> ken, your poem's beautiful, touching and true. au 'voir judy
> From: Ken Wolman <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 2005/08/30 Tue AM 09:12:18 EDT
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: quickies:metrical code, feminism/formalism
>
> Alison Croggon wrote:
>
> >I guess the easist examples to reach for are my own (and I
could be talking
> >about something quite different from Annie). It's been a long
time since
> >I've done this kind of thing. But when I was writing about
childbirth &c,
> >while crashing head on into what a role and stereotype and
misogyny really
> >meant, I used and distorted a lot of devices I pinched from
traditional
> >religious poetry, including as I recall gestures towards George
Herbert, in
> >order to give humble and banal tasks like washing nappies or
caring for
> >babies the kind of attentiveness I felt they deserved. This was
in a
> >context where persons were saying I was written off as a poet
because I had
> >had babies and would now be swamped forever in the stink of
domesticity...
> >obviously, in certain minds, the reverse of the literary or the
> >experientially significant, being anerotic and boring. I wished to
record
> >having babies as an aesthetic experience. Part of the
sequence Domestic Art
> >below - it dates from around 1995, when Josh was born -
> >
> >
> No space to quote the poem, which is wonderful. Thoughts force
> themselves upon me. We escaped the nappy issue by using
disposables.
> No, we were not environmentally friendly, we were damned lazy
and
> besides nobody gave us a diaper service as a birth gift. Caring
for
> babies...well, I am supposedly unique among men ("blessed art
though
> among men"?) for getting up with my wife when she was nursing
the first
> boy, or getting up on my own to feed the 2nd one when we
decided to
> bottle-feed (my wife was not an endorser of La Leche). I don't
know,
> however, whether men CAN (or should?) try to write about the
domestic
> experience the way women might. We can learn from women if
we dare, but
> I suspect the value system that prizes children is in us long
before we
> need to learn from our wives, partners, women poets, etc. I
suspect the
> fact the child came from within the woman changes everything
about how
> she, as opposed to the father, will relate to the kid. Nor do I think
> that apparently self-evident statement is at all self-evident since
most
> men are a bit thick when it comes to matters like this.
>
> For me having children and nurturing them as a father infused
some of my
> writing. Nobody ever said "How cute" about the poetry I wrote
about my
> kids when they were little. Nobody ever said much of anything,
which is
> okay too.
>
> There was this, of walking into their rooms late one night and just
> watching them. What surprises me is that as Alison mentioned
using
> religious references from Herbert et al., so here--having no
conscious
> memory of The Tradition--I worked both the Jewish and Christian
forms in
> there. And it's way old.
>
> MY CHILDREN, ASLEEP
>
> It is my ritual, as near to me as
> repetition of the Silent Prayer or
> elevation of the Host: for I form
> my own religion from the vision of
> their breath; whispered sounds of inhalation,
> each an answered prayer I have not spoken,
> only thought in my cells they have from me.
> I catch my breath in witness of their breath
> and breath of night on their still faces, seen
> in half dark, and bless them for my vision.
>
> December 24, 1990
>
> Sometimes the kids require tending even when they get into the
mid-20s....
>
> Ken
> --
>
> Kenneth Wolman
> Proposal Development Department
> Room SW334
> Sarnoff Corporation
> 609-734-2538
>
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