-ESS
(from Erica Jong through Mairead Byrne through UBU...oh, who cares?)
For my generation (which graduated from college in the
mid-60's, before the 60's became ''The Sixties''), poetry
was a mandrake root-male, a large gnarled phallus buried in
the earth. Pull it out. Its virility was unmistakable.
Female writers didn't exist on our critical radar except to
be mocked.
Jong and I must've gone to some of the same schools.
We were all caught in that Men-Women thing back then.
Even Paul Simon who wrote about Her with her Emily Dickinson
and Him with his Robert Frost: it was like Dick Benjamin
and Paula Prentiss with a really crap attitude.
The student poet before whom all were bound to worship
was first Leonard Hirsch, then John Allman (who
I think still teaches in upstate New York)--
and then the mantle fell upon Penelope Weiss, yes,
Penny Weiss, unspeakably lyrical, and I of course
like any man would love to describe her, whereas
Hirsch and Allman just needed to shave more often.
Penelope read one Frida afternoon in a social room,
it was part of the regular English Department series,
and she held us: good reader, better poet, we were
enchanted...and then the bubble was pricked (appropriate)
by one David Gordon, soi-disant Lawrencian
from the Jewish side, no doubt, of the Wilmot family
that produced the Earls of Rochester, though all
David inherited was Glens Falls.
David shaded his eyes like a Varga model
and pronounced Penny's work "Good woman's poetry."
See...Penelope Weiss was a subspecies.
She was a poetess. Poet -ess.
Roll that one around on your mental tongue
And even then some us wondered "What's the difference?"
Odd that the distinction stopped at poems.
Nobody thought Porter was weird or O'Connor
(well, she was, but professing Catholics
were thought of as weird back then).
They were women who wrote.
C. S. Lewis wrote of women who sought
ordination to the Anglican priesthood
as would be Priestesses. Priest -ess.
A man too smart not to know the overtones:
I'm a priestess, a ritual whore, so screw me
but leave an offering.
-Ess.
Some months later I think Penelope kissed me.
I'm not 100 percent sure, we were both drunk,
it was her party, it just seemed like a nice gift
and if it happened it was. The hollow of her mouth
was warm and sweet from wine. It was an exchange
of graces, present and futureless, and if there
was sex involved, gender really didn't figure into it.
KTW/9-14-05
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
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