last night, the stars compelled me to wrap myself in the midnight mist, to survive chill and gray and moon craters,to wait silently and with patience for the first sun
© 2016, poem and photograph, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
This post is a gift – as all of Michael’s work is – of friend and The BeZine colleague, Michael Watson,LCMHC. It is shared here with Michael’s permission and as a follow-up to Turning Pain into Beauty … a triumph of tattoo and poem over mastectomy, published here yesterday.
Michael Watson is a shamanic healer, psychotherapist, educator, and visual and theater artist of Native American and European descent. Michael’s blog is Dreaming the World. If you were to feed your soul on only one blog, his would be the one to choose.
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Writing about being fitted for a new brace, and reading and responding to, the comments on that post, seems to have opened a doorway on to the immediacy of the past in the present, and to meaning making in the aftermath of intense experience, particularly illness. This morning I awoke early, before there was any hint of light in the sky. I awoke into a memory. It was not a “proper” memory; rather, it was more a flood of complex, even contradictory, emotions and sensations. There have been times in my life when such an awakening would have filled me with dread, but this morning I felt curiosity.
Today features a high, slightly broken overcast with the very occasional glimpse of milky blue sky. Here, at the end of January, there is a thin covering of snow on the ground. At the feeder, the male finches are showing the beginnings of bright red plumage in preparation for their February mating season. As has been true for most of the winter, the temperature is unseasonably warm, and we face another bout of rain.
Our kitchen looks out, through the sun room, into the garden and back yard where the feeder is hung from the crab apple tree. With this as a backdrop I opened a small jar of strawberry/plum jam. Immediately the fragrance of strawberries permeated the kitchen, as though a genie had been freed from the bottle. For a moment it was June! The jam promptly went on a croissant; Also on said croissant were several slices of brie which had melted under the broiler!
These experiences, the overcast, jam, and memory, set me to wondering about the body-self’s capacity for richly nuanced experience. Later, when I sat down to read through my e-mail, there was a blog post from Jamie Dedes, who writes at the Poet By Day. Today’s post was about the transformation of disfigurement into beauty. She wrote about scars, particularly those left by mastectomy, and women who use tattoos to completely alter the look and meaning of those scars.
Suddenly there was yet another layer of complexity in my pondering. Scars, fragrances, and those unbidden, complex memories, are all traces, events and meanings written in and on the body. It is, I imagine, these traces that give shape to our experiences of our bodies and lives. Our responses to these traces reflect our personal struggles to wrestle meaning from mishaps and joys; they are also suggestive of the responses of others to our scars, and our fears and expectations of how others will react. (I have been asked several times how I imagine others will react to my new, very visible, brace.) Thus, our relationship to memory and scar becomes thickly layered and re-membered.
Above me, on the bookshelf, stand the six thick volumes of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, a masterpiece set in motion by a memory of a Madeleine. The writing is a sort of quarrying, exposing the myriad layers and accretions of association attached to a singular, somehow pivotal, event. I wonder: is every moment, every event, pivotal, somehow a singularity of infinite mass and importance? Or do we remember more selectively, creating islands of meaning contextualized by specific moments in time, somehow giving more weight to specific events, allowing them to draw innumerable associations to themselves, thus creating constellations of great depth. Perhaps both are true.
© 2016, words and photograph, Michael Watson, All rights reserved
I thought it would be nice if we all had this information to easily share on our Facebook Pages and our blogs and so forth. I took some time to collect the information. Nonetheless, I’m sure I’ve left some worthy organizations out. If anyone knows of an organization that should be included, please leave it in the comments section and I’ll keep track for an update sometime in the future. Meanwhile, you can also check on a charity’s track record at: Charity Navigator. So please do download this and feel free to share anywhere you feel it’s warranted or would be welcome, maybe even on employee, union and/or church affiliated sites. Thank you!
Inspired by my long-distance poetry friends at London-based Second Light Network of Women Poets (SLN), which is dedicated to encouraging and promoting women poets and women’s poetry, I’ve decided to feature one American woman poet each week on Thursday. I hope you’ll join me for these short tidbits by way of celebration.
OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS: Second Light Network of Women Poets publishes well-regarded anthologies and the biannual magazine ARTEMISpoetry, which feature the works of both contemporary well-known A-list women poets as well as talented emerging voices. Membership and publication is not limited to the UK but there are demographic restrictions: age and gender. Associate memberships are available for women under 40. Recommended.
I had eight birds hatched in one nest,
Four Cocks there were, and Hens the rest.
Note: I recognize that more correctly Anne Bradstreet would be considered an English poet. I have decided for my purposes here, I’d include her as “American.”
The illustration above is Anne Bradstreet on the cover of The Works of Anne Bradstreet published by The John Harvard Library . The book’s introduction is by contemporary American Poet, Adrienne Rich. Some say she (Bradstreet) was the first serious woman poet in colonial America. It could be though that she was the first to be taken seriously and published while other talents plied their art in the women’s-work ghetto of obscurity
From the publisher:
“Anne Bradstreet was one of our earliest feminists and the first true poet in the American colonies. This collection of her extant poetry and prose, scrupulously edited by Jeannine Hensley, has long been the standard edition of Bradstreet’s work. Hensley’s introduction sketches the poet’s life, and Adrienne Rich’s foreword offers a sensitive critique of Bradstreet as a person and as a writer. The John Harvard Library edition includes a chronology of Bradstreet’s life and an updated bibliography.”
This is telling of the times:
Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are
Men have precedency and still excell,
It is but vain unjustly to wage warre;
Men can do best, and women know it well
Preheminence in all and each is yours;
Yet grant some small acknowledgement of ours.
And yet, Anne Bradstreet did have confidence in her gender as we can see in this portrait of Queen Elizabeth:
Who was so good, so just, so learned so wise,
From all the Kings on earth she won the prize.
Nor say I more then duly is her due,
Millions will testifie that this is true.
She has wip’d off th’ aspersion of her Sex,
That women wisdome lack to play the Rex
Resources:
•The Works of Anne Bradstreet
•Anne Bradstreet, The Poetry Foundation
•Anne Bradstreet poems, Poem Hunter
•Wendy Martin, “Anne Bradstreet’s Poetry: a Study in Subversive Poetry,” in Shakespeare’s Sisters, edited by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979)
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 