Feminine Unity

Tonja’s Thoughts… April 21, 2010

As I reflect on the meaning of poetry and the celebrations acknowledging National Poetry Month, I have been thinking of feminine voices that have offered poetic inspiration to me as a poet. Many poets -- male and female -- have inspired me. I have narrowed my list down to five female poets that I would like to discuss. They have touched my spirit on some level and contributed to my poetic voice.

Phillis Wheatley was the first poet to inspire me as a child. I always wanted to know about the accomplishments of Black Americans, especially those who were writers. I was a huge fan of Frederick Douglass, but I searched for a female who had literary talents and achievements. I remember seeing that famous photo of Phillis Wheatley sitting at a desk with pen in hand and a bonnet on her head as if she was in deep thought. As a child, I thought she looked studious and it inspired me to want to sit at a desk and write.

Phillis Wheatley’s life story was quite interesting and I appreciate her poetry. I pay homage to her for being noted as the first African-American to publish a book of imaginative writing. It will be nice to take a photo next to the statue of Phillis Wheatley at the Boston Women’s Memorial. 

On Virtue

by Phillis Wheatley

O Thou bright jewel in my aim I strive
To comprehend thee. Thine own words declare
Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach.
I cease to wonder, and no more attempt
Thine height t' explore, or fathom thy profound.
But, O my soul, sink not into despair,
Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand
Would now embrace thee, hovers o'er thine head.
Fain would the heav'n-born soul with her converse,
Then seek, then court her for her promis'd bliss.
Auspicious queen, thine heav'nly pinions spread,
And lead celestial Chastity along;
Lo! now her sacred retinue descends,
Array'd in glory from the orbs above.
Attend me, Virtue, thro' my youthful years!
O leave me not to the false joys of time!
But guide my steps to endless life and bliss.
Greatness, or Goodness, say what I shall call thee,
To give me an higher appellation still,
Teach me a better strain, a nobler lay,
O thou, enthron'd with Cherubs in the realms of day.

I was hospitalized during my teens and the preacher’s wife came to visit me. She brought with her the gift of poetry by Helen Steiner Rice. I was unfamiliar with her, but after reading her poems, I became a fan of Helen Steiner Rice. I must admit that her poems were the most inspirational, uplifting and joyous poems I had read. At that moment, I aspired to write poems that could make people feel as good as I felt after reading those poems.

Everyone Needs Someone

by Helen Steiner Rice

People need people and friends need friends
And we all need love for a full life depends
Not on vast riches or great acclaim,
Not on success or on worldy fame,
But just in knowing that someone cares
And holds us close in their thoughts and prayers-
For only the knowledge that we're understood
Makes everyday living feel wonderfully good,
And we rob ourselves of life's greatest need
When we "lock up our hearts" and fail to heed
The outstretched hand reaching to find
A kindred spirit whose heart and mind
Are lonely and longing to somehow share
Our joys and sorrows and to make us aware
That life's completeness and richness depends
On the things we share with our loved ones
and friends.

I can’t remember when I became acquainted with Nikki Giovanni’s poetry, but I was familiar with her as an activist and voice for the community. Her outspokenness for rights, her academic endeavors and literary talents are laudable. I too have been known to speak out and be an advocate for rights, so Nikki Giovanni is on my wish list of people to meet.

Poetry

by Nikki Giovanni

poetry is motion graceful
as a fawn
gentle as a teardrop
strong like the eye
finding peace in a crowded room
we poets tend to think
our words are golden
though emotion speaks too
loudly to be defined
by silence
sometimes after midnight or just before
the dawn
we sit typewriter in hand
pulling loneliness around us
forgetting our lovers or children
who are sleeping
ignoring the weary wariness
of our own logic
to compose a poem
no one understands it
it never says "love me" for poets are
beyond love
it never says "accept me" for poems sake not
acceptance but controversy
it only says "i am" and therefore
i concede that you are too

a poem is pure energy
horizontally contained
between the mind
of the poet and the ear of the reader
if it does not sing discard the ear
for poetry is song
if it does not delight discard
the heart for poetry is joy
if it does not inform then close
off the brain for it is dead
if it cannot heed the insistent message
that life is precious

which is all we poets
wrapped in our loneliness
are trying to say

There is a toss up between Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I like both of the poets’ work and I have been inspired by their confessional style. They needed to express themselves, using poetry as a means of attempting to purge their minds of the plights they struggled with in their respective lives. Yet, the therapeutic healing powers of the expressive art of poetry could not save either of them. I have written about my plights and find writing and poetry to be a source of healing that I have recommended to clients and friends.

Insomniac

by Sylvia Plath

The night is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole ---
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
Under the eyes of the stars and the moon's rictus
He suffers his desert pillow, sleeplessness
Stretching its fine, irritating sand in all directions.

Over and over the old, granular movie
Exposes embarrassments--the mizzling days
Of childhood and adolescence, sticky with dreams,
Parental faces on tall stalks, alternately stern and tearful,
A garden of buggy rose that made him cry.
His forehead is bumpy as a sack of rocks.
Memories jostle each other for face-room like obsolete film stars.

He is immune to pills: red, purple, blue ---
How they lit the tedium of the protracted evening!
Those sugary planets whose influence won for him
A life baptized in no-life for a while,
And the sweet, drugged waking of a forgetful baby.
Now the pills are worn-out and silly, like classical gods.
Their poppy-sleepy colors do him no good.

His head is a little interior of grey mirrors.
Each gesture flees immediately down an alley
Of diminishing perspectives, and its significance
Drains like water out the hole at the far end.
He lives without privacy in a lidless room,
The bald slots of his eyes stiffened wide-open
On the incessant heat-lightning flicker of situations.

Nightlong, in the granite yard, invisible cats
Have been howling like women, or damaged instruments.
Already he can feel daylight, his white disease,
Creeping up with her hatful of trivial repetitions.
The city is a map of cheerful twitters now,
And everywhere people, eyes mica-silver and blank,
Are riding to work in rows, as if recently brainwashed.

Sylvia’s Death

by Anne Sexton

for Sylvia Plath
O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,
with two children, two meteors
wandering loose in a tiny playroom,
with your mouth into the sheet,
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer,
(Sylvia, Sylvia
where did you go
after you wrote me
from Devonshire
about rasing potatoes
and keeping bees?)
what did you stand by,
just how did you lie down into?
Thief --
how did you crawl into,
crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,
the death we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny breasts,
the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,
the death that talked of analysts and cures,
the death that talked like brides with plots,
the death we drank to,
the motives and the quiet deed?
(In Boston
the dying
ride in cabs,
yes death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer
who beat on our eyes with an old story,
how we wanted to let him come
like a sadist or a New York fairy
to do his job,
a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib,
and since that time he waited
under our heart, our cupboard,
and I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides
and I know at the news of your death
a terrible taste for it, like salt,
(And me,
me too.
And now, Sylvia,
you again
with death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
And I say only
with my arms stretched out into that stone place,
what is your death
but an old belonging,
a mole that fell out
of one of your poems?
(O friend,
while the moon's bad,
and the king's gone,
and the queen's at her wit's end
the bar fly ought to sing!)
O tiny mother,
you too!
O funny duchess!
O blonde thing!

Maya Angelou is a poet I became more familiar with during my twenties. I had read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, but it took some time before I really became familiar with Maya Angelou’s poetry. Of course, I listened to her poem during President Clinton’s inauguration and thought it would be great to be called upon to write and read a poem for a president. When I first learned Hillary Clinton was running and had a chance of becoming the first female president, I was inspired to write Feminine Unity as I saw women were uniting in an effort to see one of us accomplish such a goal. I began to think about how great it would be if feminine spirits could unite all of the time for all occasions. Phenomenal Woman has a universal appeal that unites women (young and old) from all backgrounds.