Dear Emphatic Empath:
You and I have found common ground, then. This is the first time since 1992
that I, too, have tried to be a woman (and it feels pretty good).
But don't become too comfortably ensconced in your estrogen cage, Ken. We
have work for you to do that ONLY you---an old white hair man in New
Jersey---can do.
I enjoy your feeling that "this one" (Lynndie England) "is somehow
important." Fortunate you are (despite your nitwiggling about God's urge to
strike you down for hubris) that you, at least a little, recognize your
ability to mediate for us---with rare force and winkings of humor---the
hidden world's workings.
While you stretch your monologue muscles, throw serious sidelong looks at
your many petc friends' recommends, and focus your most intense light inward
and heavenward, please give me another tragi-fun poem or two like TURN THE
CORNER.
Will you, then?
Blessings and thanks, as always,
Judy and sometimes Elizabeth Barrett
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ken Wolman" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2005 3:34 PM
Subject: Re: Version 2: Lynndie England to her Baby Son
> Joanna Boulter wrote:
>
>> I did one once as Myra Hindley in prison. For those who don't know, she
>> was one of the infamous "Moors Murderers", who along with Ian Brady
>> tortured and killed several children, back in the 1960s.
>>
>> It wasn't a successful poem, per se, but I never managed to figure out
>> why or how.
>>
>> But there is this compulsion, not so much to excuse, as to understand if
>> we can.
>>
>> joanna
>
> I'm paying particular and extended attention to these comments from
> everyone who's spoken because...God will strike me for my hubris...I feel
> as though this one is somehow important. There has been a strain in me
> for years of being someone else. This is the first time since 1992 I've
> tried to be a woman. Lynndie England grabbed me from the minute I saw
> that picture of her with her kid. The kid made his mother real.
>
> In 1993 I cooked up a, yes, dramatic monologue. It was one of several I
> wrote over a long weekend. One was Henry Stanley. The other was Harry
> Kendall Thaw, the maniac who shot the architect and pedophile Stanford
> White in the face on June 25, 1906. He did so in Madison Square Garden in
> front of a crowd. White had "taken the virginity" of Evelyn Nesbit,
> Thaw's wife, when she was 15, after White had gotten her drunk and/or
> drugged. After two trials, money prevailed and Thaw was acquitted as
> insane. Actually, he probably was. As it is I'm a bit appalled even now
> at how much of Thaw I "got."
>
> The poem clunks. It's like really overcooked Robert Browning. Yet it's
> still interesting...I kept tying up with malcontents, or making them. I
> did better with Henry Stanley since I had to totally invent him. "How ya
> gonna get 'em back to New York after they've seen the jungle?"
>
> The one I wanted to write I couldn't. It scared me. Back in the late
> 1980s, some man who'd been denied visitation rights with his kid kidnapped
> his son, took him to a motel room in California, soaked him in an
> accellerant, and set him afire. It was an unspeakable "If I can't have you
> nobody can" gesture. But the boy didn't die. He spent years in the
> hospital receiving skin grafts. He looked like an Amish doll. There was
> news footage when he came out of the hospital, and my younger son--about
> the same age--saw the footage and freaked. "Why would his father do
> that?" I think for a moment he was afraid of ME. I tried to explain from
> no knowledge whatsoever that love can become so strong that it can twist
> and can make you hurt people. I guess I got it right.
>
> I tried to write a monologue from inside the father. I fought with it for
> months. I quit. Maybe I was lucky. I told myself I wasn't nuts enough
> to see inside that guy's head. But I believe now that I was afraid that
> if I succeeded, I would not be able to get out of that maniac's mind.
> This is of course bilge. The poem I wrote was emphatic in terms of the
> man and compassionate toward my son's terror. It's not AWful, it's just
> not what I need to do there.
>
> I also want to write from inside the Columbine kids, Eric Harris and Dylan
> Klebold. Recreate them. One mind or two or one? I was those kids when I
> was in Junior High School. I lacked only a companion in misery and access
> to weapons. I can't say I exactly went "right on!" when I heard what they
> did, but I could start to understand what might have pushed them to both
> vengeance and self-annihilation...the same impulse.
>
> What a collection..."Ken's Deviants." It would probably be published in
> some Ruppert Murdoch publication. Well, reworking them will keep my warm
> on cold nights.
>
> ken
>
> --
> Kenneth Wolman
> Proposal Development Department
> Room SW334
> Sarnoff Corporation
> 609-734-2538
>
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