Saint Elizabeth Street

Thought du Jour

2008-06-27T08:55:00.000-07:00

Here's what I've been thinking about -- in the lovely land of Oregon.

I was just interviewed for the fabulous GirlDrive project and was lucky to do the
How2 curatorial. None-the-less, I don't consider myself a feminist, and have been critized by some for such. The reasons are complicated. But, I've been thinking of this -- what forum, what inclusion, doea feminism have for women with disabilities? How does feminism speak to my particular body? My research is far from complete, but to my knowledge thus far, none. There is nothing in feminist magazines or theory that accounts for the different body. This is a call to all feminists to realize the oversight.

Harriet McBryde Johnson

2008-06-09T08:32:00.001-07:00

Harriet Johnson, 50, Activist for Disabled, Is Dead

John R. Polito, 2007

Harriet McBryde Johnson
No cause has been determined, her sister, Beth Johnson, said, while pointing out that her sister had been born with a degenerative neuromuscular disease. “She never wanted to know exactly what the diagnosis was,” Beth Johnson said.

The condition did not stop Harriet Johnson from earning a law degree, representing the disabled in court, lobbying legislators and writing books and articles that argued, as she did in The New York Times Magazine in February 2003, “The presence or absence of a disability doesn’t predict quality of life.”

Using a battery-powered wheelchair in which she loved to “zoom around” the streets of Charleston, Ms. Johnson playfully referred to herself as “a bedpan crip” and “a jumble of bones in a floppy bag of skin.”

Rolling into an auditorium at the College of Charleston on April 22, 2001, Ms. Johnson went to the microphone during a question-and-answer session to confront Peter Singer, a philosopher from Princeton, who was giving a lecture titled “Rethinking Life and Death.”

Professor Singer had drawn protests by insisting that suffering should be relieved without regard to species. That, he said, allows parents and doctors to kill newborns with drastic disabilities, like the absence of higher brain function or an incompletely formed spine, instead of letting “nature take its course.”

In Professor Singer’s view, infants, like other animals, are neither rational nor self-conscious.

“Since their species is not relevant to their moral status,” he said, “the principles that govern the wrongness of killing nonhuman animals who are sentient but not rational or self-conscious must apply here, too.”

Ms. Johnson had been sent to the lecture by Not Dead Yet, a national disability-rights organization. Describing the event in The Times, she wrote: “To Singer, it’s pretty simple: disability makes a person ‘worse off.’ Are we ‘worse off’? I don’t think so.”

She added: “We take constraints that no one would choose and build rich and satisfying lives within them. We enjoy pleasures other people enjoy, and pleasures peculiarly our own.”

An e-mail exchange followed that encounter in Charleston, leading to an invitation to debate Professor Singer at Princeton on March 25, 2002. Their two encounters were the subject of the 8,000-word Times article, which brought Ms. Johnson considerable attention in the disability rights movement and from the general public.

“Her impact came mostly from her writing,” said Laura Hershey, a disability rights activist with several organizations, including Not Dead Yet. “Millions of people by now have read that article, and it was reprinted in her book. Dozens of people who read the article told me, ‘Wow, I never thought about it that way.’ ”

Ms. Johnson’s memoir, “Too Late to Die Young,” was published in 2005. Her novel, “Accidents of Nature,” about a girl with cerebral palsy who had never known another disabled person until she went to camp, was published in 2006.

Born in Laurinburg, N.C., on July 8, 1957, Ms. Johnson was one of five children of David and Ada Johnson. Her parents taught foreign languages at colleges. Besides her parents and her sister, Ms. Johnson is survived by three brothers, Eric, McBryde and Ross.

The fact that her parents could afford hired help was a salient point in another Times Magazine article Ms. Johnson wrote in November 2003, “The Disability Gulag.” Describing institutions where “wheelchair people are lined up, obviously stuck where they’re placed” while “a TV blares, watched by no one,” she called for a major shift from institutionalizing people to publicly financing home care provided by family, friends or neighbors.

“I sometimes dare to dream that the gulag will be gone in a generation or two,” she wrote. “But meanwhile, the lost languish in the gulag.”

Early on, Ms. Johnson was a troublemaker. At 14, at a school for the disabled, her sister said, “Harriet tried to get an abusive teacher fired; the start of her hell raising.” In her memoir, Ms. Johnson describes how, after watching a Jerry Lewis muscular dystrophy telethon while in her teens, she turned against “the charity mentality” and “pity-based tactics.”

Ms. Johnson graduated from Charleston Southern University in 1978, then earned a master’s degree in public administration from the College of Charleston. She graduated from the University of South Carolina School of Law in 1985 and soon went into private practice.

Humor laced her writing. The “crippled children’s school” she attended as a teenager, she wrote in a Times Op-Ed article in December 2006, once considered staging a play based on Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” But who would be Tiny Tim?

Ms. Johnson quoted directly from the Dickens book: “Alas for Tiny Tim, he bore a little crutch, and had his limbs supported by an iron frame!”

“Alas!” Ms. Johnson exclaimed. “A little crutch! An iron frame! In our world, the crutch-and-brace kids were the athletic elite. They picked up the stuff we hard-core crips dropped.”

Some thoughts-- the NYT is still clinging to that expression -- 'the disabled.' When are they going to get it?
Also, why are three paragraphs in her obit about Peter Singer? Huh?

List

2008-06-03T06:08:00.000-07:00

What were you doing five years ago?

-dealing with postpartum depression
-teaching in a very difficult school
-preparing to go to Oregon (same as now!)
-finishing my masters in teaching
-writing longer poems

What are five things (in no particular order) on your to-do list for today?

-meet Reb and Gideon Livingston for lunch
-clean
-apologize to my husband
-garden
-read Paul Auster

What are five snacks you enjoy?

-cheese
-cheese
-cheese
-booze
-cheese

What are five things you would do if you were a billionaire?
-donate
-buy houses in Oregon and New Mexico
-hire a housekeeper
-give my husband money so he could write full time
-buy all Agnes B. clothes

What are five of your bad habits?

-getting in fights with poets on the internet
-being too didactic
-playing devil's advocate
-getting angry
-avoiding writing poems

What are five places you have lived?

Brooklyn
Davis, Ca
Boston
Atwater, Ca
Great Falls Montana

What are five jobs you have had?

-half-time professor
-inner-city high school teacher
-museum shop customer service
-nanny
-dishwasher

Which five people do you want to tag?

-Reb and Gideon Livingston
-Ron Silliman
- Jim Stewart
-Paul Guest
-Danielle Punfunda (I hope I spelled it right!)

Evergreen

2008-05-30T15:29:00.000-07:00

I am just back from the PRESS conference in Olympia. I am new to 'conferences' but I am beginning to realize their importance. Being around people thinking about poetry, ideas, politics and such is so crucial. I think many poets are or do look for connections on the internet -- myself definitely included. It is refreshing to meet people face to face. One idea that I'm contemplating via the conference is the idea of cross-genre work as a way to protest the system. This would never have occurred to me. My friend Nick came up with a brilliant idea, life does work like a short story -- with rising action, climax, and such -- so why do we write as such?

How2

2008-05-29T16:33:00.001-07:00

This Condensery: Poets On Mentorship

curated by Jennifer Bartlett

Featuring interviews with:

Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker
Joanna Fuhrman and Susanna Fry
Shin Yu Pai and Renee Rossi
Jennifer Firestone and Eileen Myles

Essays and poems by:

Jen Benka
Susanna Fry & Joanna Fuhrman
Renée Rossi
Shin Yu Pai

And excerpts from Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts & Affections by Rachel Zucker and Arielle Greenberg (University of Iowa Press, 2008)

Elizabeth Treadwell
Katy Lederer
Kristin Prevallet

2008-05-23T10:10:00.001-07:00

Off to the PRESS conference in Olympia!

Poetry and community

2008-05-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Jack Spicer's lectures. I am struggling to understand the difference between community (positive) and society (negative). He writes, "I think every poet has to create actively his (her) own community." Later, 'well, community is a good word. If you make your own community, which you can't...but if you could, that would be ideal."

I am also thinking about whether and how one can create poetry community. And, if not, can a poet thrive in isolation?

Bike

2008-05-19T06:20:00.001-07:00

I rode my bike seven miles on Saturday.

My husband, the hero

2008-05-19T06:09:00.000-07:00

As my husband trudged off to yet another job interview today, he broke my heart. I can't help but, in my own tiny way, try to expose the condition of the NYC Department of Education. As my husband left, he expressed dismay in missing teaching today because his students have the regents coming up and they need him. Who makes it impossible for my husband's students to have their caring teacher? Why, the school's principal, of course. This administration basically pushed my husband out of this job because my husband 'can't control the class.' Well, no wonder. There is no support and the principal can't 'control' the kids either. So, this administrator, is giving up a teacher who is brilliant, caring, and would rather go to work half-dead than miss a day.

Anxiety, Disability and Paul Auster

2008-05-12T05:11:00.000-07:00

I'm obsessed with Paul Auster's books. This is part of a longer story. However, last night I was at a local new bar in the greater GNPT/WBG area with a friend. I left my Auster book...well...somewhere. So, I called the bar and said 'Hey, it's Jennifer. Did you find my book?' The person on the phone was not the owner {who knows me} but some girl who said, "Hey, you know that girl, like with MS, did she leave her book her." O.k. Miss brilliant. I don't have MS -- I have cP -- and I not a 'girl' I'm nearly forty and have a kid. I don't like being described as 'the handicapped girl' anymore than you like like being described as the brainless hipster.

Where is my book!?

Oregon

2008-05-11T07:19:00.000-07:00

In a few weeks we will leave for our yearly summer in Oregon. I have to say, I've got one foot out my New York door. Moving from New York seems an impossible task, yet one that lingers. Partially, this desire to leave comes from my perceived inability to find a home in the New York Poetry world. I find I can't fit in, and I can't completely hide either. The west -- a kinder, gentler place -- might give the opportunity for one ... or the other.

2008-05-09T17:25:00.000-07:00

I just saw a fabulous poetry reading: Robyn Art and Erica Ehrenberg. Two witty, wonderful poets.

Paul Guest/ John Ashbery

2008-05-04T16:27:00.000-07:00

In a blurb for Paul Guest's new book, Ashbery calls the book 'invalid's rage.' My question, why would Ashbery say such a thing and why would Guest let him? Invalid (or in valid) in my book is one of the most offensive terms (short of retard) that a people with a physical disability can be called. It would be likened to putting a blurb on Ashbery's book calling him a crotchety old fag. And it is untrue. While I am conflicted about Guest's work, I hold him in the highest esteem as a person. Not only is he attractive, friendly, smart, and warm but he has also gone far, far beyond where most able-bodied ports will: books with Ecco, a good professor job, and so on. Guest is in no terms an invalid, So, I wonder what's going on. For starters, I think the politically correct police need to give ole John a good kick in the head. He's a poet, after all, doesn't he know the power of words? Perhaps I am stupid. Perhaps it is mean ironically. If so, will other get the joke?

Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections

2008-04-21T13:08:00.001-07:00

Finally, Rachel Zucker and Arielle Greenberg's long awaited "Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections" is out. You can read an interview with Zucker and Greenberg in How2 shortly, along with a few 'samples.' Also included in my How2 piece (This Condensary) are interviews with Susanna Fry and Joanna Furhman, Eileen Myles and Jennifer Firestone, Shin Yu Pai and Renee Rossi and an essay on Rukeyer by Jen Benka.

Which Books could Poetry not Live Without?

2008-04-18T05:15:00.000-07:00

I have been following Ron Silliman's writings about the Williams Carlos Williams award. Silliman says he wanted to pick a book that would "was a book that would change poetry itself, deeply & permanently." This led me to some thinking. What does this mean exactly and which books do I hold dear accomplish this?

First, one could argue that every poem (with a captured reader) changes poetry deeply. They may only change an audience of one (which in the poetry business is not uncommon) but a change occurs none-the-less.

This is what led me to differenciate between my 'personal' list and my 'global' list. Some poems I credit with 'altering my life' are (titles may be off, as I am writing from memory) Akhmatova's Monday Night, Michael Palmer's Dearest Reader, Mary Oliver's Wild Geese, Rachel Zucker and others poems on motherhood, Robert Hass' poems from "Human Wishes," parts of Patterson, Before the War, and Maximus poems, Howl AND Kaddish, From this Condensary by Lorine Niedecker, The Greenhouse Effect by Lee Bartlett (and his biography of Bill Everson), any number of Jorie Graham's poems, everything by Muriel Rukeyser, and the lines (close to them)
I don't know how the hip hop kids do it
but I love it.
By Fanny Howe.

This, of course, is a beginning list. However, have any of my little poets 'changed' the course of poetry history? If not, who has? Ironically, Sillman, as he knows!, is a good place to start with changing poetic history. He pretty much 'invented' the poetry blog and has been sucessful at being the best source, although I see Reginald Shepard inching in. Sillman also, of course, did "In the American Tree." Need I say more.

However, he can't be entirely credited in this 'changing.' There are, of course, all the poets in the anthology and my father who wrote the seminal 'What is Language Poetry?'

Onward, I'm not sure if Mary Oliver's poetry, as much as I love it, can "change poetry itself, deeply & permanently." But, she has done something miraculous in the culture. In 2008, Oliver has convinced over 500 people at any given time that they will go to a poetry reading and pay $25 to do so. Now, that's a miracle. Is she getting advice from Mick Jagger? Even Michael Palmer who, in my small opinion, is the best looking, smartest, nearly most talented poet alive, only got a hundred or so people at the New School.

I know many people might argue, but the only possible answer to the question did Ginsberg, Olson, and Duncan change poetry history is Well, Yes. I know this may not seem feminism enough, but the fact that they were men (and in Olson's case, an asshole) does not make their talent less. Rukeyser, Dickinson, and Stein all had their influence as well. One might even ask, would there be LP if there were no Stein? Would there be Graham or Oliver if there were Dickinson?

This brings us to the 'heavy social' hitters. The guys with Ecco Press and big jobs. Jorie Graham. I think she's a fucking genius -- also very good looking. But, where does she fit? What about Robert Pinsky? Stanley Kunitz? Billy Collins? They all write (or did in Kunitz's case) solid, good books. But, will they "change poetry itself, deeply & permanently." I'm not sure, and perhaps it's too soon to tell.

I think some one like Mei Mei Berssenbrugge might have a better chance.

Perhaps poetry is like The Bible. You get to have it good in this life or the next.
You get to work at Iowa or Harvard OR toil in obscurity.

What poets have changed your life -- globally or personally?

The Frida Show

2008-04-11T05:49:00.000-07:00

Ron Silliman got me interested in seeing the Frida Kahlo show. Yesterday, a friend and I traveled to Philadelphia to see it. With a little luck and good timing, we managed not to wait in line and the audience was sparse. As Silliman said, the paintings were nothing less than spectacular. My exhaustion from the trip keeps me from writing much, but a few things did strike my interest.

I adore Kahlo, In my small, stupid opinion, she was one of the last century's most important painters. The fact that that list would, unfortunately, largely dedicated to men, is part of what makes Frida a great feminist. As Silliman notes, unlike Plath, Kahlo didn't kill herself. Instead, she made art. As a young-ish handicapped woman prone to constant mood swings, this realization was very poinent for me yesterday, particularly after falling into a morass because a woman turned to my friend (referring to me) and asked her "How does she make it up the stairs?" A more appropriate question might have been, "How does she make it through the world?"

But, I digress.

In this respect, and many others, Kahlo is a champion of feminism. More importantly, she is also a champion of crippled people, of pain, of the alternate body. People never say it, and she wouldn't herself, but she is a disability activist. A crippled woman who was powerful, sexy, and had a string of men on her arm.

That said, I do find Frida's relationship to Diego as making her 'feminsist status' problematic. She did pine after a guy, after all.

More Soon.

Andy Sez

2008-04-02T05:25:00.000-07:00

There are two kinds of people: my kind and assholes.

For April Writing Month

2008-04-02T05:21:00.000-07:00

This means to say, I want to avoid the world.
Oregon wraps her body around mine.
A list of dailiness, the fragmentation,
the problem in a business of poetics
and one self-crippled young person.
Embarrassed to say, this morning,
I ran across a picture of Frank O'hara
in the New Yorker.
I kissed it.

Feminist Art

2008-03-31T05:51:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, after seeing the PS 1 feminist show, I went to panel discussion "Beyond the Waves: Feminist Artists Talk Across the Generations." The talk included the fine artists and critics Carolee Schneenmann, Mira Shor, Brynna Tucker, Susan Bee, and Emma Bee Bernstein. I was looking for answers, but like any good thinking, the talk led me to more questions.

First, I want to note, among the topics discussed -- and they made a point of recognizing them -- were racism, gender, ageism, feminism, sexism, transgender, and so on. As usual, disability was the glaring absence. We have entered a culture where artists will speak about transgender BEFORE disability. I think the problem is not maniacal. I think that people tend to focus what is on their radar. I think people with disabilities (and their problems) are still very oppressed in our society -- so that even the most sensitive thinkers aren't aware. I find this to be a problem.

The question I asked was what makes the WACK show a feminist show a feminist show? I felt like there is no answer -- even the artist who attempted to address the question weren't sure. That brings me to my further question -- what is feminism and am I one?

My understanding is that feminism is about treating women equal and supporting their decisions. If this is true, why is there so much devision and oppression BY women going on? Let's pick on the suicide girls for a minute. I have read that they believe they are dispelling myths about feminine beauty. Oh really? After a short cruise through their photos I am pressed to find a black woman, a disabled woman, a woman with small boobs, a woman who weighs over 105 and a woman without an enormous amount of makeup on. I'd like to see a naked overweight black lady with one arm. Of course, then, they'd label it 'fetish.'

Wack at PS !

2008-03-30T05:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Julia and I went over the bridge to see WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution. The first wonderful thing was seeing Thomas who runs the bookstore. I didn't know he had that job -- cool. The second thing was that we were surprised by how wonderful the show was. There was a fair amount of work that was tedious, including the pieces that said 'Angry Marilyn', 'Angry Jennifer' and so on. Okay, you're angry -- we get it. Others bored me a bit. Some were so powerful that they were painful to look at -- particularly collages of neato sparkling houses with war scenes out the window. For me, some of the highlights were the 'stone' painting, the woodcuts, the Aunt Jaminina with a gun. And a few artists I already new about -- Aliice Neel, Eva Hesse, and Francesca Woodman. I must note that we only saw the first floor.

But, as much as I liked the show, I have a few questions. More notably, what makes all of these pieces 'feminist'? If I think and think, I might be able to attribute some feminist qualities to each piece perhaps, although that is not necessarily how I would think of them. I found myself wondering what made this or that work feminist. The work struck me as coming from many different points of view: anti-racist, sublime, figurative, abstract, feminist, and anti-war. Some were just, well, art works by women.

Julia pointed out that they probably used 'feminist' as a marketing scheme to draw in the crowd. This has worked. An unnamed source tell us that this has been one of the most successful shows ever. But, I am very uncomfortable with using the term 'feminist' to market stuff -- if this is the intension. Isn't this going against feminist ideals -- we are ultimately 'marketing women' because of their gender. Our household feminist, JIM, argues that men have had their shows for years, and women have been excluded and he's right.

Here's my very radical feminist idea...why call it a feminist show or a women's show? Why not slap the men in the face and just call it a show? Isn't that what men have been doing for centuries?

2008-03-29T06:04:00.000-07:00

I am resurfacing from two weeks in New Mexico. The readings went amazingly well! They were kind of like a whose who in New Mexican poetry with Nathaniel Tarn, Gary Brower, Joy Harjo, Dianne Edwards, VB Price, Miriam Sagan, David Melzlener (sp?) who is an amazing Los Alamos poet, Janet Rodney, Lee Bartlett, Miriam Sagan, and others. VB's and Miriam's books by UNM Press are amazing. It was nice to pull myself into a new reality. I have tendency to get so tied up in the 'New York Scene.' It's important to be reminded that poets all over are doing real work. It's my poetry wish that one day the two 'coasts' (and the middle) of poetry will be able to acknowledge and respect each other.

Apex

2008-03-15T16:08:00.000-07:00

If you're anywhere near a B & N in the coming week, my dear husband Jim Stewart has the cover story in the new Apex.

Time for vacation, ya'll.

There is a Santa Claus

2008-03-15T16:06:00.000-07:00

This week, the NYT has redeemed it's failings. They mentioned my girl Jill Alexander Essbaum in the book review -- yes!

The NYT and 'Language' Poetry

2008-03-12T16:44:00.000-07:00

I wrote a letter to the NYT last Sunday night in response to James Longenbach's review of Salter's latest book. Since the Times refuses to run the letter, I've decided to recount it here.

Letter #1
Dear Editor,

In regard to James Longenbach's review of Salter's work, anyone who believes that the so-called Language Poets are merely 'part of the niggling history of taste rather than the grand history of art' hasn't been reading many poets of the last 25 years. Further, this 'movement' of poetics was not exactly 'named after' the magazine which, by the way, was called L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, not 'Language.' Since Longenbach can't even get the name of the magazine correct, perhaps it would be better to suspend his opinion.

Letter #2 : Response from the Times. I do not have permission to 'show' their letter and I'm paranoid, so I'll paraphrase.
A 'staff' editor from the Times responded to my letter saying that Longenbach could not be 'taxed' as it is the Times editorial policy not to 'reproduce stylistic quirks in titles.'

Letter #3

First, I am flattered at your response.

With all due respect, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E is not a 'stylistic quirk.' That is the NAME of the journal and partial to that 'groups' poetics. This oversight, along with Longenbach's obvious jab at this group either shows a gross naivete of American poetics or a very narrow view that no 'good' poetry is written beyond the walls of Iowa University.

Letter #4

There was no letter #4.

My question: Did Longenbach actually KNOW the name of the journal? Did he write it correctly and the editor's changed it? Was it a 'jab'? Or just an honest miseducation of 20th century literature? Inquiring minds want to know.

Great, Happy News!

2008-03-04T15:51:00.000-08:00

The first printing of Derivative of the Moving Image is nearly sold out! -- Only fifty more copies in the warehouse. If you're into first printings -- jump on it! Here are some great vendors:

Word, Brooklyn NY
St. Marks Bookstore, New York City
Powells, Portland, OR
Amazon
UNM Press
Bookworks, Albq, NM
UNM Bookstore, Albq, NM
The Grolier, Cambridge, MA
Bluestockings, NYC

Thank you so much! And happy reading.