saw slipping into an abandoned house at dusk.

How depressed was she? Well, consider a famous poem: Having it Out with Melancholy. The first stanza clues you in pretty quickly:

When I was born,

you waited behind a pile of linen in the nursery,

and when we were alone, you lay down

on top of me, pressing

the bile of desolation into every pore.

Kenyon, born in Ann Arbor but living in New Hampshire, died early at age 47 from leukemia. But the question troubling my afternoon today is whether she also suffered from the Sylvia Plath effect.

The idea goes back to Aristotle, if not before, but got named in 2001 by James C. Kaufman; Wikipedia has this to say about it:

Kaufman's work further demonstrated that female poets were more likely to suffer from mental illness than any other class of writers. In addition, female poets were more likely to be mentally ill than other eminent women, such as politicians, actresses, and artists.

Well, looking at the 20^th century, it’s not hard to see that there were seriously troubled women out there, often writing extraordinary poetry. Besides Plath, there was Anne Sexton, Sara Teasdale, and not so much a raft as a cruise ship of others.

Writing, in fact, is on the list of the ten most depression-prone professions. But it seems that female poets outstrip all others for being nuts. Why?

Well, unless you have the fortune to be born with…well, a fortune, poetry is a pretty awful profession. And what happens if you don’t particularly want or like to teach?

You’re also digging, digging into some of the messiest terrain around—your own psyche. Worse, there’s the terrible fact that there is all too often an inverse relationship between a poem’s intrinsic worth and its financial worth. Which is to say that bad poetry sells.

Then there’s not much support out there for being a poet. Novels are sexy, everybody venerates a Hemingway or Steinbeck. But a poet, who has produced a slim little book of sixty poems or so—the fruit of two years of sitting alone with her thoughts and feelings? It sort of pales next to a 600-page novel.

Right—so now we get to chicken and egg: does the poetry create the madness, or do crazy people decide to become poets? Well, the age-old question has now been solved, and by a Harvard man no less. Here, from the American Psychological Association, is what the authors have to say:

There isn't a link between mental illness and the actual process of creating, says psychiatrist Albert Rothenberg, MD, of Harvard Medical School, who has studied Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners and other highly creative individuals. Rather, he argues that mental illnesses such as anxiety, thought disorder and depression disrupt the cognitive and emotional processes necessary for successful creativity.

I agree—but there’s something that has to be acknowledged: it may be that the depression of creative people is distinct from the depression of the rest of us. Business people, plumbers, doctors have some external yardstick against which they can measure themselves. But creative people—and especially artists and poets—have no such thing. The question, “am I any good?” awaits by the bedside in the morning, perches on the shoulder for the rest of the day, sours your morning coffee, and stalks you, side by side, throughout the day.

It was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life—resolve the issue with the cello, that had led to self-inflicted bites on my arms, and three or four spectacular choked auditions. In the space of two or three weeks, I went through madness and came out the other end.

Two or three weeks?

Sorry—a lifetime….

Come to Think of it, the Eiffel is Kinda Sexy….

Well, if Cousin Ruthie said it, it had to be real, but all the same, it seemed incredible. And indeed, The Huffington Post confirmed it:

The "marriage evasion" law criminalizes leaving the state to “contract a marriage that is prohibited or void” in Wisconsin. Couples violating the marriage evasion statute can be fined up to “$10,000 or imprisoned for not more than 9 months or both.”

So that means that a gay or lesbian couple who drive across the bridge to the Twin Cities, get married, and then drive back over the bridge to Wisconsin have committed a criminal act in Wisconsin.

There’s good and bad news. First, the law has been on the books since 1915, when “marriage evasion” laws were popular: the laws were intended to prevent inter-racial marriages, in general, but also marriages to minors or recently divorced people. (Wisconsin, apparently, has a six-month waiting period for remarriage….)

The other good news?  

The law hasn’t been enforced since 2001, when a man left the state to get remarried 30 days after his divorce was finalized.

Now for the bad news: the law is still on the books. And guess what? Well, here’s the Wisconsin Gazette on the subject:

ACLU of Wisconsin executive director Chris Ahmuty said it’s not difficult to imagine a rogue district attorney apprehending a same-sex couple married out of state in order to make a statement or score political points, just as renegade county clerks in New Mexico and Pennsylvania are handing out marriage licenses to test the law in those states.

And, in fact, the Gazette goes on to say that in 2009, the CEO of the Wisconsin Family Council (note—any title with “freedom, “family,” or “heritage” in it should give you the shivers) said this:

“You purposely left the state or another state and you get married and you know it’s not going to be legal where you reside and you have every intention of returning. That’s defrauding the government,” Appling said in the interview.

And who is Appling? Well, the Gazette wonderfully supplies the answer:

Appling, a never-married woman who has lived for decades with another never-married woman in a home they own jointly in Watertown, continues to work fiercely against equality.

Well, any conscientious blogger would check out the Wisconsin Family Council, so I took a deep breath, and clicked on the link. Fortunately, though, I got a message saying that the website certificate was invalid. This I took to be a sign: the universe was letting me off the hook. But who was Julaine Appling?

Well, The Huffington Post, via the Cap Times had the answer: "the most important social conservative in the state." Oh, and she was also reported to be the driving force behind the (gag) defense of marriage amendment to Wisconsin’s constitution in 2006.

And here’s what she said when asked about whether she was, err, you know…that way:

"I would submit there’s not a person alive who hasn’t said, 'Well, I wonder,' because of the culture we live in, the time we live in," Appling, 60, told the Times. "It's a natural part of the maturation process. It's not a life sentence."

Oh, but not to worry, because “people have left gay lifestyles by the droves successfully.”

Whew, so there’s hope!

Which is lucky, because it seems I’m on the slippery slope. Fortunately, Mr. Fernández hates the French, so I’m unlikely to be tempted, but an Iowan, living in that cesspool of sin that permits gay marriage, has news for me. You can see it in the clip below, or—so says the Iowan—you can simply google “red herring,” and what you’ll see will shock you.

Well, the red herring was a red cape to my inner bull, so I did that, and discovered nothing more noxious than the standard definitions. But add “gay marriage” into the mix? Your eyes will sear in horror!

“Kids, I’m sorry to tell you that my gay marriage deeply threatens your straight—and putative—marriages. Just felt you should know.”

Felt like I should warn the guys at the coffee shop.

“Hey, you’re gay? Always thought you were straight…” said Mendoza-who-is-not Montalvo (don’t ask…).

I tell them about Wisconsin, that it’s a criminal offense to go get married—if you’re gay—in another state.

Lucía, busy sweeping the floor, is totally uninterested in my sexual orientation—WHAT!—but remarks over her shoulder that “don’t worry, my generation will take care of that.”

Which it will, of course.  Julaine Appling is in her young 60’s—will any girl of Lucía’s age lead the closeted life that Appling has? Not likely.

There was a time when, “I’m” and “gay,” were the two hardest words in the language to put together. But practice has made it easy: I’ve told bosses, parents, strangers that I’m gay. And now, I’m gonna tell the public about it. In twenty states—including Wisconsin—gay couples have gone to court to challenge the state amendments that invalidates their marriages.

I bought an apartment next to Raf’s parents, so that someone could live there and look after them. And I asked the notary, who described me in the deed, if it was really true that I was soltero, or single. Legally, yes, he said, according to the laws of Puerto Rico. He then went home, tossed and turned all night, and called the bar association the next day. They had been waiting for the call….

“Hey, I’m a footnote in the legal history of Puerto Rico,” I ran around telling everybody. I and Raf had become the first reference legally to a same-sex marriage in a legal document in Puerto Rico. Being a footnote feels great—try it sometime…

So why not be a paragraph?

Newhouse versus the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico!

Like it?

Of Course I Had To Do It….

I couldn’t resist, and if got away with it, it’s only because of the extreme generosity of Penélope.

She was the coach, sitting behind a table and listening and commenting on the poems being recited by the high school students who are participating in a program called Poetry Out Loud. So Penélope—a long, willowy woman—was making rather general comments, and seemed a bit at sea. At one point I stopped to listen to To Helen, by Edgar Allan Poe. You’ll remember it, of course:

To Helen

BY EDGAR ALLAN POE

Helen, thy beauty is to me

   Like those Nicéan barks of yore,

That gently, o'er a perfumed sea,

   The weary, way-worn wanderer bore

   To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,

   Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,

Thy Naiad airs have brought me home

   To the glory that was Greece,      

   And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo! in yon brilliant window-niche

   How statue-like I see thee stand,

The agate lamp within thy hand!

   Ah, Psyche, from the regions which

   Are Holy-Land!

Penélope had nothing particularly to say, and asked if anyone had anything to say.

Guess who did!

“Grandeur,” I’m telling the girl—probably 16, and almost certainly suffering Asperger syndrome. She had been saying it “grander.” Then I went on pretending I was writing. Penélope went on to urge the students only to make gestures that were “organic.”

Marc’s red cape!

Look, students want to know how to do things, which means that the comments have to be specific, practical, and lead to different results—one hopes better. And anyway, what is organic, and how do I know if a gesture is organic or not? At this point I had made several comments, and Penélope asked me if I had any comments.

“Could I stand up and fall flat on my face?” I asked.

“I’m not really good with poetry,” I said. “And a lot of this stuff I don’t know, so I’m winging it. But let’s do this—you recite a stanza, and I’ll recite the stanza, and we’ll see how they differ, and which is better, if any.”

So we were off—and my first question was, “who’s Helen?”

The student didn’t know.

OK, so I explained, even hauling out the tired line of, “the face that launched a thousand ships.” Then we got into the question of the “t”—would it be an American “t” which is almost a “d,” or would it be a good English “t?”

We did similar work of “barks of yore”—the “ks” was getting swallowed. Oh, and what about lengthening and relishing that alliterative “weary, way-ward wanderer?”

And so we spent twenty minutes or so, digging in, discussing meanings, discussing what words are important, what words less so.

“If every word is important, then none of them are important,” I said. At this point Penélope had sat down.

“I’m learning so much from seeing you coach,” she told me.

Right, so the next student was going to do Ella Wheeler Wilcox. I won’t burden you with all of it, but here—in all its dreadful familiarity—are the first lines:

Laugh, and the world laughs with you,

Weep, and you weep alone,

For the brave old earth must borrow its mirth—

But has trouble enough of its own.

It was time to come clean.

“Look,” I said, “you’ve gotta know: this poem is not considered out of the top drawer. In fact, most people this it’s pretty awful.”

News to the student!

“So you’re gonna have to make a decision. On the one hand, you have to own this poem, to say in your voice ‘I know what you think of this poem, I know you think it’s trash, but guess what? I believe it, and you’re going to, too!”

So we played with that, stepping forward, locking eyes with the audience, using a stronger, firmer tone of voice.

“The other alternative is to play it straight, but to try to bring out some meaning in the poem that we’ve been missing.”

Finally, I asked the student if he had analyzed the rhyme scheme of the poem.

He looked blank.

“You mean like ABBA?”

“That’s part of it,” I said. “But is this poem in iambic pentameter? What are the five—think it’s five—types of meter?”

The student’s lip quivered.

“We don’t get that stuff in our school,” said one of the other students. “We’re in 10^th grade, and we’re still studying adjectives.”

Hunh?

“You know, ‘the car is red’—which word in that sentence is an adjective?’ That’s what the teacher does every year….”

“It is NOT your fault,” I tell the kid. “It’s a sin that no teacher has taught you this….”

There were surprises—why would any student choose Emerson, so I asked, midway through working with the student on the poem:

The lords of life, the lords of life,—

I saw them pass,

In their own guise,

Like and unlike,

Portly and grim,—

Use and Surprise,

Surface and Dream,

Succession swift and spectral Wrong,

Temperament without a tongue,

And the inventor of the game

Omnipresent without name;—

Some to see, some to be guessed,

They marched from east to west:

Little man, least of all,

Among the legs of his guardians tall,

Walked about with puzzled look.

Him by the hand dear Nature took,

Dearest Nature, strong and kind,

Whispered, ‘Darling, never mind!

To-morrow they will wear another face,

The founder thou; these are thy race!’   

“It’s about the death of his child,” said the student.

“Whoa!” I said. “Let’s go back. I confess, I had no idea—and I don’t much like Emerson, though my grandmother did.” So how to put more emotion in, without being a ham?

Another surprise:

 All Hallows’ Eve

By Dorothea Tanning

Be perfect, make it otherwise.

Yesterday is torn in shreds.

Lightning’s thousand sulfur eyes

Rip apart the breathing beds.

Hear bones crack and pulverize.

Doom creeps in on rubber treads.

Countless overwrought housewives,

Minds unraveling like threads,

Try lipstick shades to tranquilize

Fears of age and general dreads.

Sit tight, be perfect, swat the spies,

Don’t take faucets for fountainheads.

Drink tasty antidotes. Otherwise

You and the werewolf: newlyweds.

I was learning, too—what was the story behind the poem? The poet, it turned out, had been physically abused as a newlywed. What was the tone? Irony? Anger? Despair? And what about that last word, that whole last line? We played with different ways of saying “werewolf,” and then, of course, how you’d say the word “newlyweds.” We spat it out, we sighed it, we shrugged it off.   

It was a mixture of technique and interpretation, and so we played around—could you whisper and still be heard in the back of the room? What was the softest you could speak, and still be audible?

There’s something that happens when teaching, when you step into the river and let it carry you where it may. One kid, thin, shy, and quite possibly gay—looked at me with the eyes of an animal in pain, an animal who knows and trusts—you will pull out the splinter, the pain will be gone. It’s an experience like none other—a kid putting his soul for however long in your hands.

Teaching. It’s something I never much wanted to do…

…but really glad I did.