Here Come The Wild Dogs

Patti Smith Inducted

2007-02-04T18:12:00.000-08:00

Long overdue-Patti Smith has finally been inducted into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.

Plan B. Where's Yours?

2006-12-08T11:55:00.000-08:00

Did you know that you can actually prevent unintended pregnancy if your primary birth control fails?

I want to make sure you have the facts about the emergency contraception Plan BÂ®, also called the "morning-after" pill.

If every woman across the country knew about this option - what it does, how it works, and where they can get it - and used it correctly and consistently, then we could cut in half the three million unintended pregnancies in this country every year, and greatly reduce the need for abortion.

A little prevention goes a long way. Here are the facts:
Emergency contraception can prevent an unintended pregnancy after sex. It can even work up to five days after sex, but it's most effective if taken in the first 24-72 hours.

Emergency contraception does not cause abortion; rather, it prevents pregnancy by inhibiting ovulation, fertilization, or implantation before a pregnancy occurs. If a woman is already pregnant when she takes it, the medication won't harm the pregnancy.

Emergency contraception is a safe, effective birth-control option: that's why the FDA's scientific and medical experts said it should be available to women over the counter.

Plan BÂ®, a brand of emergency contraception, is now available for sale at pharmacies without a prescription for women and men 18 and older. Just bring your ID to the pharmacist. If you are under 18, in most states you will need to get a prescription from a doctor. Nine states (Alaska, California, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Vermont, and Washington) have laws in place that allow specially trained pharmacists to dispense Plan BÂ® to women without a prescription regardless of a woman's age. If you live in one of these states, ask your pharmacist for more information. You can visit www.not-2-late.com for more information about emergency contraception.
It's really that safe and that effective. If you are ever in a situation when you might need Plan BÂ®, remember these important facts - and if you want to take them with you, download a Plan BÂ® flyer here-http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/choice-action-center/take-action/plan-b/

With My Back to City Hall, On Yom Kippur

2006-09-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

With My Back to City Hall, On Yom Kippur
by Jordan Davis

The gnats love the highway dividers,
the freelance pickup artists love the softness of the hands
of the women who love their friends
for walking with them laughing at the situation,
lost people love that I am sitting here looking likely to know,
I love it when I know, knowledge in the form of radar
loves the cloud cover which resembles my headache
in its topography and its effect on my mood,
the path which connects Park Row with Broadway
loves the paranoia which has closed off all the paths closer than this to City Hall,
Jesus loves the balding man in the striped windbreaker
who looks at my small script and remarks, "Jesus loves you,"
I love the silk suit and the hard candy curl hair
of the middle-aged black woman going by with her dry cleaning,
I love the sock the bundled baby recumbent in an Aprica stroller kicks out,
I love from a distance the speck this woman in the tight clothes
reaches to brush from her shoe, I love the effect it has on her distraction, I love
the ties tucked into the short sleeve shirts of the men returning from lunch,
I love the men and women my age strolling
with purpose in their Pumas, the feather tumbling by,
the drift of the hulking red haired woman with psoriatic elbows,
the opal in the hairbow of the Hindi woman in white robes
and the tuck of her husband's shirt into his jeans,
the ticking of the wheel of the bicycle rolled along
by a backpack-wearing man on foot,
the acceleration of an open-roof double-decker tour bus,
the ignition cough of the not-in-service kneeling bus,
the change clod and leaf-shuffle of the lower torsos
and the carry-out conveyor sound of a closed up shopping cart,
I love the downturned glance of the woman carrying the Borzoi College Reader crossing against the light and going into Pace,

may all these people have rent-stabilized leases,
and may they be registered to vote, in their unions,
and in the next election.

Poem from Million Poem Journal, reprinted with permission of Faux Press Books

One More Reason to Love Autumn

2006-09-21T19:31:00.000-07:00

Mallomars are back!

Women's Equality Day

2006-08-26T05:57:00.000-07:00

Join the Nation in Celebrating Women's Equality Day, August 26, 2006

Voting is the foundation of our democracy. In this election year with the Voting Rights Act stalled in Congress, we are reminded that barriers to voting can still exist.

Women's Equality Day, August 26th is an opportunity to celebrate the vote and also an opportunity to remind others, especially our children, about the importance of voting.

Women's Equality Day, August 26, 2006, honors the 86th anniversary of women in the United States winning the right to vote.
To win the right to vote, women conducted a 72-year political campaign.
This political campaign began at the first women's rights convention at Seneca Falls in July of 1848 and ended with the passage of the 19th Amendment on August 26, 1920.
When you vote, you are taking action to support this democracy and to recognize the unrelenting tenacity and spirit of women who worked to secure the vote for women in the United States

Dorothy Parker

2006-08-25T06:51:00.000-07:00

Belated HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DOROTHY PARKER (8/22/1893- 6/7/1967)

Comment

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Roumania.

And my favorite:

The Flaw in Paganism

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)

Epitaphe D'Un Chat

2006-08-07T14:41:00.000-07:00

From Epitaphe D'Un Chat

For three days now I have lost
My well-being, my pleasure, all my love.
My heart is almost breaking in me
When I speak or when I write
For Belaud my small grey cat
Belaud who was, by chance,
Nature's most beautiful work
Thus made, as cats are made,
Belaud whose beauty was such
That she is worthy to be immortal.

-Joachim Du Bellay

What Do Teachers Make?

2006-07-30T14:18:00.000-07:00

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing
life. One man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with
education. He argued, "What's a kid going to learn from
someone who decided his best option in life was to become a
teacher?"

He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about
teachers: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

To stress his point he said to another guest; "You're a
teacher. Be honest. What do you make?"

Having a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, "You
want to know what I make?

"I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.
I make a C+ feel like the winner of the Congressional Medal of
Honor.
I make kids sit through 40 minutes of study hall in absolute
silence.

"You want to know what I make?
I make kids wonder.
I make them question.
I make them criticize.
I make them apologize and mean it.
I make them write.
I make them read, read, read.
I make them show all their work in math and perfect their final
drafts in English.
I make them understand that if you have the brains, and follow
your heart, and if someone ever tries to judge you by what you
make, you must pay no attention because they just didn't
learn."

I paused and continued.
"You want to know what I make?
'I MAKE A DIFFERENCE.'
What do you make?"

Quiz-No's

2006-07-29T14:46:00.000-07:00

Quizno's claims that nutritional info is "not available." They only provide nutritional info for 2 sandwiches. Just 2 items on their entire menu. How hard is to calculate the nutritional value of tuna on bread? Boycott Quizno's and eat someplace that does have nutritional info available.

Here's the reply I received in response to my request for nutritional info:

I appreciate your interest in our menu here at Quizno's. I would like to point out that there is a list of selected sandwiches available on the website. The others are still being changed due to vendor changes and the data is not available as of yet. Please keep checking back for more information at www.quiznos.com

Sincerely,

Quizno's Customer Service Department

contact Quizno's and demand that they provide nutritional info:
http://www.quiznos.com/contactus0.asp?id=1&sid=9999

Parental Notification

2006-07-29T06:06:00.000-07:00

Cartoon by Jack Ohman at Slate.com

More cartoons at: http://cartoonbox.slate.com/hottopic/?topicid=74&image=0

2006-07-22T08:11:00.000-07:00

Martina Newberry - Outlook

"If you wake up at a different time, in a different place, could you wake up as a different person?"
—Tyler Durdin, Fight Club

I’ve been ripe all my life; it is my
mother’s gift to me along with her
madness—but “ripe" doesn’t make it now.

I want to see my taut flesh pulled down
over my frame, no softness, no place
that gives. I want to be pared down to

the bone, no places left to pinch. I
want to find birds with beaks like straws to
suck the fat from my fat places and

fly away with it. I want to be
an abstraction, a wraith, a nymph. I
want to be unreachable, remote

as the eye of a needle. I want
to leave sweat out of the equation
that is my body and put sylph in

its place. I want my bones to be
remarkable, my face chiseled marble.
If I am to return to the same

darkness from which I rose, I want to
do it with fingers like twigs, ankles—
impossible, hummingbird ankles.

This is the way to perfection, this
longing to be going, going, gone—
pushing hard against the adversity

of silken chocolates, sweet plums, red wine,
roasted chicken, buttered bread—things that
stay and will not be replaced by ice

water and grape skins. All this will come
back to haunt me. At some point, I will
not remember the difference between

shadows and radiance. I will only
be aware that light will shine through me,
ignoring flesh, headed toward paradise.

Martina Newberry’s most recent books are Not Untrue & Not Unkind (Arabesques Press 2006) and Running Like a Woman with Her Hair on Fire (Red Hen Press 2005). She was the winner of i.e. magazine’s Editor’s Choice Poetry Chapbook Prize for 1998: An Apparent, Approachable Light. She is also the author of Lima Beans and City Chicken: Memories of the Open Hearth, a memoir of her father (E.P. Dutton and Company 1989). Her work was included in the Ascent Aspirations anthology and has been widely published in many literary magazines. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, Brian, and their cat, Gato.

thepedestalmagazine.com

For Shame, Nana!

2006-07-15T08:49:00.000-07:00

iVillage - solutions for women

Good Housekeeping
Diet Central

Dieting Nutrition

Calorie Counts You Can't Trust

Calorie Counts You Can't Trust
Nana's all-natural oatmeal-raisin and sunflower cookies are yummy and huge. Both treats claim to have less than 300 calories. Since these babies are almost CD-size and more than half an inch thick, that count struck us as too good to be true. An independent laboratory confirmed that the oatmeal-raisin cookie, listed on the label as having only 264 calories, actually has 460! The sunflower flavor, labeled as 240, has 436. What's more, the sunflower cookie has twice as much fat as the label claims; the oatmeal flavor is almost as bad. Both are sold nationwide at Whole Foods Market and health food stores, so buyer, beware, unless you want to splurge.
—Delia A. Hammock, M.S., R.D.

© iVillage Inc. 1995-2005.

Contact Nana to complain at:
http://www.healthycrowd.com/default.asp?pageid=4209

Creatures From The Far Right

2006-07-08T05:23:00.000-07:00

Creatures from the Far Right are out to win this November. But you can stop them.

Forget imaginary monsters under your bed... the real creatures are lurking in your government.

• Starring South Dakota Governor Rounds as Ban-a-thor!
• Featuring U.S. Senate candidate from Florida, Katherine Harris, as Swamp Thing!
• And many more of your most feared right-wing extremists...
Click here to watch our new movie:
http://www.prochoiceamerica.org/elections/creatures2/

Decisions, Decisions, What's a Girl to Do?

2006-07-03T06:04:00.000-07:00

http://minimumsecurity.net/toons2006/6034.htm

Cartoon by Stehanie McMillan. Those really are/were the Senator's phone numbers.

A Partial History of My Stupidity-Edward Hirsch

2006-07-02T05:57:00.000-07:00

A Partial History of My Stupidity

Traffic was heavy coming off the bridge
and I took the road to the right, the wrong one,
and got stuck in the car for hours.

Most nights I rushed out into the evening
without paying attention to the trees,
whose names I didn't know,
or the birds, which flew heedlessly on.

I couldn't relinquish my desires
or accept them, and so I strolled along
like a tiger that wanted to spring,
but was still afraid of the wildness within.

The iron bars seemed invisible to others,
but I carried a cage around inside me.

I cared too much what other people thought
and made remarks I shouldn't have made.
I was slient when I should have spoken.

Forgive me, philosophers,
I read the Stoics but never understood them.

I felt that I was living the wrong life,
spiritually speaking,
while halfway around the world
thousands of people were being slaughtered,
some of them by my countrymen.

So I walked on--distracted, lost in thought--
and forgot to attend to those who suffered
far away, nearby.

Forgive me, faith, for never having any.

I did not believe in God,
who eluded me.

-- Edward Hirsch

Hirsch on poetry:
I do believe that lyric poetry puts us in touch with something deep and mysterious within ourselves. It also evoke the grandeur of large mysteries beyond us. The earliest roots of poetry are in religion, and I suppose that poetry has never entirely lost its sense of the sacred. It still trembles with a holy air.

More at:
www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/hirsch/poetsonpoetry.html

The Coming of Light-Mark Strand

2006-07-02T05:45:00.000-07:00

The Coming of Light
by Mark Strand

Even this late it happens:

the coming of love, the coming of light.

You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,

stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,

sending up warm bouquets of air.

Even this late the bones of the body shine

and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

Excerpted from The Story of Our Lives by Mark Strand. Copyright © 2002 by Mark Strand. Poets.org

Buy The Story of Our Lives at Amazon.com

ttp://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375709754/sr=8-
2/qid=1151844223/ref=sr_1_2/002-4065108-0810401?ie=UTF8

Shakespeare in the Park - Macbeth

2006-06-16T13:41:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare in Central Park

MACBETH PREVIEWS BEGIN
JUNE 14!
MACBETH
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Moisés Kaufman

June 14 - July 9, 2006
Tuesday through Sunday
All shows at 8:30pm!
No performance July 4, added performance July 3.
*Click here for a performance schedule.

Featuring Tolan Aman, Teagle F. Bougere, Sterling K. Brown, Lynn Cohen, Sanjit DeSilva, Seth Duerr, Jennifer Ehle, Amefika El-Amin, Stephanie Fieger, Jacob Fishel, Herb Foster, Phillip Goodwin, Hollie Hunt, Florencia Lozano, Joan MacIntosh, Graeme Malcolm, Michael Markham, Andrew McGinn, Mark Montgomery, Lucas Near-Verbrugghe, Clancy O'Connor, Pedro Pascal, Liev Schreiber, Ching Valdes-Aran

Macbeth takes place in a world torn by war, in which treachery, ambition and superstition rule. Macbeth is a victorious war general who applies the rules of war to domestic politics and in the process turns his country upside down. This savage political thriller has never been more timely.

DELACORTE THEATER
Entrances at Central Park West & 81st Street and 5th Avenue & 79th Street.

Pick up your FREE tickets to Shakespeare in the Park on the day of the performance beginning at 1pm at The Delacorte Theater in Central Park, or from 1 to 3 pm at The Public Theater at 425 Lafayette Street. Tickets will also be distributed in each of the five boroughs on selected dates. Please note, there is a limit of 2 tickets per person.

call 212.539.8750 for more info

http://www.publictheater.org/view.php?mode=eventdisplay
&eventid=210&returnURL=%2Fview.
php%3Fmode%3Dseasoneventlisting%26seasonid%3D1

Newly Appointed US Poet Laureate-Donald Hall

2006-06-14T17:36:00.000-07:00

Two poems from our new Poet Laureate. One on Love and one on Death. What else is there?

Gold

Pale gold of the walls, gold
of the centers of daisies, yellow roses
pressing from a clear bowl. All day
we lay on the bed, my hand
stroking the deep
gold of your thighs and your back.
We slept and woke
entering the golden room together,
lay down in it breathing
quickly, then
slowly again,
caressing and dozing, your hand sleepily
touching my hair now.

We made in those days
tiny identical rooms inside our bodies
which the men who uncover our graves
will find in a thousand years,
shining and whole.

Affirmation
To grow old is to lose everything.
Aging, everybody knows it.
Even when we are young,
we glimpse it sometimes, and nod our heads
when a grandfather dies.
Then we row for years on the midsummer
pond, ignorant and content. But a marriage,
that began without harm, scatters
into debris on the shore,
and a friend from school drops
cold on a rocky strand.
If a new love carries us
past middle age, our wife will die
at her strongest and most beautiful.
New women come and go. All go.
The pretty lover who announces
that she is temporary
is temporary. The bold woman,
middle-aged against our old age,
sinks under an anxiety she cannot withstand.
Another friend of decades estranges himself
in words that pollute thirty years.
Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

Bio at:
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/264

“Mr. Hall, a poet in the distinctive American tradition of Robert Frost, has also been a harsh critic of the religious right's influence on government arts policy. And as a member of the advisory council of the National Endowment for the Arts during the administration of George H. W. Bush, he referred to those he thought were interfering with arts grants as "bullies and art bashers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/14/books/14poet.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Indifference

2006-06-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

Indifference

If you took a butter knife
and stuck it in
just two inches
below my ribs
and pulled it out
it would be clean:
then you would know
that I
was done
with you.

Beverly-jane Vasquez
Evolution
Fall 2005
Suffolk County Community College

Skills

2006-05-14T07:45:00.000-07:00

Skills
by Jonathan Aaron

Blondin made a fortune walking back and forth
over Niagara Falls on a tightrope—blindfolded,
or inside a sack, or pushing a wheelbarrow, or perched on stilts,
or lugging a man on his back. Once, halfway across,
he sat down to cook and eat an omelette.

Houdini, dumped into Lake Michigan chained
and locked in a weighted trunk, swam back to the boat
a few moments later. He could swallow more than a hundred needles
and some thread, then pull from between his lips
the needles dangling at even intervals.

I can close my eyes and see your house
explode in a brilliant flash, silently,
with a complete absence of vibration. And when I open them again,
my heart in my mouth, everything is standing
just as before, but not as if nothing had happened.

Poets.org

To Die for

2006-05-10T17:48:00.000-07:00

The Basic Con
by Lew Welch

Those who can’t find anything to live for,
always invent something to die for.

Then they want the rest of us to
die for it, too.

Poets.org

The least-known member of the trio of Beat poets who met at Reed College in Oregon, Lew Welch was perhaps even more tuned into literature than the other two, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen. But he did not share the remarkable Buddhist calmness that Snyder and Whalen had in common, and when these two poets became instantly famous after participating in the landmark Six Gallery poetry reading in 1955, Lew Welch was away in Chicago, working as a marketing researcher while recovering from a nervous breakdown.

He had been writing poetry since discovering Gertrude Stein as a young man. William Carlos Williams read Welch's poems while visiting Reed College, and tried to help Welch publish his thesis on Gertrude Stein. But Welch's emotional illnesses and nervous breakdowns crippled his promising literary career, although he did gain recognition after joining Snyder and Whalen in San Francisco.

Lew Welch is the hard-partying Dave Wain in Jack Kerouac's novel 'Big Sur.' Matching Kerouac drink for drink during the joyless events described in this book, he appears destined for the same troubles that faced Kerouac (although even he tells Kerouac to stop drinking by the end of the novel). During this time he was in a relationship with Lenore Kandel, later the author of a well-known book of erotic poetry, who appears as Ramona Swartz in Kerouac's book. He and Kandel broke up shortly after.

Lew Welch appears to have committed suicide while staying at Gary Snyder's house in 1971, although his body was never found. He left the following note, discovered by Snyder:

"I never could make anything work out right and now I'm betraying my friends. I can't make anything out of it - never could. I had great visions but never could bring them together with reality. I used it all up. It's all gone. Don Allen is to be my literary executor- use MSS at Gary's and at Grove Press. I have $2,000 in Nevada City Bank of America - use it to cover my affairs and debts. I don't owe Allen G. anything yet nor my Mother. I went Southwest. Goodbye. Lew Welch."

Aram Saroyan wrote a book about Welch and the Beat scene, 'Genesis Angels.' This book offers a touching and well-written consideration of the short life of this enigmatic poet.

http://www.beatmuseum.org/welch/LewWelch.html

Take Action Against Fake Women's Clinics

2006-05-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

An Indiana mother recently accompanied her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend to one of Indiana's Planned Parenthood clinics, but they unwittingly walked into a so-called "crisis pregnancy center" run by an anti-abortion group, one that shared a parking lot with the real Planned Parenthood clinic and was designed expressly to lure Planned Parenthood patients and deceive them.

The group took down the girl's confidential personal information and told her to come back for her appointment, which they said would be in their "other office" (the real Planned Parenthood office nearby). When she arrived for her appointment, not only did the Planned Parenthood staff have no record of her, but the police were there. The "crisis pregnancy center" had called them, claiming that a minor was being forced to have an abortion against her will.

The "crisis pregnancy center" staff then proceeded to wage a campaign of intimidation and harassment over the following days, showing up at the girl's home and calling her father's workplace. Planned Parenthood's clinic director reports that the girl was "scared to death to leave her house." They even went to her school and urged classmates to pressure her not to have an abortion.

The anti-choice movement is setting up these "crisis pregnancy centers" across the country. Some of them have neutral-sounding names and run ads that falsely promise the full range of reproductive health services, but they dispense anti-choice propaganda and intimidation instead. And according to a recent article in The New York Times, there are currently more of these centers in the U.S. than there are actual abortion providers. What's more, these centers have received $60 million in government grants. They're being funded by our tax dollars.

A bill has just been introduced in Congress to stop the fraudulent practices of fake clinics, but it desperately needs more support. Tell your representative to take a stand: anti-choice extremists must not get away with this any longer!

Go to: http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/fake

Continuity

2006-05-02T10:45:00.000-07:00

Continuity
by A. R. Ammons

I've pressed so
far away from
my desire that

if you asked
me what I
want I would,

accepting the harmonious
completion of the
drift, say annihilation,

probably.

poets.org

Poem In Your Pocket Day

2006-04-28T13:21:00.000-07:00

Today is poem in your pocket day. The New York City Department of Education, in collaboration with the Office of the Mayor, Department of Cultural Affairs, City University of New York, and the New York Times, is co-sponsoring the fourth annual Poem In Your Pocket Day on Friday, April 28, 2006. New Yorkers are encouraged to carry a poem in their pocket and share it with friends, family, coworkers and classmates.

http://www.nyc.gov/html/poem/

Keep A Poem In Your Pocket
By Beatrice Schenk de Regniers

Keep a poem in your pocket
And a picture in your head
And you'll never feel lonely
At night when you're in bed.

The little poem will sing to you
The little picture bring to you
A dozen dreams to dance to you
At night when you're in bed.

So - -
Keep a picture in your pocket
And a poem in your head
And you'll never feel lonely
At night when you're in bed.

Here are 2 poems in my pocket today. I discovered this author through one of my students:

In the Night

I longed for companionship rather,
But my companions I always wished farther.
And now in the desolate night
I think only of the people I should like to bite.

Not Waving but Drowning
by Stevie Smith
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

From Collected Poems of Stevie Smith by Stevie Smith, published by New Directions Publishing Corp. Copyright © 1972 by Stevie Smith. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved. No part of this poem may be reproduced in any form without the written consent of the publisher.

Florence Margaret "Stevie" Smith was born in 1902 in Yorkshire, England. Her father left the family to join the North Sea Patrol when she was very young. At age three she moved with her sister and mother to the northern London suburb Palmers Green. This was her home until her death in 1971. Her mother died when she was a teenager and she and her sister lived with their spinster aunt, an important figure throughout her life, known as "The Lion." After high school she attended North London Collegiate School for Girls. She began as a secretary with the magazine publisher George Newnes and went on to be the private secretary to Sir Nevill Pearson and Sir Frank Newnes. She began writing poetry in her twenties while working at George Newnes. Her first book, Novel on Yellow Paper, was published in 1936 and drew heavily on her own life experience, examining the unrest in England during World War I. Her first collection of verse, A Good Time Was Had By All (1937), also contained rough sketches or doodles, which became characteristic of her work. These drawings have both a feeling of caprice and doom, and the poetry in the collection is stylistically typical of Smith as it conveys serious themes in a nursery rhyme structure.

While Smith's volatile attachment to the Church of England is evident in her poetry, death, her "gentle friend," is perhaps her most popular subject. Much of her inspiration came from theology and the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm. She enjoyed reading Tennyson and Browning and read few contemporary poets in an attempt to keep her voice original and pure. Her style is unique in its combination of seemingly prosaic statements, variety of voices, playful meter, and deep sense of irony. Smith was officially recognized with the Chomondeley Award for Poetry in 1966 and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 1969. Smith died of a brain tumor in 1971.

Paris in the Spring

2006-04-26T16:45:00.000-07:00

Jack Gilbert, now in his eighties, writes verse that reveals his fierce ideals and provides us with a beautiful, sometimes stark view of what a life devoted to poetry has meant for him. "How Much of That Is Left in Me?" appears in his recent book, REFUSING HEAVEN, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. Other poems from that book are featured in today's episode of the Knopf Poetry Podcast and in the downloadable broadside, designed by Abby Weintraub, using a photograph by Dale Satorsky.

How Much of That Is Left in Me?

Yearning inside the rejoicing. The heart's famine
within the spirit's joy. Waking up happy
and practicing discontent. Seeing the poverty
in the perfection, but still hungering
for its strictness. Thinking of
a Greek farmer in the orchard,
the white almond blossoms falling and falling
on him as he struggled with his wooden plow.
I remember the stark and precious winters in Paris.
Just after the war when everyone was poor and cold.
I walked hungry through the vacant streets at night
with the snow falling wordlessly in the dark like petals
on the last of the nineteenth century. Substantiality
seemed so near in the grand empty boulevards,
while the famous bronze bells told of time.
Stripping everything down until being was visible.
The ancient buildings and the Seine,
small stone bridges and regal fountains flourishing
in the emptiness. What fine provender in the want.
What freshness in me amid the loneliness.

Knopfpoetry.com

Christina Davis

2006-04-25T14:27:00.000-07:00

The Primer
by Christina Davis

She said, I love you.

He said, Nothing.

(As if there were just one
of each word and the one
who used it, used it up).

In the history of language
the first obscenity was silence.

Christina Davis received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and her M.Phil. in Modernist Literature from the University of Oxford. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Gettysburg Review, Jubilat, LIT, The May Anthologies (selected by Ted Hughes), New England Review, New Republic, Paris Review, and Provincetown Arts (selected by Susan Mitchell). She is the recipient of several residencies to Yaddo and MacDowell, as well as to the Valparaiso Foundation in Spain. Currently the Assistant Director of the NYU Creative Writing Program, she lives in the heart of Greenwich Village.

Happy Birthday April Girls

2006-04-24T17:33:00.000-07:00

Always Marry An April Girl

Praise the spells and bless the charms,
I found April in my arms.
April golden, April cloudy,
Gracious, cruel, tender, rowdy;
April soft in flowered languor,
April cold with sudden anger,
Ever changing, ever true --
I love April, I love you.

Ogden Nash

http://www.aenet.org/poems/ognash1.htm

Ogden Nash (1902-1971) was raised in Savannah, Georgia, and other East Coast cities. His father's import-export business made it necessary for the family to move frequently. After completing his secondary education at St. George's School in Newport, Rhode Island, Nash attended Harvard for one year (1920-21). Dropping out of college for financial reasons, Nash took various positions teaching, selling bonds, and writing streetcar advertisements. In 1925, Nash took a position with Doubleday Page Publishers as an editor and a publicist, and published his first children's story, written with Joseph Alger, The Cricket of Carador (1925).

Still working at Doubleday, Nash collaborated with Christopher Morley to publish the comical Born in a Beer Garden or, She Troupes to Conquer: Sunday Ejaculations by Christopher Morley, Cleon Throckmorton, Ogden Nash and Certain of the Hoboken Ads, with a Commentary by Earnest Elmo Calkins (1930). Also in 1930, Nash published his first humorous poem "Spring Comes to Murray Hill" in the New Yorker.

After the Murray Hill poem, Nash's work began to appear in other periodicals and he was able to publish a collection of verse in 1931 with immense success. Hard Lines (1931) sold out seven printings in its first year and secured Nash in his role as a master of light and whimsical verse.

In 1932 he left Doubleday to work on staff at the New Yorker, but he soon quit the job to devote himself full-time to his writing. He went on to publish more than two dozen volumes of verse, as well as screenplays (none successfully produced), lyrics and scripts for theater, children's stories and various essays. Some of his better known titles include The Bad Parent's Garden of Verse (1936), I'm a Stranger Here Myself (1938), The Face is Familiar: the Selected Verses of Ogden Nash (1940), Parents Keep Out: Elderly Poems for Young Readers (1951), Custard the Dragon (1959), and Marriage Lines: Notes of a Student Husband (1963). His Broadway play, One Touch of Venus (1943), written with Kurt Weill and S.J. Perelman was a smashing success.

When he wasn't writing poems, Nash took time to appear on various radio game and comedy shows in the 1940s and to write scores for TV shows in the 1950s. He also engaged in extensive lecture tours around the United States and England.

In his personal life, he married Frances Rider Leonard in June of 1931 and had two daughters, Linell Chenault (Mrs. J. Marshall Smith), and Isabel Jackson (Mrs. Frederick Eberstadt). His marriage and his children proved to be a strong influence on his work. He received honorary degrees from New England College (1967), Adelphi (1961), and Franklin and Marshall (1962) and was elected to membership in many societies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1965), American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (1943), and the National Institute of Arts and Letters (1950).

Ogden Nash continued to write, publish, tour, and lecture until very close to the end of his life on May 19, 1971.

http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/nash.bio.html

Happy Birthday, Will

2006-04-23T09:54:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday to the Baird born this day in 1564. Shakespeare was considered “low brow” in his time and would be surprised at his high position in literary culture today. Various conspiracy theories seek to prove that Shakespeare was not written by Shakespeare but by Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe or Edward de Vere the Earl of Oxford.

VI

Then let not winter's ragged hand deface,
In thee thy summer, ere thou be distilled:
Make sweet some vial; treasure thou some place
With beauty's treasure ere it be self-killed.
That use is not forbidden usury,
Which happies those that pay the willing loan;
That's for thy self to breed another thee,
Or ten times happier, be it ten for one;
Ten times thy self were happier than thou art,
If ten of thine ten times refigured thee:
Then what could death do if thou shouldst depart,
Leaving thee living in posterity?
Be not self-willed, for thou art much too fair
To be death's conquest and make worms thine heir.

Sonnet 6 is an early sonnet written to Shakespeare’s male patron Henry Wriothesley the Earl of Southampton. Yes, the early sonnets were written to a man. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

CXXVII

In the old age black was not counted fair,
Or if it were, it bore not beauty's name;
But now is black beauty's successive heir,
And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:
For since each hand hath put on Nature's power,
Fairing the foul with Art's false borrowed face,
Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,
But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.
Therefore my mistress' eyes are raven black,
Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem
At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,
Sland'ring creation with a false esteem:
Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,
That every tongue says beauty should look so.

This is the first of the “Dark Lady” sonnets in which a mystery woman comes between Shakespeare and the Earl. Below is an expert of To The Virtuous Reader by Amelia Lanyer, a Renaissance feminist who compared the oppression of women to the persecution of Christ and wrote a piece defending Eve and explaining why Adam, not Eve, was to be blamed for eating the apple. It has been suggested by one scholar that Lanyer was Shakespeare’s Dark Lady, but this suggestion has been almost universally rejected.

…to be practised by evill dispo-
sed men, who forgetting they were borne of women, nourished (20)
of women, and that if it were not by the means of women, they
would be quite extinguished out of the world: and a finall ende
of them all, doe like Vipers deface the wombes wherein they
were bred, only to give way and utterance to their want of
discretion and goodnesse. Such as these, were they that disho- (25)
noured Christ his Apostles and Prophets, putting them to
shamefull deaths…

http://www.ic.arizona.edu/ic/mcbride/lanyer/lanyer.htm

In support of Shakespeare as the author of Shakespeare:
http://shakespeareauthorship.com/

For more on the conspiracy and proposed authors of Shakespeare:
http://www.bardweb.net/debates.html

Shakespeare’s sonnets:
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/

Read all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnet one per day
http://www.sonnetaday.com/

Shakespeare’s Last Will and Testament in which the old romantic leaves his second best bed to his wife:

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/museum/item.asp?item_id=21

Earth Day/Kipling

2006-04-22T06:43:00.000-07:00

The Song of the Women

How shall she know the worship we would do her?
The walls are high, and she is very far.
How shall the woman's message reach unto her
Above the tumult of the packed bazaar?
Free wind of March, against the lattice blowing,
Bear thou our thanks, lest she depart unknowing.

Go forth across the fields we may not roam in,
Go forth beyond the trees that rim the city,
To whatsoe'er fair place she hath her home in,
Who dowered us with walth of love and pity.
Out of our shadow pass, and seek her singing --
"I have no gifts but Love alone for bringing."

Say that we be a feeble folk who greet her,
But old in grief, and very wise in tears;
Say that we, being desolate, entreat her
That she forget us not in after years;
For we have seen the light, and it were grievous
To dim that dawning if our lady leave us.

By life that ebbed with none to stanch the failing
By Love's sad harvest garnered in the spring,
When Love in ignorance wept unavailing
O'er young buds dead before their blossoming;
By all the grey owl watched, the pale moon viewed,
In past grim years, declare our gratitude!

By hands uplifted to the Gods that heard not,
By fits that found no favor in their sight,
By faces bent above the babe that stirred not,
By nameless horrors of the stifling night;
By ills foredone, by peace her toils discover,
Bid Earth be good beneath and Heaven above her!

If she have sent her servants in our pain
If she have fought with Death and dulled his sword;
If she have given back our sick again.
And to the breast the wakling lips restored,
Is it a little thing that she has wrought?
Then Life and Death and Motherhood be nought.

Go forth, O wind, our message on thy wings,
And they shall hear thee pass and bid thee speed,
In reed-roofed hut, or white-walled home of kings,
Who have been helpen by ther in their need.
All spring shall give thee fragrance, and the wheat
Shall be a tasselled floorcloth to thy feet.

Haste, for our hearts are with thee, take no rest!
Loud-voiced ambassador, from sea to sea
Proclaim the blessing, mainfold, confessed.
Of those in darkness by her hand set free.
Then very softly to her presence move,
And whisper: "Lady, lo, they know and love!"

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was born in Bombay, but educated in England at the United Services College, Westward Ho, Bideford. In 1882 he returned to India, where he worked for Anglo-Indian newspapers. His literary career began with Departmental Ditties (1886), but subsequently he became chiefly known as a writer of short stories. A prolific writer, he achieved fame quickly. Kipling was the poet of the British Empire and its yeoman, the common soldier, whom he glorified in many of his works . He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1907.
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1907/kipling-bio.html

Since the first Earth Day in 1970 people around the world have sought to celebrate the planet through a variety of individual and community activities. But Earth Day is about more than observing the beauty and vitality of nature; it is also about renewing your commitment to saving our living planet.

http://www.worldwildlife.org/earthday/

Mr. Zadie Smith

2006-04-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

The Bearhug
by Nick Laird

It’s not as if I’m intending on spending the rest of my life
doing this:
besuited, rebooted, filing to work, this poem a fishbone in
my briefcase.
The scaffolding clinging to St Paul’s is less urban ivy than
skin, peeling off.

A singular sprinkler shaking his head spits at the newsprint
of birdshit.
It’s going unread: Gooseberry Poptarts, stale wheaten
bread, Nutella and toothpaste.
An open-armed crane turns to embrace the aeroplanes
passing above.

I hadn’t the foggiest notion. Imagine: me, munching
cardboard and rubbish,
but that’s just what they meant when they said, Come in,
you’re dead-beat,
take the weight off your paws, you’re a big weary grizzly
with a hook through his mouth,

here, have some of this love.

Poets.org

Who is Nick Laird? As I walk to a bar in north London to meet him, I run everything I know about this man through my mind. I have seen the beautiful boy band face, gazing from the jacket of his debut novel Utterly Monkey. I have read the searing poetry - "Go home I haven't slept alone / In weeks and need to reach across / The sheets to find not warmth but loss." I know he is married to Zadie Smith. And I have heard that he hates journalists.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/generalfiction/story
/0,6000,1475434,00.html

Meet Zadie Smith at:
http://www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth257

When You Are Old-Yeats

2006-04-19T17:46:00.000-07:00

The second verse of this poem was read at my wedding.

When You are Old
by W. B. Yeats

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.

An Irish Poet born in 1865 Yeats was strongly influenced by Irish myth and folklore. This poem is believed to be for Yeats’ unrequited love, Maud Gonne, the Irish revolutionary. He was also influenced by Irish politics and the modern poet Ezra Pound, but Yeats continued to write in traditional verse forms. He had a life-long interest in mysticism and the occult, which was off-putting to some readers, but he remained uninhibited in advancing his idiosyncratic philosophy. He was appointed as an Irish Free State Senator in 1922. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1923 and died in 1939 at the age of 73.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/117

Yeats once lived in the London apartment where Sylvia Plath killed herself.

Elegy

2006-04-18T14:06:00.000-07:00

What Came to Me
by Jane Kenyon

I took the last
dusty piece of china
out of the barrel.
It was your gravy boat,
with a hard, brown
drop of gravy still
on the porcelain lip.
I grieved for you then
as I never had before.

From: The Sorrow Psalms: A Book of Twentieth-Century Elegy

edited by Lynn Strongin

At their most mournful, with praise and love and raw emotion, poets throughout time have put their grief to paper. The elegy and its inherent drama---the inevitable struggle between love and death---are showcased in The Sorrow Psalms, a collection of twentieth-century elegies edited by poet Lynn Strongin.

Divided into five thematic sections, the elegies convey the impact of death and its aftermath; focus on the loss of family, lovers, and dear friends; contend with the loss of a child; deal with violent death; and seek to look beyond death to find some kind of resolution. The traditional stages of grieving---denial, anger, depression, and acceptance---are evident, either singly in the expression of one profound emotion or all at once, in these elegies. Strongin's introduction explains the origins of the elegy and its evolution through the twentieth century.

Jane Kenyon

Jane Kenyon was born in 1947 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and grew up in the midwest. She earned a B.A. from the University of Michigan in 1970 and an M.A. in 1972. That same year, Kenyon married the poet Donald Hall, whom she had met while a student at the University of Michigan. With him she moved to Eagle Pond Farm in New Hampshire. During her lifetime Jane Kenyon published four books of poetry—Constance (1993), Let Evening Come (1990), The Boat of Quiet Hours (1986), and From Room to Room (1978)—and a book of translation, Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova (1985). In December 1993 she and Donald Hall were the subject of an Emmy Award-winning Bill Moyers documentary, "A Life Together." At the time of her death from leukemia, in April 1995, Jane Kenyon was New Hampshire's poet laureate. A fifth collection of Kenyon's poetry, Otherwise: New and Selected Poems, was released in 1996, and in 1999, Graywolf Press issued A Hundred White Daffodils: Essays, Interviews, the Akhmatova Translations, Newspaper Columns, and One Poem.

poets.org

Watch Your Step in Istanbul

2006-04-17T14:32:00.000-07:00

In Antigua
by Kerri Webster

"In Antigua I am famous. I am bathed in jasmine
and pressed with warm stones."
—Carnival Cruise ad in the New Yorker

In Albuquerque, on the other hand, I am infamous; children
throw stones and the elderly whisper behind their hands.
In Juneau, I am glacial, a cool blue where anyone can bathe
for a price. In Rio I am neither exalted nor defamed; I walk
the streets and nothing makes sense, voices garbled, something
about electricity, something about peonies and cheap wool.

In Prague I am as fabulous as Napoleon and everyone
knows it. They give me a horse and I tell them this horse
will be buried with me, I tell them I will call the horse either
Andromeda or Murphy and all applaud wildly. In Montreal
I am paler than I am in Toronto. In Istanbul I trip over cracks
in the sidewalk and no one rushes to take my elbow, to say
Miss or brew strong tea for a poultice. In Sydney they talk
about my arrival for days. I sit outside the opera house
waiting for miracles, and when none occur in a fortnight

it's Ecuador, where the old gods include the small scythes
of my fingernails in their rituals and I learn that anything
can ferment, given opportunity, given terra cotta. In Paris
I'm up all night. Off the Gold Coast, I marry a reverend
who swears that pelicans are god's birds and numbers them
fervently, meanwhile whistling. Near Bucharest I go all
invisible, also clammy, also way more earnest than I ever was
in Memphis. For three Sundays I wander skinny side streets
saying amphora, amphora.

Poets.org

An amphora is a Greek vase with two handles. See one at:
http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/viewone.asp?dep=13&viewmode
=0&item=56.171.38

Kerri Webster received her M.F.A. from Indiana University. Her poems have appeared recently in The Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Boston Review, and VOLT. Her chapbook, was selected by Carl Phillips as a winner of the Poetry Society of America's National Chapbook Competition was published in 2003. She is currently teaching poetry at Boise State University.

Happy Spring From Emily Dickinson

2006-04-16T07:52:00.000-07:00

A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
But human nature feels.

It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) was born in Amherst, Massachusetts. Around 1850 she started to write poetry and over the years experimented with a number of different styles and types of poem. She was very prolific, and wrote over 1800 poems; but was equally shy and solitary, and in her own lifetime only six of these were published. After her death her poems were brought out by her sister Lavinia, who edited three volumes between 1891 and 1896. Even then the task wasn't fully completed, and it wasn't until the 1950's that the job of bringing Dickinson's poetry to the world was essentially completed.

http://www.firstscience.com/SITE/poems/dickinson3.asp

Rowan Ricardo Phillips

2006-04-15T13:07:00.000-07:00

Closing Night's Nocturne
by Rowan Ricardo Phillips
From The New Republic 3/7/05

At the end of an excellent career
the moon combs her hair
for one final time
in the narrow, half-lit window.
Tomorrow, all of her
memorized lines
and muttered perfections,
all of her heights, will burn.
Nothing left but the lights
that for so long framed the face.
And then, too, slowly the lights
to cinder.
Wait for the curtain to rise
again. "The hours"--she said--
"the hours I have now."
Wait for the encore, wait the human bow.

Phillips is an Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University
http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/CAS/englishweb2.nsf/pages/phillips

Kenneth Koch

2006-04-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

In an essay called "On Reading Poetry," the late Kenneth Koch wrote:
Suppose you want to get an experience into words so that it is permanently there, as it would be in a painting—so that every time you read what you wrote, you reexperienced it. Suppose you want to say something so that it is right and beautiful—even though you may not understand exactly why. Or suppose words excite you—the way stone excites a sculptor—and inspire you to use them in a new way. And that for these or other reasons you like writing because of the way it makes you think or because of what it helps you to understand. These are some of the reasons poets write poetry.
Today's episode of the Knopf Poetry Podcast features Mark Strand reading Kenneth Koch's poem "Permanently."

Permanently

One day the Nouns were clustered in the street.
An Adjective walked by, with her dark beauty.
The Nouns were struck, moved, changed.
The next day a Verb drove up, and created the Sentence.

Each Sentence says one thing—for example, "Although it was a dark rainy
day when the Adjective walked by, I shall remember the pure and sweet
expression on her face until the day I perish from the green, effective
earth."
Or, "Will you please close the window, Andrew?"
Or, for example, "Thank you, the pink pot of flowers on the window sill
has changed color recently to a light yellow, due to the heat from the
boiler factory which exists nearby."

In the springtime the Sentences and the Nouns lay silently on the grass.
A lonely Conjunction here and there would call, "And! But!"
But the Adjective did not emerge.

As the Adjective is lost in the sentence,
So I am lost in your eyes, ears, nose, and throat—
You have enchanted me with a single kiss
Which can never be undone
Until the destruction of language.

More info at:
http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400044993

Time and Space and Poetry by Natasha Trethewey

2006-04-12T18:03:00.000-07:00

Theories of Time and Space
by Natasha Trethewey

You can get there from here, though
there’s no going home.

Everywhere you go will be somewhere
you’ve never been. Try this:

head south on Mississippi 49, one-
by-one mile markers ticking off

another minute of your life. Follow this
to its natural conclusion – dead end

at the coast, the pier at Gulfport where
riggings of shrimp boats are loose stitches

in a sky threatening rain. Cross over
the man-made beach, 26 miles of sand

dumped on a mangrove swamp – buried
terrain of the past. Bring only

what you must carry – tome of memory
its random blank pages. On the dock

where you board the boat for Ship Island,
someone will take your picture:

the photograph – who you were –
will be waiting when you return

Hear Natasha Tretheway read her poems at the following Academy of American
Poets National Poetry Month event:

April 11
Michael Collier, Natasha Tretheway, and David Tucker
Co-sponsored by Houghton Mifflin and Poets House
Poets House, 72 Spring Street
New York, NY
7 p.m $5 general admission, free to Poets House and Academy members

Poetry.org

Poet Natasha Trethewey is a Professor at Emory. She was born in Gulfport, Mississippi. During the 2005-2006 academic year, Trethewey is the Lehman Brady Joint Chair Professor of Documentary and American Studies at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her third collection of poems, Native Guard, is forthcoming in March 2006 from Houghton Mifflin.

Read another poem by Natasha at http://www.creativewriting.emory.edu/faculty/trethewey.html

Another Workplace Poem

2006-04-11T17:12:00.000-07:00

Quixotic Roar: A Non-Epic

By Cynthia Kuhn

These ivy-covered walls invite
serene contemplation; calm figures
glide hither and yon with books.

A sudden roar sweeps the stone
halls, and quiet scholars flee.

The elder, vicious in wild voice,
charges at the younger, who is
surprised to find herself
drawing a sword. She confronts
the violent stabs without flinching;
no tilting at windmills, this.
The sword is heavy, but she
is willing to use it. Invokes first
a verbal balm, a necessary
and temporary truce.

The elder retreats, tail twitching,
to wait for another victim.

The younger vows to remain
armed and dangerous.
It's medieval in here.

All Rights Reserved, Copyright 2004 @ Meow Power. No Reprint Without Permission

More poetry by Cynthia Kuhn at Meowpower.org

I could not find a bio on Cynthia...very mysterious.

Hey, Hey, We're The Monkey Poets

2006-04-10T19:49:00.000-07:00

"If you have enough monkeys banging randomly on typewriters,
they will eventually type the works of William Shakespeare."

One of the Monkeys
by Nicholas Johnson

I'm one of the monkeys they've got typing
in a room full of monkeys. It's a play
Shakespeare wrote back in the old days
they want us to write again. So we're writing
a play we never read. They keep inviting
strangers to watch us and the strangers say:
"They wrote 'to be or nutti to be'!" They stay
too long if we write something exciting
but the bananas flow like wine. We know
it's a crazy, morbid, ranting play, a stew
full of murder, love, but with a noble feel.
Shocked, I see hack monkeys come and monkeys go.
One keeper killed my father. What should I do?
I'm watching him. My teeth are as sharp as steel.

Poets.org

NICK JOHNSON's new chapbook, Degrees of Freedom, is published by Bright Hill Press. A MacDowell Colony fellow, Pushcart Prize nominee, and winner of The Lyric Recovery Festival Award 2000 at Carnegie Hall, he has published work in Rattapallax,, Pivot, American Poetry Review, Chance of a Ghost anthology, and elsewhere. Nick is Co-Founder and Senior Poetry Editor of Big City Lit (BigCityLit.com), an on-line literary magazine. He has taught creative writing for many years at the Payne Whitney Clinic and The Lighthouse in New York City.

http://wordworksdc.com.hosting.domaindirect.com/cafe_muse.html

It is frequently stated in books and articles on probability that if a succession of monkeys were set before a typewriter with limitless paper, eventually the complete works of Shakespeare would be repeated by chance. If there are 50 keys on the typewriter, the probability of the monkey getting Shakespeare correct is raised to the power of the number of characters (letters and spaces) in Shakespeare plus the adjustments of the typewriter needed for capitals and punctuation. On this basis the chance of the monkey typing the word 'Hamlet' correctly is one in 15,625,000,000, so to quote the probability of him typing the complete works involves a large number indeed.

http://www.probabilitytheory.info/topics/bridge_monkeys.htm

More Monkey business
http://www.careerbuilder.com/monk-e-mail/Default.aspx?siteid=sep
_google_supbowl&sc_extcmp=monkemail+monk+e+mail&cbRecursionCnt=
1&cbsid=8ece6c40ac4c437993e6991f3a97444b-198024200-WJ-2

Moran/Friedan

2006-04-09T09:28:00.000-07:00

Daniel Thomas Moran
Suffolk County Poet Laureate

Never Cross a Woman
For Eileen

There she comes, as if from
nowhere, Betty Friedan,
the Mother of all wo-
man, The feminine my-
stic lobbying just-
ice with an upraised
fist, high priestess of
uterine actual-
ization. There she came in
a rusty old Ply
mouth daring as she must to
navigate the tight
spots; careening off of
the nice lady’s
new Beemer in the noon-
time bedlam of a Sag
Harbor summer and step-
ped out to the con-
frontation. The lady said,
“Save the speech, Betty. Who’s
going to pay for the god-
damned crease in my door? When
my husband sees this he’s going to kill
me.”

Daniel Thomas Moran was born in New York City on March 9, 1957. In 1962 his family moved to Massapequa on Long island… In 1987 he purchased a Dental practice on New York’s Shelter Island…In 1988 he gave his first public reading at the famed Canio’s Books in Sag Harbor, NY along with a poet who would become one of his greatest influences, the late Dan Murray… Since 1997, Dr. Moran has been a Trustee to The Walt Whitman Birthplace Association in West Hills, NY where he founded The Long Island School of Poetry Series. He presently serves as The Birthplace’s Vice-President. He was appointed Suffolk County Poet Laureate in April, 2005. Street Press has just released The Light of the City and Sea, an anthology of Suffolk County Poets edited by Moran who believes this anthology represents the Long Island School of Poetry.

http://www.danielthomasmoran.net/index.html

http://www.newsday.com/news/columnists/ny-lfisle4682344apr02,0,2979111.
column?coll=ny-news-columnists

"Love" Poems by Dan Chiasson

2006-04-08T15:24:00.000-07:00

These two offerings begin NATURAL HISTORY, a collection from Dan Chiasson that was published in October. I took two poetry classes with Chiasson at Stony Brook. He’s a young, up and coming poet. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was US Poet Laureate some day.

************************************

LOVE SONG (SMELT)

When I say 'you' in my poems, I mean you.
I know it’s weird: we barely met.
You must hear this all the time, being you.

That night we were at opposite ends of
the long table, after the pungent
Russian condiments, the carafes of tarragon vodka,

the chafing dishes full of boiled smelts
I was a little drunk: after you left,
I ate the last smelt off your dirty plate.

LOVE SONG (SYCAMORES)

Stop there, stop now, come no closer
I said, but you followed me anyway.
You made a bed for us in the woods.
There were sycamore boughs overhead.

Stop there. Stop now. I calculated that
the number of birds singing
on any given morning
was a function of the sycamores plus my hangover.

I said, Stop there, but you followed me
even when I tore our bed to pieces,
I did that, I brought anger into the bower
and the sycamores became menacing shoulders.

And the birds cried, scared, a little embarrassed.
And we paced back and forth, under
the menacing shoulders of the sycamores.
The birds made nests inside our heads.

When you held my fist between your two hands,
I pretended to be subdued. But then
I opened my fist easily
and scattered your strength all over the bower.

When you ran towards me, I said, Stop there,
stop now, you'll end up
in a stranger's life; and when you ran away
I said the same words over again, louder.

************************************

RELATED LINKS:

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************************************

from NATURAL HISTORY by Dan Chiasson. Copyright
c) 2005 by Dan Chiasson. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A.
Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part
of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in
writing from the publisher.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Happy Birthday Wordsworth

2006-04-07T14:16:00.000-07:00

William Wordsworth was born April 7, 1770
Here's a sonnet by Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

It was with Coleridge that Wordsworth published the famous Lyrical Ballads in 1798. While the poems themselves are some of the most influential in Western literature, it is the preface to the second edition that remains one of the most important testaments to a poet's views on both his craft and his place in the world. In the preface Wordsworth writes on the need for "common speech" within poems and argues against the hierarchy of the period which valued epic poetry above the lyric.

complete bio at http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/296

a sad poem by Wordsworth at http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16085

Bronte, Stoic Soul

2006-04-06T19:41:00.000-07:00

Emily Bronte doing double duty as a famous woman and a now a poet because I'm tired. Be a "chainless soul" this weekend.

The Old Stoic

Emily Brontë (1818–48)

RICHES I hold in light esteem,
And Love I laugh to scorn;
And lust of fame was but a dream
That vanish’d with the morn;

And if I pray, the only prayer 5
That moves my lips for me
Is, “Leave the heart that now I bear,
And give me liberty!”

Yes, as my swift days near their goal,
’T is all that I implore: 10
In life and death a chainless soul,
With courage to endure.

Newly Discovered Dr. Seuss Poem

2006-04-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

A newly discovered Dr Seuss poem?

I Love My Job!

I love my job, I love the pay!
I love it more and more ach day.
I love my boss, she is the best!
I love her boss and all the rest.

I love my office and its location, I have to have to go on vacation
I love my furniture, drab and grey, and piles of paper that grow each day!
I think my job is really swell, there’s nothing else I love so well.
I love to work among my peers, I love their leers, and jeers, and sneers.
I love my computer and its software;
I hug it often though it won’t care. I love each program and every file.
I’d love them more if they worked a while.

I’m happy to be here. I am. I am.
I’m the happiest slave of the Firm, I am.
I love this work, I love these chores.
I love the meetings with the deadly bores.
I love my job – I’ll say it again – I even love those friendly men.
Those friendly men who’ve come today
In clean white coats to take me away!

Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known to the world as the beloved Dr. Seuss, was born in 1904 on Howard Street in Springfield, Massachusetts…His mother, Henrietta Seuss Geisel, often soothed her children to sleep by "chanting" rhymes remembered from her youth. Ted credited his mother with both his ability and desire to create the rhymes for which he became so well known…

Ted left Springfield as a teenager to attend Dartmouth College, where he became editor-in-chief of the Jack-O-Lantern, Dartmouth's humor magazine. Although his tenure as editor ended prematurely when Ted and his friends were caught throwing a drinking party, which was against the prohibition laws and school policy, he continued to contribute to the magazine, signing his work "Seuss." This is the first record of The Cat in the Hat the "Seuss" pseudonym, which was both Ted's middle name and his mother's maiden name.

To please his father, who wanted him to be a college professor, Ted went on to Oxford University in England after graduation. However, his academic studies bored him, and he decided to tour Europe instead. Oxford did provide him the opportunity to meet a classmate, Helen Palmer, who not only became his first wife, but also a children's author and book editor.

After returning to the United States, Ted began to pursue a career as a cartoonist. The Saturday Evening Post and other publications published some of his early pieces, but the bulk of Ted's activity during his early career was devoted to creating advertising campaigns for Standard Oil, which he did for more than 15 years.

As World War II approached, Ted's focus shifted, and he began contributing weekly political cartoons to PM magazine, a liberal publication…

Getting the first book that he both wrote and illustrated, And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, published, however, required a great degree of persistence - it was rejected 27 times before being published by Vanguard Press…

At the time of his death on September 24, 1991, Ted had written and illustrated 44 children's books, including such all-time favorites as Green Eggs and Ham, Oh, the Places You'll Go, Fox in Socks, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. …

His honors included two Academy awards, two Emmy awards, a Peabody award and the Pulitzer Prize.

Full bio at: http://www.catinthehat.org/history.htm

One Word

2006-04-04T15:40:00.000-07:00

One-Word Poem
By David Slavitt

Motherless.

Discussion questions.

1. Is this a joke? And, if so, is it a joke of the poet in which the editor of the magazine (or, later, the book publisher or the textbook writers) has conspired? Or is it a joke on the editors and publishers? Is the reader the audience of the poem?
2. It is regrettable not to have a mother. Is the purpose of the poem to convey an emotion to the reader? Does the poet suppose that this is the saddest word in the language? Do you agree or disagree? Can you suggest a sadder word?
3. The Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary gives an alternate meaning from nineteenth- and twentieth-century Australian slang as an intensifier, as in “stone motherless broke.” Can you assume that the poet knew this? Does this make for an ambiguity in the poem? Does this information change your emotional response?
4. If the assertion of the single word as a work of art is not a joke, then what could it mean? Is it a Dada-ist gesture, amusing and cheeky perhaps but with an underlying seriousness that the poet either invites or defies the reader to understand?
5. Even if the poet was merely fooling around, does that necessarily diminish the possible seriousness of the poem?
6. If we acknowledge that this is a work of art, can the author assert ownership? Is it possible to copyright a one-word poem?
7. In writing a one-word poem, the crucial decision must be which word to choose and to posit as a work of art. Do you think the poet spent a great deal of time picking this word? Or did he simply open a dictionary and let his fingers do the walking? Does that diminish the poem’s value? Or is it a kind of bibliomancy?
8. Should the word have been in quotes? Or is it quotes even without being in quotes? There is a period at the end of the poem. Would it change the meaning of the poem if there were an exclamation point? Or no punctuation at all? Would that be a different poem? Better or worse? Or would you like it more or less? (Are these different questions?)
9. You can almost certainly write—or “write”—a one-word poem. But it would be difficult for you to get it published—almost certainly more difficult now that this one has been published and staked its claim. Is the publication of a poem a part of the creative act? Had the poet written his poem and put it away in his desk drawer as Emily Dickinson used to do, would this make it a different poem?
10. Some poems we read and some that we particularly like, we memorize. You have already memorized this one. Do you like it better now? Or are the questions part of the poem, so that you have not yet memorized it? Will you, anyway? Do you need to memorize the questions verbatim, or is the idea enough?

----------------------------------------------
Sonnets on Love XIII
by Jean de Sponde
Translated by David R. Slavitt

"Give me a place to stand," Archimedes said,
"and I can move the world." Paradoxical, clever,
his remark which first explained the use of the lever
was an academic joke. But if that dead

sage could return to life, he would find a clear
demonstration of his idea, which is not
pure theory after all. That putative spot
exists in the love I feel for you, my dear.

What could be more immovable or stronger?
What becomes more and more secure, the longer
it is battered by inconstancy and the stress

we find in our lives? Here is that fine fixed point
from which to move a world that is out of joint,
as he could have done, had he known a love like this.

David R. Slavitt was born in White Plains, New York, in 1935, and educated at Andover, Yale, and Columbia University. A poet, translator, novelist, critic, and journalist, he is the author of more than seventy works of fiction, poetry, and poetry and drama in translation. …His honors include a Pennsylvania Council on Arts award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in translation, an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and a Rockefeller Foundation Artist's Residence. He lives in Philadelphia and is on the faculties of Bennington and Yale.

Poetry.org

Two From Wislawa Szymborska

2006-04-03T16:02:00.000-07:00

What is National Poetry Month? National Poetry Month was established by the Academy of American Poets as a month-long, national celebration of poetry. The concept was to increase the attention paid-by individuals and the media—to the art of poetry, to living poets, to our poetic heritage, and to poetry books and magazines. In the end, we hoped to achieve an increase in the visibility, presence, and accessibility of poetry in our culture. National Poetry Month has been successful beyond all anticipation and has grown over the years into the largest literary celebration in the world.

More about Poetry Month at Poets.org

A Note
By Wislawa Szymborska

Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the sand,
rise on wings;

to be a dog,
or stroke its warm fur;

to tell pain
from everything it's not;

to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chance
to remember for a moment
a conversation held
with the lamp switched off;

and if only once
to stumble upon a stone,
end up soaked in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;
and to keep on not knowing
something important.

From The New Yorker, November 28, 2005

Some Like Poetry
By Wislawa Szymborska

Some -
thus not all. Not even the majority of all but the minority.
Not counting schools, where one has to,
and the poets themselves,
there might be two people per thousand.

Like -
but one also likes chicken soup with noodles,
one likes compliments and the color blue,
one likes an old scarf,
one likes having the upper hand,
one likes stroking a dog.

Poetry -
but what is poetry.
Many shaky answers
have been given to this question.
But I don't know and don't know and hold on to it
like to a sustaining railing.

http://info-poland.buffalo.edu/classroom/szymborska/poetry.html

Ms. Wislawa Szymborska was born in Kornik in Western Poland on 2 July 1923. Since 1931 she has been living in Krakow, where during 1945-1948 she studied Polish Literature and Sociology at the Jagiellonian University. Szymborska made her début in March 1945 with a poem "Szukam slowa" (I am Looking for a Word) in the daily "Dziennik Polski".

During 1953-1981 she worked as poetry editor and columnist in the Kraków literary weekly "Zycie Literackie" …

Szymborska has published 16 collections of poetry and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1996.

Nobel Prize Press Release and complete bio at:
http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1996/press.html

That Light One Find In Baby Pictures-Jay Hopler

2006-04-02T05:42:00.000-07:00

That Light One Finds In Baby Pictures

1.
Being born is a shame---

But it’s not so bad, as journeys go. It’s not the worst one
We will ever have to make. It’s almost noon

And the light now clouded in the courtyard is
Like that light one finds in baby pictures: old

And pale and hurt---

2.
When all roads are low and lead to the same
Place, we call it fate and tell ourselves how

We were born to make the journey. Who’s
To say we weren’t?

3.
The clouded light has changed to rain.
The picture---no, the baby’s blurry.

4.
That’s me, the child playing in the sand with a pail
And shovel; in the background, my mother’s shadow

Is crawling across a soot-blackened collapse of brick
And timber, what might have been a bathhouse once.

The tide is coming in. Someone has written “HELL”
On its last standing wall.

From the New Yorker March 6, 2006

Read A Combustion of Plums by Hopler at:
http://home.earthlink.net/~glafemina/poetsintheirthirties2004archive/id35.html

Jay Hopler's work has appeared most recently, or is forthcoming, in The Iowa Review, The Journal, The Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, The New Yorker, Pleiades and Xantippe. His book of poems, Green Squall, was chosen by Louise Glück as the winner of the 2005 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. Green Squall will be published by Yale University Press in April 2006. He is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing/Poetry at University of South Florida.

http://www.pshares.org/authors/authordetails.cfm?prmauthorid=6515

Walking Home on an Early Spring Evening-David Young

2006-04-01T06:11:00.000-08:00

Walking Home on an Early Spring Evening

Every microcosm needs its crow,
something to hang around and comment,
scavenge,
alight on highest branches.

Who hasn't seen the gnats,
the pollen grains that coat the windshield—
who hasn't heard the tree frogs?

In the long march that takes us all our life,
in and out of sleep, sun up, sun gone,
our aging back and forth, smiling and puzzled,
there come these times: you stop and look,

and fix on something unremarkable,
a parking lot or just a patch of sumac,
but it will flare and resonate

and you'll feel part of it for once,
you'll be a goldfinch hanging on a feeder,
you'll be a river system all in silver
etched on a frosty driveway, you'll

say "Folks, I think I made it this time,
I think this is my song." The crow lifts up,
its feathers shine and whisper,

its round black eye surveys indifferently
the world we've made
and then the one we haven't.

David Young is the author of nine previous books of poetry, including At the White Window (2000) and The Planet on the Desk: Selected and New Poems (1991). He is a well-known translator of the Chinese poets, and more recently of the poems of Petrarch and Eugenio Montale. A past winner of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships as well as a Pushcart Prize, Young is the Longman Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing at Oberlin College and an editor of the prestigious Field Poetry Series at Oberlin College Press.

http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/catalog/results2.pperl?authorid=69055

I am "Wom", Hear Me Roar

2006-03-31T14:02:00.000-08:00

Thank you for celebrating Women's History Month with me. Tomorrow begins National Poetry Month, and daily poetry postings.

“It is taken for granted that a work reveals the artist's soul as well as his mind" writes Jacques Barzun in From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present (67). Barzun is referring to an unspecified Renaissance artist, to Renaissance artists in a general, abstract sense, yet he uses the masculine third person singular pronoun "his". Were all Renaissance artists men? Are only male Renaissance artists worthy of Barzun's (and the reader's) attention? Are women merely hypersensitive to the use of the male pronouns "he" and "his" to refer to individuals of unspecified gender as suggested by Calvert Watkins, Chair of the Linguistics Department at Harvard Divinity School who coined the phrase "pronoun envy"? (Harvard Crimson, 26 November 1971, 17 qtd. in Livia 3)…
Detailed study of the proposed alternative "womyn" leads me to conclude, regretfully, that it fails to adequately separate "woman" from "man"… There are two possible morphological interpretations of the word "womyn". The first is to consider it a completely new word; a free morpheme that cannot be broken down into smaller units. Yet, can anyone read "womyn" without reading "woman"? I think the more honest and accurate analysis is to treat "wo" as a derivational prefix to "myn" which is merely an alternative spelling of the free morpheme "man". "Womyn", while it does not succeed as a viable alternative to "woman", does serve the valuable purpose of protesting the linguistic inferiority of women and highlighting the need for language reform.
It is no surprise that "womyn", when recognized at all, retains its non-standard, alternative status. "Womyn" was not listed by the on-line dictionaries of American Heritage, Cambridge or Dictionary.com. The effort to separate "woman" from "man" linguistically is, of course, socially symbolic, highly controversial and certain to meet with resistance. It would be extremely difficult to replace "woman" with an entirely new word. Donald Hook in discussing the need for an English epicene pronoun, notes the rejection of "neologisms" and suggests that the "utilization of familiar constructs used in new ways" is a more amenable solution. Can the familiar existing units of "woman" be used in a new way that will disassociate "woman" from "man"?
I propose "wom" as an alternative to "woman" or "womyn". "Wom" unlike "womyn" succeeds in reducing the word for woman to one morpheme and eliminates man completely rather than just altering the spelling of "man". "Wom" as a three letter word beginning with "w" is morphologically closer to "wif" and would return to the original meaning of "wif" of an adult female. Femaleness would be the essence of the word in contrast to "woman" in which the essence is human first and female only secondarily. I would offer "wom" not as an abbreviated form of "woman" but as cognate with the word "womb" to entirely disassociate it from the word "man". "Wom" from "womb" would represent not just women's anatomical reproductive capabilities but would symbolically represent women as a "place of origin, development and growth" ("Womb," def. 1.b.) It is not a strange new word nor is it a deviant spelling. It can be viewed as an abbreviated form of "woman" which makes it both familiar and non-threatening. "Womyn" only distinguishes itself from "woman" in written language but "wom" distinguishes itself in spoken language as well. "Wom" is just the sort of hip linguistic shorthand that might become popular with today's young people, especially in e-mail and instant message exchanges. It flows from the instant message to the spoken language and by the time today's adolescents reach their golden years we will write and speak the word "wom" as naturally and effortlessly as we use "woman" today. "Wom" defines woman independently from man, restores to women the reproductive powers denied them by the creation myths and, finally, gives us a word of one's own.

-Deborah Hauser

Full essay at meowpower.org

Mary, Mary II

2006-03-31T13:59:00.000-08:00

The novel, Frankenstein, bears little resemblance to the movies we’re familiar with. It raises ethical issues about the powers and responsibilities of science that our society continues to grapple with today. It was published anonymously in 1818 and was assumed to be the work of Percy Shelley. Mary wrote the book in 11 months after she and Percy spent an evening with Lord Byron reading ghost stories and Byron suggested that they each write their own ghost story.

Bio at http://www.online-literature.com/shelley_mary/

Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley (1797-1851), English Romantic novelist, biographer and editor, best known as the writer of Frankenstein (1818). Mary Shelley was 21 when the book was published.

Mary Shelley was born on August 30, 1797, in London. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, who died in childbirth, was one of the first feminists. Her father was the writer and political journalist William Godwin.

In her childhood Mary Shelley was left to educate herself amongst her father's intellectual circle. She published her first poem at the age of ten. At the age of 16 she ran away to France and Switzerland with the poet Percy Shelley. They married in 1816 after Shelley's first wife had committed suicide by drowning. Their first child, a daughter, died in Venice, Italy, a few years later. In the History Of Six Weeks' Tour (1817) the Shelleys jointly recorded their life. Thereafter they returned to England and Mary gave birth to a son, William.

In 1818 the Shelleys left England for Italy, where they remained until Shelley's death - he drowned in 1822 in the Bay of Spezia near Livorno. In 1819 Mary suffered a nervous breakdown after the death of William - she had also lost a daughter the previous year. In 1822 she had a dangerous miscarriage. Of their children only one, Percy Florence, survived infancy. In 1823 she returned with her son to England, determined not to-re-marry. She devoted herself to his welfare and education and continued her career as a professional writer…

Mary Shelley died in London on February 1, 1851, probably of a brain tumor.

Mary, Mary

2006-03-29T17:07:00.000-08:00

Closing out the month with a mother/daughter duo. Today Mary Wollstonecraft, tomorrow her daughter.

Mary Wollstonecraft
(1759-1797)

A self-taught native of London, Mary Wollstonecraft worked as a schoolteacher and headmistress at a school she established at Newington Green with her sister Eliza. The sisters soon became convinced that the young women they tried to teach had already been effectively enslaved by their social training in subordination to men. In Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787) Wollstonecraft proposed the deliberate extrapolation of Enlightenment ideals to include education for women, whose rational natures are no less capable of intellectual achievement than are those of men.

Following a period of service as a governess to Lord Kingsborough in Ireland, Wollstonecraft spent several years observing political and social developments in France, and wrote History and Moral View of the Origins and Progress of the French Revolution (1793). Her A Vindication of the Rights of Men (1790) is a spirited defense of the ideals of the Revolution against the conservative objections of Burke. Upon her return to England, she joined a radical group whose membership included Blake, Paine, Fuseli, and Wordsworth. Her first child, Fanny, was born in 1795, the daughter of American Gilbert Imlay. After his desertion, she joined the radical activist William Godwin, a long-time friend whom she married in 1797. Wollstonecraft died a few days after the birth of their daughter…

Wollstonecraft's lasting place in the history of philosophy rests upon A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792). In this classical feminist text, she appealed to egalitarian social philosophy as the basis for the creation and preservation of equal rights and opportunities for women. The foundation of morality in all human beings, male or female, is their common possession of the faculty of reason, Wollstonecraft argued, and women must claim their equality by accepting its unemotional dictates. Excessive concern for romantic love and physical desirability, she believed, are not the natural conditions of female existence but rather the socially-imposed means by which male domination enslaves them. The posthumously-published Maria, or the Wrongs of Woman develops similar themes in a fictional setting, by showing that the plight of working women differs little from imprisonment.

http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/woll.htm

Virginia Woolf and Shakespeare's Sister Judith

2006-03-28T17:57:00.000-08:00

Over sixty years after her death, the writings of Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) are a source of continuing power and ever-increasing influence. Recognized in her own time and country as one of the most significant of the Modernists, Woolf has achieved a stature, in the twenty-first century, of international prominence. Admired first in the era of New Criticism as a supreme formalist writer, Woolf has since been recognized as one of the most important and influential feminist writers of the twentieth century and as a writer whose works are dynamically engaged with the political, philosophical, historical and materialist issues of her time.
http://www.utoronto.ca/IVWS/

A Room Of One’s Own: Surprisingly, this long essay about society and art and sexism is one of Woolf's most accessible works. Woolf, a major modernist writer and critic, takes us on an erudite yet conversational--and completely entertaining--walk around the history of women in writing, smoothly comparing the architecture of sentences by the likes of William Shakespeare and Jane Austen, all the while lampooning the chauvinistic state of university education in the England of her day. When she concluded that to achieve their full greatness as writers women will need a solid income and a privacy, Woolf pretty much invented modern feminist criticism.
Amazon.com

Woolf imagines how the talent of Shakespeare’s sister would have been stifled in Shakespeare’s time: “I told you in the course of this paper that Shakespeare had a sister; but do not look for her in Sir Sidney Lee's life of the poet. She died young - alas, she never wrote a word… She lives in you and in me, and in many other women who are not here tonight, for they are washing up the dishes and putting the children to bed. But she lives; for great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh. This opportunity, as I think, it is now coming within your power to give her. For my belief is that if we live another century or so - I am taking of the common life which is the real life and not of the little separate lives which we live as individuals - and have five hundred a year each of us and rooms of our own; if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think;…, then the opportunity will come and the dead poet who was Shakespeare's sister will put on the body which she has so often laid down…But I maintain that she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worth while.”

Woolf, Virginia; A Room of One's Own. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc. 1929.

http://www.haverford.edu/psych/ddavis/psych214/woolf.room.html

The Feminine Mystique-Betty Friedan

2006-03-27T18:13:00.000-08:00

Betty Friedan (1921-2006) has been central to the reshaping of American attitudes toward women's lives and rights. Through decades of social activism, strategic thinking and powerful writing, Friedan is one of contemporary society's most effective leaders.

Friedan's l963 book, The Feminine Mystique, detailed the frustrating lives of countless American women who were expected to find fulfillment primarily through the achievements of husbands and children. The book made an enormous impact, triggering a period of change that continues today. Friedan has been central to this evolution for women, through lectures and writing (It Changed My Life: Writings on the Women's Movement in 1976 and The Second Stage in 1981). She was a founder of the National Organization for Women, a convener of the National Women's Political Caucus, and a key leader in the struggle for passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Friedan published her latest book, The Fountain of Aging in Fall, 1993 and is co-chair of Women, Men and Media, a gender-based research organization that conducts research on gender and the media.

http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=62

What happens when Rosie the Riveter is sent home after the war?

“There was a strange discrepancy between the reality of our lives as women and the image to which we were trying to confirm, the image that I came to call the feminine mystique.”

Betty Friedman-The Feminine Mystique

The Virgin Queen

2006-03-25T05:42:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth I (1558-1603 AD)

Elizabeth I was born in 1533 to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Although she entertained many marriage proposals and flirted incessantly, she never married or had children. Elizabeth, the last of the Tudors, died at seventy years of age after a very successful forty-four year reign.
Elizabeth inherited a tattered realm: dissension between Catholics and Protestants tore at the very foundation of society; the royal treasury had been bled dry by Mary and her advisors, Mary's loss of Calais left England with no continental possessions for the first time since the arrival of the Normans in 1066 and many (mainly Catholics) doubted Elizabeth's claim to the throne. Continental affairs added to the problems - France had a strong footland in Scotland, and Spain, the strongest western nation at the time, posed a threat to the security of the realm. Elizabeth proved most calm and calculating (even though she had a horrendous temper) in her political acumen, employing capable and distinguished men to carrying out royal prerogative.

http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/eliza.htm

Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues

2006-03-23T20:52:00.000-08:00

EVE ENSLER (Playwright/Performer/Activist), award-winning author of The Vagina Monologues, is touring 20 North American cities from October 2005-April 2006 with her newest play The Good Body, following engagements on Broadway in NYC, at ACT in San Francisco, and in a workshop production at Seattle Repertory Theatre (http://www.thegoodbody.com). The Good Body has been been published by Villard/Random House. The Good Body addresses why women of all cultures and backgrounds -- whether undergoing Botox injections or living beneath burkhas -- feel compelled to change the way they look in order to fit in, to be accepted, to be good.

Ms. Ensler's The Vagina Monologues has been translated into over 35 languages and running in theaters all over the world, including sold-out runs at both Off-Broadway's Westside Theater and on London's West End (2002 Olivier Award nomination, Best Entertainment.) Her experience performing The Vagina Monologues inspired her to create V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. Ms. Ensler's performance in The Vagina Monologues can be seen in the HBO original documentary of the play (2002).

Ms. Ensler has devoted her life to stopping violence, envisioning a planet in which women and girls will be free to thrive, rather than merely survive. The Vagina Monologues is based on Ensler's interviews with more than 200 women. With humor and grace the piece celebrates womens' sexuality and strength.

Today, V-Day is a global movement that supports anti-violence organizations throughout the world, helping them to continue and expand their core work on the ground, while drawing public attention to the larger fight to stop worldwide violence (including rape, battery, incest, female genital mutilation (FGM), sexual slavery) against women and girls. V-Day exists for no other reason than to stop violence against women. In just seven years, it has raised over $30 million and was named one of Worth magazine's "100 Best Charities."...

Ms. Ensler's play Necessary Targets, set in a Bosnian refugee camp, opened Off-Broadway at the Variety Arts Theater in February 2002, after a hit run at Hartford Stage. Other plays include Conviction, Lemonade, The Depot, Floating Rhoda and the Glue Man, and Extraordinary Measures. The Good Body, The Vagina Monologues, and Necessary Targets have been published by Villard/Random House, as will Ms. Ensler's upcoming new works, Insecure at Last: Guidelines to Groundlessness and I Am an Emotional Creature. Vagina Warriors, words by Eve Ensler and photos by Joyce Tenneson, was published by Bulfinch Press for V-Day 2005...

http://www.vday.org

-----
This article may be found on vday.org at
http://www.vday.org/contents/vday/aboutvday/eveensler

V-Day is a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. V-Day is a palpable energy, a fierce catalyst that promotes creative events to increase awareness, raise money, and revitalize the spirit of existing anti-violence organizations. For more information about V-Day, visit us at http://www.vday.org/.

copyright (c) 2000-2006 V-Day.

Unbought and Unbossed-Shirley Chisholm

2006-03-22T18:07:00.000-08:00

Shirley St. Hill Chisholm was born on November 30, 1924 in Brooklyn, New York to Charles and Ruby St. Hill. Her father was from British Guiana and her mother was from Barbados.

British education in Barbados.

At Brooklyn College where she majored in sociology. Shirley encountered racism at Brooklyn College and fought against it. When the black students at Brooklyn College were denied admittance to a social club, Shirley formed an alternative one. She graduated in 1946 with honors. … she obtained a job at the Mt. Calvary Childcare Center in Harlem.

In 1949, she married Conrad Chisholm, a Jamaican who worked as a private investigator. Shirley and her husband participated in local politics, helping form the Bedford-Stuyvesant political League. In addition to participating in politics, Chisholm worked in the field of day care until 1959. In 1960, she started the Unity Democratic Club. The Unity Club was instrumental in mobilizing black and Hispanic voters.

In 1964 Chisholm ran for a state assembly seat. She won and served in the New York General Assembly from 1964 to 1968. … In 1968, After finishing her term in the legislature, Chisholm campaigned to represent New York's Twelfth Congressional District. Her campaign slogan was "Fighting Shirley Chisholm--Unbought and Unbossed." She won the election and became the first African American woman elected to Congress.

During her first term in Congress, Chisholm hired an all-female staff and spoke out for civil rights, women's rights, the poor and against the Vietnam War. In 1970, she was elected to a second term. She was a sought-after public speaker and cofounder of the National Organization for Women (NOW). She remarked that, "Women in this country must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to accept the old, the traditional roles and stereotypes."

On January 25, 1972, Chisholm announced her candidacy for president. She stood before the cameras and in the beginning of her speech she said,

"I stand before you today as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States. I am not the candidate of black America, although I am black and proud. I am not the candidate of the women's movement of this country, although I am a woman, and I am equally proud of that. I am not the candidate of any political bosses or special interests. I am the candidate of the people."

The 1972 Democratic National Convention in Miami was the first major convention in which any woman was considered for the presidential nomination. Although she did not win the nomination, she received 151 of the delegates' votes. She continued to serve in the House of Representatives until 1982. She retired from politics after her last term in office. …

Shirley Chisholm passed away on January 1, 2005.

http://nh.essortment.com/shirleychisholm_ruol.htm

Literary Sisters

2006-03-21T16:41:00.000-08:00

The Brontës are the world’s most famous literary family. Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë were the authors of some of the best-loved books in the English language. Charlotte and Emily are ranked among the world’s greatest novelists and Anne is a powerful but underrated author....

After accidentally discovering a manuscript of her sister Emily’s poems in 1846, Charlotte persuaded both her sisters to allow their poems to be published along with her own. The sisters hid their real identities behind false names; Charlotte became Currer Bell, Emily became Ellis Bell and Anne became Acton Bell. The volume of poems was a failure and only two copies were sold.

*Charlotte’s first attempt at writing a novel for publication, The Professor, was rejected by several publishing houses, but her next novel, Jane Eyre, was accepted immediately and published in 1847, gaining instant success. Charlotte was to publish two more novels, Shirley in 1849 and Villette in 1853...

Tragically, her happiness was not to last and she died in the early stages of pregnancy on 31 March 1855 at the age of 38.

*Emily’s only novel Wuthering Heights was published in 1847, but she died a year later from tuberculosis on 19 December 1848 at the age of 30.

*Anne began her first novel Agnes Grey whilst still at Thorp Green and it was published in 1847. Her second novel The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, was published the following year. Anne was not to enjoy her success for long; she died of tuberculosis only a few months later on 28 May 1849 at the age of 29.

http://www.historytoherstory.org.uk/index.php?targetid=7

Susan B. Anthony-Every Cent

2006-03-20T16:42:00.000-08:00

March 13, 1906
OBITUARY

Miss Susan B. Anthony Died This Morning

End Came to the Famous Woman Suffragist in Rochester

Enthusiastic To The Last

Wished All Her Estate to Go to the Cause for Which She Labored--Her Deathbed Regret

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
…Miss Anthony was taken ill while on her way home from the National Suffrage Convention in Baltimore. …

"Write to Anna Shaw immediately, and tell her I desire that every cent I leave when I pass out of this life shall be given to the fund which Miss Thomas and Miss Garrett are raising for the cause. I have given my life and all I am to it, and now I want my last act to be to give it all I have, to the last cent. Tell Anna Shaw to see that this is done." …

Miss Shaw said:

Susan Brownell Anthony was a pioneer leader of the cause of woman suffrage…

… She paid much attention to dress and advised those associated in the movement for women suffrage to be punctilious in all matters pertaining to the toilet. For a little over a year in the early fifties she wore a bloomer costume, consisting of a short skirt and a pair of Turkish trousers gathered at the ankles. So great an outcry arose against the innovation both from the pulpit and the press that she was subjected to many indignities, and forced to abandon it…

Miss Anthony had become impressed with the idea that women were suffering great wrongs, and when she abandoned school teaching, having saved only about $300, she determined to enter the lecture field. People of to-day can scarcely understand the strong prejudices Miss Anthony had to live down. In 1851 she called a temperance convention in Albany, admittance to a previous convention having been refused to her because it was not the custom to admit women. The Women's New York State Temperance Society was organized the following year. Through Miss Anthony's exertions and those of Elizabeth Cady Stanton women soon came to be admitted to educational and other conventions, with the right to speak, vote, and act upon committees.

Miss Anthony's active participation in the movement for woman suffrage started in the fifties. As early as 1854 she arranged conventions throughout the State and annually bombarded the Legislature with messages and appeals. She was active in obtaining the passage of the act of the New York Legislature in 1860 giving to married women the possession of their earnings and the guardianship of their children. During the war she was devoted to the Women's Loyal League, which petitioned Congress in favor of the thirteenth amendment. She was also directly interested in the fourteenth amendment, sending a petition in favor of leaving out the word "male." …

In order to test the application of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments she cast ballots in the State and Congressional election in Rochester in 1872. She was indicted and ordered to pay a fine, but the order was never enforced…

She was the joint author with Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, and Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage of "The History of Woman Suffrage." She also was a frequent contributor to magazines.

Complete NY Times Obituary at:
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/bday/0215.html

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company

Women of Steel

2006-03-19T13:18:00.000-08:00

During World War II, so many men were sent off to war, and so much new production was needed to support that war effort that there was a gross shortage of manpower to staff factories and manufacturing plants. As a result, propaganda was distributed through print, film and radio to encourage women to take over their jobs for the duration of the war. There was a catch, however. When the war was over, they were supposed to give the jobs right back.

Rosie The Riveter was the name given to the woman depicted on many of the propaganda posters. In the most famous one, she is wearing a red and white bandana to cover her hair, and she has rolled back the sleeve of her blue coverall to expose a flexed bicep. The expression on her face was confident and determined. The caption above her head reads, "We Can Do It!" in bold letters.

Women who had been employed in fields predominated by women- pink collar secretarial positions, domestic jobs and lower paying industrial positions were eager to try their hands at the new opportunities. Soon they were successfully doing things only men had done before. Women became taxi and streetcar drivers, operated heavy construction machinery, worked in lumber and steel mills, unloaded freight, built dirigibles, made munitions and much more. Men's jobs always paid more, and this was women's only chance to step up and earn more.

The slogan, "Do the job he left behind" said a lot. She could do it as long as he didn't want it or wasn't around to do it. As soon as soldiers began to return home, women were forced out of these jobs, even if they had no other means of support. A great many women would have preferred to stay in their industrial jobs, but the influx of men and the attitudes of the day prevented it.

Despite the way they were discarded at the end of the war, these female workers had much to do with the success of the United States during World War II and their contribution should not be forgotten. In a very direct way, women helped win the war.

http://de.essortment.com/whowasrosieri_rslx.htm

Norma McCorvey aka Jane Roe

2006-03-18T21:48:00.000-08:00

Title: Roe v. Wade
US Citation: 410 U.S. 113 (1973)
Docket: 70-18
Events: Decided - January 22, 1973
Reargued - October 11, 1972
Argued - December 13, 1971

Subjects: Privacy: Abortion, Including Contraceptives

Facts: Roe, a Texas resident, sought to terminate her pregnancy by abortion. Texas law prohibited abortions except to save the pregnant woman's life. After granting certiorari, the Court heard arguments twice. The first time, Roe's attorney -- Sarah Weddington -- could not locate the constitutional hook of her argument for Justice Potter Stewart. Her opponent -- Jay Floyd -- misfired from the start. Weddington sharpened her constitutional argument in the second round. Her new opponent -- Robert Flowers -- came under strong questioning from Justices Potter Stewart and Thurgood Marshall.

Question Presented: Does the Constitution embrace a woman's right to terminate her pregnancy by abortion?

Conclusion: The Court held that a woman's right to an abortion fell within the right to privacy (recognized in Griswold v. Connecticut) protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The decision gave a woman total autonomy over the pregnancy during the first trimester and defined different levels of state interest for the second and third trimesters. As a result, the laws of 46 states were affected by the Court's ruling.

http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/334/print

South Dakota has banned abortion and Mississippi is close behind. Protest here http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/mississippi_abortionban2

What happens when abortion is outlawed? Rent the movie Vera Drake: http://www.veradrake.com/

Norma McCorvey, Jane Roe, is now a pro-life activist
http://www.barf.org/articles/0080/

Estelle Griswold, Penumbras and Reproductive Rights

2006-03-18T07:09:00.000-08:00

Griswold v. Connecticut
381 U.S. 479 (1965)
Docket Number: 496

Abstract

Argued:
March 29, 1965

Decided:
June 7, 1965

Subjects:
Judicial Power: Standing to Sue, Personal Injury

Facts of the Case
Griswold was the Executive Director of the Planned Parenthood League of Connecticut. Both she and the Medical Director for the League gave information, instruction, and other medical advice to married couples concerning birth control. Griswold and her colleague were convicted under a Connecticut law which criminalized the provision of counseling, and other medical treatment, to married persons for purposes of preventing conception.

Question Presented
Does the Constitution protect the right of marital privacy against state restrictions on a couple's ability to be counseled in the use of contraceptives?

Conclusion

Though the Constitution does not explicitly protect a general right to privacy, the various guarantees within the Bill of Rights create penumbras, or zones, that establish a right to privacy. Together, the First, Third, Fourth, and Ninth Amendments, create a new constitutional right, the right to privacy in marital relations. The Connecticut statute conflicts with the exercise of this right and is therefore null and void.

From:
http://www.oyez.org/oyez/resource/case/149/
More at:
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/griswold.html

Pirate Queen of Connacht

2006-03-17T06:02:00.000-08:00

Pirate Queen of Connacht 1530-1603
Grace O'Malley or Gráinne Ni Mháille was a famous female pirate, seafarer, trader and chieftain in Ireland in the 1500's. Twice widowed and imprisoned, she fought all comers at the head of a force of 200 sea-raiders to protect her rights and those of her people. At one time condemned to death, Queen Elizabeth I later pardoned her after a meeting between the two...

Grace left England with a pardon and an order for Sir Richard to supply her with a pension. Her son was soon released by order of the Queen and Sir Richard was replaced in two years. Grace remained a pirate as her fleet continued to sail the sea, but this time it sailed without her, as her advanced age no longer permitted her voyages. Grace died in 1603, a pirate to the end.

http://www.irishclans.com/articles/famirish/omalleyg.html

Taking the Heat-Women Firefighters

2006-03-15T16:45:00.000-08:00

TAKING THE HEAT: The First Women Firefighters of New York City

By Bann Roy

ITVS Community is proud to support TAKING THE HEAT with a variety of community outreach events and materials, in anticipation of its national broadcast on Independent Lens on March 28, 2006.

SHOW DESCRIPTION:

They faced death threats on the job—from some of the men they worked with. With the story of Captain Brenda Berkman of the Fire Department of New York at its core, TAKING THE HEAT explores the history of women firefighters in America and the price these women paid to serve their communities

Broadcast premiere Tuesday, March 28 at 10 p.m. on PBS

http://itvs.org/outreach/takingtheheat/

Who was the first woman firefighter? The first woman to become a modern, paid firefighter was Judith Livers, who was hired by the Arlington County, Virginia, Fire Department in 1974. Helping her firefighter husband study for his fire science classes, Livers learned about the devastation fire can cause, and was motivated to become a firefighter herself. Now Judith Brewer, she retired from Arlington County in late 1999 as a Battalion Chief.

However, many other women were in the fire service before 1974. The earliest were volunteer firefighters in urban and small-town settings dating back to at least the 1800's. Molly Williams was the first known firefighter, an African-American woman held under slavery, who worked on Oceanus Engine Company 11 in New York City in 1818. Women have also worked as fire lookouts since the early 1900's and, beginning in the mid-1970's, as seasonal firefighters in the wildland sector.

In the U.S., approximately 5,200 women currently work as full-time, career firefighters and officers. Several hundred hold the rank of lieutenant or captain and about 60 are district chiefs, battalion chiefs, division chiefs, or assistant chiefs. (All of these numbers increase every year). While accurate figures on volunteer firefighters are difficult to obtain, it is estimated that 30,000-40,000 women are in the volunteer fire service in the U.S.

http://www.cobbfire.org/women.htm

Frida Kahlo-Turning Pain Into Art

2006-03-14T15:39:00.000-08:00

Frida Kahlo is a Mexican painter, born on July 6, 1907 and dead on July 13, 1954.

Frida claimed to be born on 1910, the year of the outbreak of the Mexican revolution, because she wanted her life began together with the modern Mexico.

This detail well introduces us to a singular personality, characterized since her childhood by a deep sense of independence and rebellion against social and moral ordinary habits, moved by passion and sensuality, proud of her "Mexicanidad" and cultural tradition set against the reigning
Americanization: everything mixed with a peculiar sense of humour.

Her life was marked by physical suffering, started with the polio contracted at the age of five and worsen by her life-dominating event occurred in 1925. A bus accident caused severe injuries to her body owing to a pole that pierced her from the stomach to the pelvis. The medicine of her time tortured her body with surgical operations (32 throughout her life), corsets of different kinds and mechanical "stretching" systems.

Lots of her works were painted laying in the bed. Because of these physical conditions Frida was never able to have any children and this was a great sorrow for her.

She had a great love, Diego Rivera (she married twice with this man and dedicated to him a passionate diary) but also a lot of lovers, men and women, such as Leon Trotsky and André Breton's wife.

http://www.fridakahlo.it/

online gallery http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/kahlo_frida.html

Rent the movie Frida at
http://www.netflix.com/MovieDisplay?movieid=60024997&trkid=
189530&strkid=29724638_0_0

The Power of An Ordinary Woman-Rosa Parks

2006-03-13T17:41:00.000-08:00

Rosa Parks turned the course of American history by refusing in 1955 to give up her seat on a bus for a white man.

In 1999, former President Bill Clinton presented Parks with the Congressional Gold Medal.

Born Rosa Louise McCauley on Feb. 4, 1913, she married Raymond Parks in 1932. By the early 1950s, Rosa Parks and her now deceased husband were long-time activists in Montgomery Alabama's chapter of the NAACP.

Parks worked as a seamstress at a local department store, and on her way home from work one day, she engaged in a simple gesture of defiance that galvanized the civil rights movement.

It was nearly 50 years ago, Dec. 1, 1955, when Parks challenged the South's Jim Crow laws -- and Montgomery's segregated bus seating policy -- by refusing to get up and give her seat to a white passenger.

When the police officer boarded the bus, Parks, who was 42, had one question for him: "I said, 'Why do you push us around?' He said, 'I do not know, but the law is the law and you are under arrest.' "

The NAACP had been looking for a test case to challenge segregated busing and Parks agreed to let the group take her case.

Parks lost her job and had trouble finding work in Alabama after her public stance. She and her husband moved to Detroit. For many years she worked as an aide to Congressman John Conyers, and she remained a committed activist. In the 1980s, she worked in the anti-apartheid movement and also opened a career counseling center for black youth in Detroit.

She received numerous awards and in 1999, President Clinton presented her with the nation's highest civilian honor, a Congressional Gold Medal. "We must never ever, when this ceremony is over, forget about the power of ordinary people to stand in the fire for the cause of human dignity," Clinton said.

Parks died Oct. 24, 2005, in her Detroit home of natural causes.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.
php?storyId=4973548&sourceCode=gaw

Let Flowers Fall Upon the Tomb of Aphra Behn

2006-03-12T08:04:00.000-08:00

Aphra Behn
July 1640 - April 16, 1689, London

Esteemed as a writer in her own time, upon her death, Behn was buried in the East cloister of Westminster Abbey. In A Room of One's Own Virginia Woolf wrote that all women should "let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds."

http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2001/behn.html

Aphra Behn broke every rule. She was a spy, she was a writer, she was thrown in prison several times for her debts and her politics, she may or may not have been married and she had a live-in lover for nine years.

Her origin a mystery, an unidentified child named Aphra traveled with a couple named Amis to Surinam (Dutch Guiana), then an English possession. Upon her return to England around the time of the Restoration, she may have married a London merchant named Behn. Her wit and beauty caught the eye of the royal court and she was employed by Charles II in secret service in The Netherlands. Unrewarded, and imprisoned for debt, she began to write to support herself.

From 1670 until her death in 1689, Aphra Behn enjoyed commercial triumph. Her witty, vivacious comedies, such as The Rover (two parts, produced 1677 and 1681) and The Lucky Chance, were highly successful. She was well read, fluent in French and Italian with some Spanish, and she often adapted work by older dramatists. Her versatility, like her output, was immense, and in her day was rivaled only by that of her friend and colleague, John Dryden.

Aphra Behn is considered the first professional English woman writer and originator of the novel in its modern form. This honor is often bestowed on Daniel Defoe, but Aphra Behn's Oroonoko (1688)(based on her stay with an English colony in Surinam in 1664) predates Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719). Her most famous play is The Rover (1677), which is still being seen today in productions all over the world. Her gifts as a poet, playwright and novelist earned her the sobriquet "The Incomparable Astrea."

http://www.nyct.net/cosmicleopard/Behn_bio.html

Read her works on line:
http://www.lit-arts.net/Behn/docs.htm

Women's History Month in Iran

2006-03-11T09:03:00.000-08:00

Iran: Police Attack Women's Day Celebration
09 Mar 2006 18:27:40 GMT
Source: Human Rights Watch

(New York, March 9, 2006) – Iranian police and plainclothes agents yesterday charged a peaceful assembly of women's rights activists in Tehran and beat hundreds of women and men who had gathered to commemorate International Women's Day, Human Rights Watch said today. The attack took place shortly after participants in the celebration assembled at Tehran's Daneshjoo Park at 4 P.M. on Wednesday, March 8.

Full story at : http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/
HRW/0ead934ab6f2e9e124df8d9cb1bdddca.htm

Heretic, Witch, Cross Dresser? Burn, Baby, Burn

2006-03-08T16:23:00.000-08:00

Some claim she was convicted not for heresy but for wearing men’s clothes, so give thanks to Joan next time you step into a pair of pants, ladies.

Moreover, as one of the points upon which she had been condemned was the wearing of male apparel, a resumption of that attire would alone constitute a relapse into heresy, and this within a few days happened, owing, it was afterwards alleged, to a trap deliberately laid by her jailers with the connivance of Cauchon.
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08409c.htm

Joan of Arc (1412-1431)

Joan of Arc, in French, Jeanne d'Arc, also called the Maid of Orleans, a patron saint of France and a national heroine, led the resistance to the English invasion of France in the Hundred Years War. …

When Joan was about 12 years old, she began hearing "voices" of St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret believing them to have been sent by God. These voices told her that it was her divine mission to free her country from the English and help the dauphin gain the French throne. They told her to cut her hair, dress in man's uniform and to pick up the arms.

By 1429 the English with the help of their Burgundian allies occupied Paris and all of France north of the Loire. The resistance was minimal due to lack of leadership and a sense of hopelessness. Henry VI of England was claiming the French throne.

Joan convinced the captain of the dauphin's forces, and then the dauphin himself of her calling. After passing an examination by a board of theologians, she was given troops to command and the rank of captain.

At the battle of Orleans in May 1429, Joan led the troops to a miraculous victory over the English…

Charles VII was crowned king of France on July 17, 1429 in Reims Cathedral. At the coronation, Joan was given a place of honor next to the king. Later, she was ennobled for her services to the country.

In 1430 she was captured by the Burgundians while defending Compiegne near Paris and was sold to the English. The English, in turn, handed her over to the ecclesiastical court at Rouen led by Pierre Cauchon, a pro-English Bishop of Beauvais, to be tried for witchcraft and heresy. Much was made of her insistence on wearing male clothing. She was told that for a woman to wear men's clothing was a crime against God. Her determination to continue wearing it (because her voices hadn't yet told her to change, as well as for protection from sexual abuse by her jailors) was seen as defiance and finally sealed her fate. Joan was convicted after a fourteen-month interrogation and on May 30, 1431 she was burned at the stake in the Rouen marketplace. She was nineteen years old. Charles VII made no attempt to come to her rescue.

In 1456 a second trial was held and she was pronounced innocent of the charges against her. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV.

Contributed by Danuta Bois, 1999.

http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/biographies/joanarc.html

Back to Radicals, Susan Brownmiller

2006-03-07T16:51:00.000-08:00

I had lunch with Susan last month. I met her at a conference and had no idea what a big deal she was.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Susan Brownmiller (b. February 15, 1935) is a radical feminist, journalist, and activist. She is best known for her pioneering work on the politics of rape in Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (1975). Brownmiller also participated in civil rights activism, joining CORE during the sit-in movement and volunteering for Freedom Summer in 1964. She first became involved in the Women's Liberation Movement in New York City in 1968, by joining a consciousness-raising group in the newly-formed New York Radical Women. Brownmiller went on to co-ordinate a sit-in against Ladies' Home Journal in 1970, began work on Against Our Will after a New York Radical Feminists speak-out on rape in 1971, and co-founded Women Against Pornography in 1979. She continues to write and speak on feminist issues, including a recent memoir and history of Second Wave radical feminism, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (1999).

As of 2005, she is an Adjunct Professor of Women's & Gender Studies at Pace University in New York City.

Susanbrownmiller.com

Mommies Write! J. K. Rowling

2006-03-06T17:57:00.000-08:00

J. K. Rowling, Author of the Harry Potter Novels

“The idea that we could have a child who escapes from the
confines of the adult world and goes somewhere where he
has power, both literally and metaphorically, really appealed to me” says Rowling.

When Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter novel in a café she was a divorced, single mom living on public assistance. She received a grant from the Scottish Art Council to finish the book which won The British Book Awards Children's Book of the Year and the Smarties Prize. More importantly, kids were suddenly excited about reading again.

A graduate of Exeter University, a teacher, and then an unemployed single parent, Rowling wrote Harry Potter when "I was very low, and I had to achieve something. Without the challenge, I would have gone stark raving mad." But Rowling has always written; her first book was called "Rabbit." "I was about six, and I haven't stopped scribbling since."

For Rowling, the change in her fortunes has been slightly bewildering. But her daughter has no doubt about her mother's new career: when asked what mommies do, she replies without hesitation, "Mommies write!"

™ & © 2000–1996 Scholastic Inc. All rights reserved

------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.gigglepotz.com/hpauthor.htm

More at http://www.jkrowling.com

For kids http://www.kidsreads.com/harrypotter/jkrowling.html

Alice Paul, Iron Jawed Angel, and the ERA

2006-03-05T07:53:00.000-08:00

"I always feel....the movement is a sort of mosaic. Each of us puts in one little stone, and then you get a great mosaic at the end."
-Alice Stokes Paul (1885-1977)
Suffragist and author of the Equal Rights Amendment

HBO's "Iron Jawed Angels" A docudrama of the suffragist struggle includes a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged. The film also depicts Woodrow Wilson and his cronies trying to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. It is inspiring to watch the doctor admonish the men. “Alice Paul was strong and brave, but that didn't make her crazy. Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity."

1913
Alice Paul and Lucy Burns organize a major suffrage parade in Washington, D.C. with over 5,000 women attending. The mistreatment of the marchers by the crowd and the police led to a great public outcry and the event was a media coup for the suffragists.

The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed in 1923, is still not part of the U.S. Constitution.
The ERA has been ratified by 35 of the necessary 38 states. When three more states vote yes, the ERA might become the 28th Amendment.

http://www.equalrightsamendment.org).
http://www.alicepaul.org/
http://www.hbo.com/films/ironjawedangels/community/

Funny Woman in Women's History

2006-03-04T05:29:00.000-08:00

Lucille Ball
(1911 - 1989)

Year Inducted:
2002
Achievement In:
Arts / Business

Born in Jamestown, NY, Lucille Desiree Ball left her hometown at the age of fifteen to study drama in New York City and began her entertainment career with stints as a model and Goldwyn Girl.

In 1951, Lucy and her husband, Desi Arnaz, launched a comedy television series, I Love Lucy, based on their own lives. The show pioneered technical aspects of a comedy show, using three cameras, a set, and a live audience. It also became the launching pad for the endearing comic talents of Ball.

Lucy went on to win four Emmy Awards for her work. Proving that her talents extended beyond the realm of comedy, the entrepreneur became the first female studio head in Hollywood. As president of Desilu Productions, she broke the glass ceiling for women executives in the film and television industry.

In 1986, Ball received a Kennedy Center Honor for her work and her shows live on in syndication even today.

National Women's Hall of Fame:
http://www.greatwomen.org/women.php?action=viewone&id=179

A Women's History of The World for Women's History Month

2006-03-02T15:45:00.000-08:00

Who Cooked The Last Supper? The Women’s History of the World by Rosalind Miles
Rosalind.net

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0609806955/sr=8-1/qid=
1141338716/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-8853112-8920730?%5Fencoding=UTF8

“Who cooked the Last Supper? If it had been a man, wouldn’t he have a saint’s day by now, with a fervent following of celebrity chefs?”

So begins Miles history of the world from a women’s perspective. You may not agree with some of her more radical theories, but that’s not the point. The importance of this book is that it presents an alternative interpretation that prompts us to re-examine our view of the world.

“Women are the race itself, the strong primary sex, and man the biological afterthought…woman’s the basic “X” chromosome…while the creation of a male requires the branching off of the divergent “Y” chromosome, seen by some as a genetic error…Women therefore are the original, the first sex, the biological norm from which males are only a deviation…femaleness is the norm, the fundamental form of life.”

Why Women's History Month?

2006-03-01T15:49:00.000-08:00

The Beginning
As recently as the 1970's, women's history was virtually an unknown topic in the K-12 curriculum or in general public consciousness. To address this situation, the Education Task Force of the Sonoma County (California) Commission on the Status of Women initiated a "Women's History Week" celebration for 1978. We chose the week of March 8 to make International Women's Day the focal point of the observance. The activities that were held met with enthusiastic response, and within a few years dozens of schools planned special programs for Women's History Week, over one-hundred community women participated in the Community Resource Women Project, an annual "Real Woman" Essay Contest drew hundreds of entries, and we were staging a marvelous annual parade and program in downtown Santa Rosa, California.

Local Celebrations
In 1979, a member of our groups was invited to participate in Women's History Institutes at Sarah Lawrence College, attended by the national leaders of organizations for women and girls. When they learned about our county-wide Women's History Week celebration, they decided to initiate similar celebrations within their own organizations and school districts. They also agreed to support our efforts to secure a Congressional Resolution declaring a "National Women's History Week." Together we succeeded! In 1981, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Rep. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) co-sponsored the first Joint Congressional Resolution.

Overwhelming Response
As word spread rapidly across the nation, state departments of education encouraged celebrations of National Women's History Week as an effective means to achieving equity goals within classrooms. Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Oregon, Alaska, and other states developed and distributed curriculum materials all of their public schools. Organizations sponsored essay contests and other special programs in their local areas. Within a few years, thousands of schools and communities were celebrating National Women's History Week, supported and encouraged by resolutions from governors, city councils, school boards, and the U.S. Congress.

The Entire Month of March
In 1987, the National Women's History Project petitioned Congress to expand the national celebration to the entire month of March. Since then, the National Women's History Month Resolution has been approved with bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. Each year, programs and activities in schools, workplaces, and communities have become more extensive as information and program ideas have been developed and shared.

Growing Interest in Women's History
The popularity of women's history celebrations has sparked a new interest in uncovering women's forgotten heritage. A President's Commission on the Celebration of Women in History in America recently sponsored hearings in many sections of the country. It took reports about effective activities and institutions that are promoting women's history awareness and heard recommendations for programs still needed. The Women's Progress Commission will soon begin hearings to ascertain appropriate methods for identifying and then preserving sites of importance to American women's history. In many areas, state historical societies, women's organizations, and groups such as the Girl Scout of the USA have worked together to develop joint programs. Under the guidance of the National Women's History Project, educators, workplace program planners, parents and community organizations in thousands of American communities have turned National Women's History Month into a major focal celebration, and a springboard for celebrating women's history all year 'round.

Expanding the Focus
The National Women's History Project is involved in many efforts to promote multicultural women's history. We produce organizing guides, curriculum units, posters and display sets, videos, and a range of delightful celebration supplies. We also coordinate the Women's History Network, conduct teacher training conferences, and supply materials to people wherever they live through a Women's History Catalog.

http://www.nwhp.org/about_nwhp/mission/mission.html

Women's History Month Celebrating Phenomenal Women

2006-02-28T18:07:00.000-08:00

A poem by Maya Angelou, a phenomenal woman, to kick off Women’s History Month, a month of celebrating phenomenal women.

PHENOMENAL WOMAN

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies
I'm not cute or built to suit a model's fashion size
But when I start to tell them
They think I'm telling lies.
I say
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips
The stride of my steps
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please
And to a man
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees
Then they swarm around me
A hive of honey bees.
I say
It's the fire in my eyes
And the flash of my teeth
The swing of my waist
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say
It's in the arch of my back
The sun of my smile
The ride of my breasts
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say
It's in the click of my heels
The bend of my hair
The palm of my hand
The need for my care.
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally
Phenomenal woman
That's me.
------------------------------------------------
Maya Angelou

Born in St Louis in 1928

Autobiographical book: I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings (1969)

At 8 years old was assaulted and didn’t speak for four years

Appointed by Jimmy Carter to the Commission for International Woman of the Year

1993 wrote and delivered a poem, "On The Pulse of the Morning," at the inauguration for President Bill Clinton at his request

The first black woman director in Hollywood
--------------------------------------------------

Poem found at feminst.com

More on Women’s History Month at http://www.nwhp.org/about_nwhp/mission/mission.html

More on Maya Angelou at http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/87

Happy Birthday Edna St Vincent Millay

2006-02-19T05:35:00.000-08:00

Edna St. Vincent Millay (22 February 1892 - October 1950)

If I should learn, in some quite casual way,
That you were gone, not to return again--
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man--who happened to be you--
At noon to-day had happened to be killed,
I should not cry aloud--I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place--
I should but watch the station lights rush by
With a more careful interest on my face,
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.

http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/160

Happy Valentine's Day

2006-02-14T19:28:00.000-08:00

The More Loving One
W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

It's all I have to bring today...

2006-02-12T09:36:00.000-08:00

It's all I have to bring today (26)
by Emily Dickinson

It's all I have to bring today –
This, and my heart beside –
This, and my heart, and all the fields –
And all the meadows wide –
Be sure you count – should I forget
Some one the sum could tell –
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.
--------------------------------------

Happy Valentine's Day from Em

Broken Flowers

2006-01-22T12:38:00.000-08:00

Bill Murray plays an aging lothario named Don who, upon receiving an anonymous pink letter informing him that he is the father of a nineteen year old son, sets off in search of his own immortality. He visits four former girlfriends and scrutinizes their current “pinkness” trying to identify the mother of his son. Each woman is presented as a broken flower whose personality has been shaped by the men she took up with after Don.

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

2006-01-19T14:17:00.000-08:00

JANUARY 19TH: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EDGAR ALLAN POE( 1/19/1809- 10/7/1849)

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow --
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep -- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Merry Religious Tyranny

2005-12-09T16:16:00.000-08:00

http://g.msn.com/0MN2ET7/2%3Fhttp://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/
10355980/from/ET/
Bushes' 'holiday' cards ring hollow for some
This month President Bush sent out cards with a generic end-of-the-year message, wishing 1.4 million of his close friends and supporters a happy "holiday season." But some conservative Christians are reacting as if Bush stuck coal in their stockings.
---------------------------------------------------
Didn't we flee England and steal this country from the Indians to escape just this type of religious tyranny? How many of the alleged 96% of Americans in this county who "celebrate" Christmas do so in a religiously significant way? Where in the Bible are the Christmas tree and Santa Claus mentioned?

The Embrace - A Poem For World AIDS Day - worldaidsday.org

2005-12-01T19:04:00.000-08:00

The Embrace
by Mark Doty
from poetry.org

You weren't well or really ill yet either;
just a little tired, your handsomeness
tinged by grief or anticipation, which brought
to your face a thoughtful, deepening grace.

I didn't for a moment doubt you were dead.
I knew that to be true still, even in the dream.
You'd been out--at work maybe?--
having a good day, almost energetic.

We seemed to be moving from some old house
where we'd lived, boxes everywhere, things
in disarray: that was the story of my dream,
but even asleep I was shocked out of the narrative

by your face, the physical fact of your face:
inches from mine, smooth-shaven, loving, alert.
Why so difficult, remembering the actual look
of you? Without a photograph, without strain?

So when I saw your unguarded, reliable face,
your unmistakable gaze opening all the warmth
and clarity of you--warm brown tea--we held
each other for the time the dream allowed.

Bless you. You came back, so I could see you
once more, plainly, so I could rest against you
without thinking this happiness lessened anything,
without thinking you were alive again.

From Sweet Machine, published by HarperCollins. Copyright © 1998 by Mark Doty. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

A Note

2005-11-25T11:41:00.000-08:00

A Note

By Wislawa Szymborska
(Translated, from Polish, by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh)
From The New Yorker Newyorker.com

Life is the only way
to get covered in leaves,
catch your breath on the sand,
rise on wings;

to be a dog,
or stroke its warm fur,

to tell pain
from everything it’s not;

to squeeze inside events,
dawdle in views,
to seek the least of all possible mistakes.

An extraordinary chance
to remember for a moment
a conversation held
with the lamp switched off;

and if only once
to stumble on a stone,
end up soaked in one downpour or another,

mislay your keys in the grass;
and to follow a spark on the wind with your eyes;

and to keep on not knowing
something important.

-----------------------------------
Bio from http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/1996/szymborska-bibl.html

Wislawa Szymborska was born 2 July 1923 in the small western Polish town of Bnin (now a part of Kórnik), near Poznan. Since 1931 she has been living in Cracow, where she studied Polish literature and sociology at the Jagellonian University between 1945 and 1948. In March 1945 she made her début with the poem "Szukam slowa" ("I seek the word") in a weekly supplement of the daily paper Dziennik Polski, and during the period immediately after the war she continued to publish poems in various newspapers and periodicals. From 1953 to 1981 she was on the editorial staff of the weekly magazine Zycie Literackie (Literary Life), where in a column entitled "Non-compulsory reading" she reviewed books on a wide variety of subjects: from tourism, cooking, gardening and witchcraft to the history of art, T.S. Eliot's cat poetry and Edward Lear's nonsense verse. Szymborska has also translated a fair amount of lyric poetry, especially French Baroque poetry and Agrippa d'Aubigné. During the 1980s she collaborated under the pseudonym Stanczykówna in the Polish "samizdat" publication Arka and in the exile magazine Kultura, which was published in Paris. Her poetry can be found in a large number of European languages, and also in Arabic, Hebrew, Japanese and Chinese.

Rosa

2005-10-29T04:37:00.000-07:00

Rosa
by Rita Dove

How she sat there,
the time right inside a place
so wrong it was ready.

That trim name with
its dream of a bench
to rest on. Her sensible coat.

Doing nothing was the doing:
the clean flame of her gaze
carved by a camera flash.

How she stood up
when they bent down to retrieve
her purse. That courtesy.

"Rosa" from On the Bus With Rosa Parks, W. W. Norton & Co., © 1999 by Rita Dove. Used by permission of the author. All rights reserved.

poetry.org

Click Here to Boycott Target

2005-10-22T08:30:00.000-07:00

Ever hear of a pharmacist refusing to fill a prescription for Viagra or refusing to sell condoms to a man?

Contact Target and insist that every woman's pills be filled - now!

Target has ignored three attempts by Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) to determine their national policy regarding pharmacists' refusal to fill valid, legal prescriptions for birth control, including emergency contraception. But they cannot ignore hundreds of thousands of potential customers.

Or can they? I received this response from Target:

Dear Target Guest,

Target places a high priority on our role as a community pharmacy and our obligation to meet the needs of the patients we serve. We expect all our team members, including our pharmacists, to provide respectful service to our guests, particularly when it comes to their health care needs.

Like many other retailers, Target has a policy that ensures a guest’s prescription for emergency contraception is filled, whether at Target or at a different pharmacy, in a timely and respectful manner. This policy meets the health care needs of our guests while respecting the diversity of our team members.

Your thoughts help us learn more about what our guests expect, so I’ll be sure to share your feedback with our pharmacy executives.

Thanks for taking the time to share your questions, thoughts and comments. I hope we’ll see you again soon at Target.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Hanson
Target Executive Offices

Pharmacies must ensure that women get their prescriptions filled in-store, without discrimination or delay! Contact Target now. http://www.ppaction.org/campaign/fillmypillsnow_target?rk=Y71C0Q71HmQfE

Take your prescriptions, and all your business, to a different store.

Help Wanted-Supreme Court Justice-No Experience Necessary

2005-10-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

From Moveon.org:

Two days ago, President Bush nominated his personal lawyer and long-time friend Harriet Miers to Sandra Day O'Connor's crucial swing seat on the Supreme Court. With no judicial experience and an extremely thin public record, even leading right-wing pundits are calling her "transparently a crony"(1) with "non-existent"(2) qualifications.

President Bush has refused to release any documents from Miers' time in the White House,(3) and claimed he could not "recall" any conversations with Miers about abortion over 10 years of friendship and legal service.(4) The people deserve the facts.

Next week our senators will be home on recess, and will be looking closely at the local press for their constituents' reactions. This is a perfect time to write a letter-to-the-editor urging the Senate to demand real answers about Harriet Miers' views.

You can write and submit your letter online, and it only takes a few minutes. Please write one today:

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=952&id=6085-5304152-
gJpY6s09ockLt1KYgfKTiw&t=2

Immediately after Miers' nomination, MoveOn members stepped up to try to fill the information void. In the last 48- hours we've collected nearly 5,000 facts about Harriet Miers' record— and we're working to get this information into the hands of the media and our partner organizations. But it's remarkable how, even after collecting nearly everything that's publicly available, Miers' position on major constitutional questions and her qualifications to be a judge are still almost completely unknown.

What is clear is the deep personal and professional connection shared by Harriet Miers and George W. Bush. Here's what some members have uncovered about their long relationship:

From David, of Howell, MI:

When Miers was Bush's appointee to head the Texas State Lottery Commission, the lottery was accused by a former director of awarding multi-million dollar no-bid contracts to a technology firm represented by former Lieutenant Governor Ben Barnes. Barnes has since said he helped Bush escape active duty in Vietnam, and the lottery director alleged that Barnes demanded, (and under Miers received) the lucrative public contracts to keep quiet about Bush's military service.(6)

From Paula, of San Mateo, CA

As Governor, Bush signed a law blocking Texas consumers from collecting a $6 billion dollar judgment against car dealers for predatory lending and keeping secret kickbacks. The law firm Miers headed represented the auto dealers.(7)

From Nancy of Austin, TX

Miers was hired as legal counsel on both Bush's gubanatorial (sic) campaigns. Among other things, her research was used to persuade a local judge to excuse then Governor Bush from jury duty, a civic task that would have forced him to disclose his 1976 arrest for drunken driving in Maine. He was then able to keep his arrest secret until late in the 2000 presidential campaign.(8)

From Stephen of Birmingham, AL:

Miers's personal friendship and allegiance to Bush has been cited for years in connection with her promotions, including to her highest post of White House Counsel.(9)

Cronyism on the Supreme Court is a serious threat to our democracy. In fact Alexander Hamilton
specifically argued that the Senate should be empowered to confirm or reject judicial nominees in part to prevent the President from using the Court to reward friends and political allies.(10)

The call to reject cronyism and secrecy is bipartisan. As conservative columnist George F. Will put it today, "The president's "argument" for [Miers] amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons."(11) We may have different reasons not to take Bush at his word, but we can all agree on the need for more information.

It's now up to us to make sure our senators demand that information, and refuse to offer a lifetime appointment to a swing seat on the Supreme Court as an act of faith. If you write a letter-to-the-editor today, you can help make sure the media, your community and the Senate hear this message loud and clear.

Please write one today:

http://www.moveon.org/r?r=952&id=6085-5304152-
gJpY6s09ockLt1KYgfKTiw&t=3

Thanks for all that you do,

– Ben, Jennifer, Eli, Adam and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Wednesday, October 5th, 2005

Sources:

1 Statement by Michelle Malkin, October 3rd, 2005
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/003660.htm

2 Statement by Patrick Buchanan, October 3rd, 2005
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5445086/

3 "Bush Seeks to Quell Criticism of Court Nominee from the Right," New York Times, 10/4/05
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=953

4 "Bush base rattled by court pick" Atlanta Journal Constitution, 10/05/05
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=954

5 "Conservatives are wary over President's selection", The New York Times, 10/04/05
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=955

6 Texas Speaker Reportedly Helped Bush Get Into Guard" The Washington Post, 9/21/99
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=956

7 "What's the deal with Harriet Miers?" The Village Voice, 10/03/05
http://villagevoice.com/news/0540,webmondo3,68426,2.html

8 "Miers ties to Bush include personal lawyer" Associated Press, 10/03/05
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9577329/

9 "Bush promotes Miers from staff to Counsel" The Washington Post 11/18/04
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=957

10 Federalist Papers #76 by Alexander Hamilton:
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=958

11 "Can this nomination be justified?" George G. Will column in the Washington Post, 10/05/05
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=959

Support our member-driven organization: MoveOn.org Political Action is entirely funded by our 3.3 million members. We have no corporate contributors, no foundation grants, no money from unions, no major donors program. And our tiny staff ensures that small contributions go a long way. If you'd like to support our work, you can give now at:

http://www.moveonpac.org/donate/email.html?id=
6085-5304152-gJpY6s09ockLt1KYgfKTiw&t=4

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

Writer's Block?

2005-10-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

Have writer's block? I feel your pain.

http://waxy.org/random/images/weblog/love_your_job.gif

Back to School Poem

2005-09-12T17:21:00.000-07:00

Theme for English B
by Langston Hughes

The instructor said,

Go home and write

a page tonight.

And let that page come out of you--

Then, it will be true.

I wonder if it's that simple?
I am twenty-two, colored, born in Winston-Salem.
I went to school there, then Durham, then here
to this college on the hill above Harlem.
I am the only colored student in my class.
The steps from the hill lead down into Harlem,
through a park, then I cross St. Nicholas,
Eighth Avenue, Seventh, and I come to the Y,
the Harlem Branch Y, where I take the elevator
up to my room, sit down, and write this page:

It's not easy to know what is true for you or me
at twenty-two, my age. But I guess I'm what
I feel and see and hear, Harlem, I hear you:
hear you, hear me--we two--you, me, talk on this page.
(I hear New York, too.) Me--who?
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records--Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn't make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.
So will my page be colored that I write?

Being me, it will not be white.
But it will be
a part of you, instructor.
You are white--
yet a part of me, as I am a part of you.
That's American.
Sometimes perhaps you don't want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that's true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me--
although you're older--and white--
and somewhat more free.

This is my page for English B.

Freedom of the Press

2005-09-10T04:52:00.000-07:00

"Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816

Yet Another Reason To Move To Paris

2005-07-12T14:11:00.000-07:00

PATTI SMITH RECEIVES TOP FRENCH CULTURAL HONOR!

The Insignia Of Commander Of The Order Of The Arts And Letters Presented To Pioneering Rock Artist By Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres

Congratulations to the groundbreaking rock & roll artist Patti Smith on being awarded of one of France's highest cultural honors.

Smith, whose seminal rock & roll album, Horses, was released in 1975, was presented with the prestigious insignia of Commander of the Order of the Arts and Letters by French Cultural Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres at an AIDS benefit concert in Paris on Sunday, July 10.

Smith, cited as an authentic rock & roll poet laureate, was praised by the French Cultural Ministry as "one of the most influential artists in women's rock 'n' roll." The citation also noted Smith's high profile appreciation of the 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud.

Previous recipients of the Order of Arts and Letters, established on May 2, 1957, include William Burroughs and Susan Sontag.

Smith is currently at work on a new album, her second for Columbia Records and her first of cover songs.

===============================

www.pattismith.net
www.columbiarecords.com

It is a travesty that Patti Smith, one of the founders of Punk Rock, has not been inducted by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Write the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and demand that Patti Smith be inducted in 2006:

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation
1290 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10104

Finding Neverland

2005-07-10T05:47:00.000-07:00

In “Finding Neverland” Johnny Depp portrays J. M. Barrie, the author of “Peter Pan”. The film focuses on the relationship between Barrie, the four boys who inspired him to write “Peter Pan” and their mother. In a tragic twist, the mother and Barrie never consummate their relationship. In fact, no one sleeps with Barrie/Depp during the entire movie – a truly tragic turn of events that moved me to tears.

Rent Neverland at Netflix.com
http://www.netflix.com/MovieDisplay?movieid=70001999&trkid=181026

Break Into Blossom

2005-07-04T06:02:00.000-07:00

A Blessing
by James Wright

Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota,

Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass.

And the eyes of those two Indian ponies

Darken with kindness.

They have come gladly out of the willows

To welcome my friend and me.

We step over the barbed wire into the pasture

Where they have been grazing all day, alone.

They ripple tensely, they can hardly contain their happiness

That we have come.

They bow shyly as wet swans. They love each other.

There is no loneliness like theirs.

At home once more,

They begin munching the young tufts of spring in the darkness.

I would like to hold the slenderer one in my arms,

For she has walked over to me

And nuzzled my left hand.

She is black and white,

Her mane falls wild on her forehead,

And the light breeze moves me to caress her long ear

That is delicate as the skin over a girl's wrist.

Suddenly I realize

That if I stepped out of my body I would break

Into blossom.

Copyright © 2005 James Wright. From Selected Poems.

Bio at http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/73

Ask How, Not Why

2005-07-03T09:14:00.000-07:00

“The Case Of The Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution” by Elisabeth A. Lloyd, though primarily of scientific and academic interest, has attracted a much wider audience. Lloyd’s book, a survey of evolutionary theories that insist the female orgasm must serve some function, raises issues about female sexuality of interest to sociologists, feminists and curious women everywhere. Lloyd presents and critiques existing theories and concludes that none of them have satisfactorily proven an evolutionary function for the female orgasm but does not offer any original research or develop a theory of her own. The male orgasm is necessary for reproduction but the female orgasm is irrelevant to a woman’s ability to conceive. Women can become pregnant without orgasm, and sometimes, even without their consent and cooperation, yet the scientific community continues to insist that the female orgasm must serve some reproductive function. Lloyd does not explicitly analyze why American scientists have a vested interest in establishing that the female orgasm serve some biological function. Why, in the twenty-first century, is female sexuality still mysterious and threatening to science, to society, to men, to ourselves?

But these questions are too deep for a Sunday morning. Let’s concentrate on how before we ask why. She Comes First : The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman by Ian Kerner

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060538252/qid=
1120406863/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_ur_1/002-0090797-8671245?v=
glance&s=books&n=507846

Buy The Case of the Female Orgasm
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674017064/qid=
1120406775/sr=2-1/
ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-0090797-8671245

Dark Days Ahead

2005-07-02T05:43:00.000-07:00

Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female Supreme Court Justice, has tendered her resignation after twenty-four years of service saying that she wants to spend more time with her husband who is in the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. O’Connor has been a crucial swing vote in protecting abortion rights, preserving affirmative action and maintaining the separation between church and state.

Full story:
http://www.time.com

O’Connor’s appointment was a victory for women. Is her abdication of one of the most influential posts in the country to devote more time to her family irresponsible? Does her resignation provide support to those who refuse to promote women in the workplace because women routinely drop the career ball when they can no longer manage the juggling act that our society requires of them?

O’Connor’s unexpected resignation, with rumors of Rehnquist’s impending retirement already circulating, raise the specter of Bush appointing two Supreme Court Justices and the elimination of our basic civil rights. The rights of women, minorities and non-Christians, in particular, are at high risk. “The Senate must stand up to President Bush and demand a Supreme Court nominee who will protect the rights and freedoms of the American people.” Sign this petition:

http://www.moveonpac.org/protectourrights/

Upcoming cases in the Supreme Court
http://www.abanet.org/publiced/preview/briefs/home.html

Gwendolyn Brooks

2005-07-01T13:21:00.000-07:00

The Sonnet-Ballad
by Gwendolyn Brooks

Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?

They took my lover's tallness off to war,

Left me lamenting. Now I cannot guess

What I can use an empty heart-cup for.

He won't be coming back here any more.

Some day the war will end, but, oh, I knew

When he went walking grandly out that door

That my sweet love would have to be untrue.

Would have to be untrue. Would have to court

Coquettish death, whose impudent and strange

Possessive arms and beauty (of a sort)

Can make a hard man hesitate--and change.

And he will be the one to stammer, "Yes."

Oh mother, mother, where is happiness?

From "Appendix to The Anniad: leaves from a loose-leaf war diary" in Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks, published by Harper. © 1949 by Gwendolyn Brooks.

Gwendolyn Brooks bio at:
http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/165

Get Thee to Central Park

2005-06-30T14:40:00.000-07:00

Summer means Shakespeare outdoors. Do free Shakespeare productions enrich the public or merely dilute the work of Shakespeare?

Shakespeare at Suffolk Community College
http://www3.sunysuffolk.edu/Calendar/artsschedule.
asp?print=TRUE&linkID=0

Shakespeare in the parking lot
http://www.ludlowten.org/shakes.html

Shakespeare at Central Park
http://www.publictheater.org/sicp/home.cfm

Read As You Like It on-line
http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/asyoulikeit/full.html

Read Two Gentleman of Verona on-line
http://www-tech.mit.edu/Shakespeare/two_gentlemen/index.html

Shakespeare's Last Will and Testament
http://home.hiwaay.net/~paul/shakspere/shakwill.html

View Shakespeare's quarto manuscripts
http://www.bl.uk/treasures/shakespeare/homepage.html

Snob at Slate disses Shakespeare for the masses
http://www.slate.com/id/2121744/

Read Shakespeare and prove the snob wrong.
Buy the complete Shakespeare or one play at a time.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0395754909/qid=
1120169085/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/002-0090797-8671245

Sonnets
http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/

Shakesepeare sonnet that I can recite by heart:
While memorizing a sonnet you gain a new appreciation for the form.

CXL

Be wise as thou art cruel; do not press
My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain;
Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express
The manner of my pity-wanting pain.
If I might teach thee wit, better it were,
Though not to love, yet, love to tell me so;
As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,
No news but health from their physicians know;
For, if I should despair, I should grow mad,
And in my madness might speak ill of thee;
Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,
Mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.
That I may not be so, nor thou belied,
Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.

Word of the Day

2005-06-29T16:27:00.000-07:00

Abecedarian

Function: adjective
1 a : of or relating to the alphabet b : alphabetically arranged
2 : RUDIMENTARY

Pronunciation: "A-bE-(")sE-'der-E-&n
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English abecedary, from Medieval Latin abecedarium alphabet, from Late Latin, neuter of abecedarius of the alphabet, from the letters a + b + c + d
: one learning the rudiments of something (as the alphabet)

Robby Gordon Won’t Race Women

2005-05-30T08:43:00.000-07:00

Racecar driver Robby Gordon refuses to race against newcomer Danica Patrick claiming that her petite size gives her an unfair advantage. Gordon, whose weight is variously reported from 180 to 205 pounds, whines that Patrick, at 100 pounds, has a one mile per hour gain over him. Wisely, the Indy Racing League dismissed Gordon’s complaint stating: “It’s no issue at all…”

Clearly, Gordon’s issue is not Patrick’s weight, but her gender. Gordon has never balked at racing against Indy winner Dan Wheldon who weighs in at 157 pounds. According to Gordon’s pseudo-physics, Wheldon, weighting 48 pounds less than Gordon, would have a half a mile per hour lead over his pudgy competitor.

If weight were the issue, the solution is simple; add weight to each car so that all cars with their drivers are of equal weight. But Gordon has not suggested that that all weight differences be eliminated nor has he refused to race against any driver that weighs less than he does. Showing a lack of sports(wo)manship that exposes his chauvinistic attitude he has only refused to race against Patrick – that is, he will not risk losing to a woman.

2005-05-10T14:18:00.000-07:00

From Slate.com

"Impatience"
By Rachel Hadas

Late in the month, late afternoon,
en route or waiting for the train,
spring barely peeking through mild rain:
what does this impatience mean?

Scarlet eruptions on the skin.
We're poised: when will the war begin?
I crane to hear the starting gun.
What does this impatience mean?

Wait for the other shoe to drop.
What now is green will soon be ripe;
what's ripening began as green,
so what does this impatience mean?

Is the best position for the hurt
of life in time to stay alert
or try to sleep to ease the strain,
the rash, the spring, the war, the rain,

oh what does this impatience mean?

Rachel Hadas is board of governors professor of English at Rutgers
University and the author of many books of poetry, essays, and translations.
Two books are forthcoming next year: The River of Forgetfulness (poems)
and Classics (essays).

2005-04-30T09:30:00.000-07:00

Self
by Dan Chiasson

Found not founded. Attacking only
from the back
like the Bengal tiger; afraid

of the face. Sweet-talking like the addict
coveting
another addict's stash. Fished from

my own trash like the feared
letter I heard later
held a birthday check.

Watched like the tiger from
a great height,
hollered out. Two-faced, masked

like the villager tricking
the tiger. Tricked
like the tiger. Founded on owned ground.
---------------------------------------------------
The Afterlife of Objects, Dan Chiasson's first
collection of poems, was published in 2002 by the
University of Chicago Press.
He has just finished his second book of poems, Natural History,
as well as a book of criticism. Mr. Chiasson was born and
raised in Vermont, and has a BA from Amherst College. In
1999, he was a Whiting Foundation Fellow in
the Humanities while finishing his dissertation at Harvard.
A winner of a Pushcart Prize, his poems have appeared in
such magazines as The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Threepenny
Review, and The New Yorker. Mr. Chiasson was an Assistant
Professor of English and Director of the
Poetry Center at SUNY Stony Brook.

The Afterlife of Objects at:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/
cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/15354.ctl

Poetry and articles by Chiasson at
slate.com