Stereotypes are Ugly

Today the prompt at dVerse Poets Pub stopped me short: Poetics: 'Asians are Ugly!'  Written by Kelvin S.M. a self-proclaimed "Poet*Artist*Mythical Sleuth*" who is "Filipino-Spanish," the prompt lays out a bit of his experience of racism and asks us to write about any experience we have had with Asians--which includes, of course, being Asian.  He called the resulting poems his "Asian revenge (lol)" which is rather tongue in cheek.  

Geraldine Farrar as Madama Butterfly, 1907Metropolitan Opera de Nova York

I, who have never met an ugly Asian, sat down to think about Kelvin's prompt.  My Asian experience is all within the USA.  Here are the highlights summarized chronologically:

1.      Uncle Nishino

2.      Chinese and Indian food

3.      Taiwanese roommate Ye Fe Chou

4.      Madame Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini

5.      Japanese set designer Jun Maeda

6.      Butoh dancers

7.      Chinese Canadian Ping Chong and Company

8.      Korean students of English as a second Language

9.      Thai food

10.   Noh theatre

11.    Kabuki Theatre

12.    Chinese Opera

13.   M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang

14.   Tea by Maxine Hong Kingston

15.   Bunraku

16.   Vietnamese students in Public School English classes

17.   World Affairs Council Seminar in South East Asian Culture

Of these, Number 13 was probably the most intense.  I saw Hwang's M. Butterfly first on Broadway, second in text (as part of  the "Freshman Seminar in Multi-Cultural American Drama" I taught at the College of William and Mary), and third as a Hollywood movie.  Only the movie disappointed.  

 http://www.playbillvault.com/Show/Detail/Whos_who/4705/19856/M-Butterfly

The Broadway play in 1989 with actors John Lithgow as Gallimard and BD Wong as Song Liling literally put me in my place.  Not forewarned about the content and message of the piece nor anticipating its relationship to Madame Butterfly, I was taken in by the same racist stereotypes as Gallimard who was “loosely based on” French diplomat Bernard Boursicot and his relationship with  Shi Pei Pu, a male Peking opera singer.  Here is Wikipedia’s summary of the plot: 

The first act introduces the main character, Rene Gallimard, who is a civil servant attached to the French embassy in China. He falls in love with a beautiful Chinese opera diva, Song Liling, who is actually a man masquerading as a woman. In traditional Beijing opera, females were banned from the stage; all female roles (dan) were played by males.

Act two begins with Song coming to France and resuming his affair with Gallimard. They stay together for 20 years until the truth is revealed, and Gallimard is convicted of treason and imprisoned. Unable to face the fact that his "perfect woman" is actually a man, that has been posing as a woman for 20 years to be able to spy, he retreats deep within himself and his memories. The action of the play is depicted as his disordered, distorted recollection of the events surrounding their affair.

The third act portrays Gallimard committing seppuku (also known as harakiri, ritual Japanese suicide through self-disembowelment) while Song watches and smokes a cigarette.

So what were the stereotypes?  

The worst is that all of Asia is feminine/submissive to the male western world—HA! Here are some memorable quotes from the play found at Goodreads:   

“As soon as a Western man comes into contact with the East -- he's already confused.  The West has sort of an international rape mentality towards the East. ...Basically, 'Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes.' The West thinks of itself as masculine -- big guns, big industry, big money -- so the East is feminine -- weak, delicate, poor...but good at art, and full of inscrutable wisdom -- the feminine mystique. Her mouth says no, but her eyes say yes. The West believes the East, deep down, wants to be dominated -- because a woman can't think for herself. ...You expect Oriental countries to submit to your guns, and you expect Oriental women to be submissive to your men.” 
― David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly

“Consider it this way: what would you say if a blond homecoming queen fell in love with a short Japanese businessman? He treats her cruelly, then goes home for three years, during which time she prays to his picture and turns down marriage from a young Kennedy. Then, when she learns he has remarried, she kills herself. Now I believe you should consider this girl to be a deranged idiot, correct? But because it's an Oriental who kills herself for a Westerner–ah!–you find it beautiful.” 
― David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly

“Why, in the Peking Opera, are women's roles played by men?...Because only a man knows how a woman is supposed to act.” 
― David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly

“Tonight, I've finally learned to tell fantasy from reality. And, knowing the difference, I choose fantasy.” 
― David Henry Hwang, M. Butterfly

The classes I have taught since 1989 have all, in one way or another, been about identity vs. stereotypes/expectations.  I champion curiosity, inquiry, listening.  As in Kelvin’s prompt, the results I am after are much bigger, but we start always with individual experience.  I enjoy diversity.

I first learned I was white European and racist in 1969, two decades before this play taught me the depth of that racism, sexism, and classism.  I was getting on a Greyhound bus in Worcester, MA, to travel to Albany, NY where my parents were waiting for me. I looked up and saw all the faces, all black faces.  I had never been in a place where everyone else was Black, and I wondered for the first time in my life how it felt for my African-American friends to experience White.  My first instinct was to back up and step off the bus, but I didn't   I walked to the back of the bus and sat down.  I had experienced difference, but not danger—I hope I will never know the full extent of racism experientially. 

Now I love that this life-changing moment occurred on Memorial Day weekend.  Insight into self, good or bad, is always memorable.

Thank you, Kelvin S.M.

Writing as Healing

I ride on emotion as if it were language, a trusted transport into meaning—not definitions, but rhythms and feelings that lead me where I want to go as swiftly as a November wind.

But I do not know the name of the horse I am riding, be it tame or wild, love or .... A giddy rider now, screamingly happy, I fear that if I stop to name a vortex will flush me. 

If I stop, something precious will keep going, will drop my hand  and leave me tumbling, eye glasses smashed, teeth broken, nose and knees bleeding, blood writing.  

But if I don't dismount, I will lose myself as if a Frodo who could not destroy his magic ring.  As if a Dorothy asleep in a field of forgetfulness, I will lose my choice.  

So drop. I will myself.  Stumble.  Find name and voice.  Write names, say them, touch them, welcome the horse, then remount and ride words dangerously in wind and sea and city.  

Nothing is more precious. 

#

Re-posted 5/19/2013 for Poets United  Poetry Pantry - #150,  after major revision--but still not quite settled.  Perhaps if you say what you see, I will know how to proceed.

This writing is inspired by Kim Nelson's 5/8/2013 suggestion to share a self healing  (which this is), a concrete instance (which this is not), and 100 words or less (which this is not)--I will go and write that poem next now that this is off my chest.  Thank you Kim and Poets United!   Visit my poem, "Getting On With It," here.

Wanting to get on with it!

I want to finish the draft of my novel this year, but cannot stir myself.  So I wrote this poem--though part of the problem is how to turn away from the poetry for a while.  It isn't taking me deep enough into the knowledge I want to put forth from my life.  Ah me.  Deep Sigh.  This poem needs a better title:

Wanting a Drink

Sitting in Meeting for Worship and seeking clearness on my path

Watching a cat turn an empty couch into an absent mother
One clump of fabric after another becoming her belly, her breast—

It is the teat of God I want to suck on for knowledge of my path now,

Why my reluctance to work hard every day in this luscious time to write

I've set aside, journals in the living room, computer in the study

Novel opens to page 46 on paper and screen; conflict is set—

Maybe I don’t know enough yet—ha!—If not, I never will

At least not without climbing into the writing itself

So let me pump your breast, my God, let Sophia meet me there

Rich and milky, let me re-nurture there like a son and a daughter

My thirst is beyond water and blood, beyond the earth.

Copyright © 2013 S.L.Chast

Visit my new poem, "Getting On With It," here.

Shakespeare to watch while waiting for a new post

From Shakespeare in American life at the Folger Shakespeare Library:

The Plays

2004. The Merchant of Venice

2000. Hamlet

1999. A Midsummer Night’s Dream

1999. Titus

1996. Romeo + Juliet

1995. Othello

1993. Much Ado About Nothing

1990. Hamlet

1967. Taming of the Shrew

1953. Julius Caesar

Inspired by Shakespeare

2006. Romeo & Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss. Animated version with feuding seal families.

2006. She’s the Man. Twelfth Night in a private boys’ academy.

2001. O. Othello in a modern high school.

2001. Scotland, PA. Macbeth in a fast-food restaurant.

2000. Romeo Must Die. Romeo and Julietadaptation with kung fu.

1999. Let the Devil Wear Black. Hamlet in southern California in a violent film.

1998. The Tempest. The Tempest in the Civil War South

1996. Looking for Richard. Documentary with interviews and scenes from Richard III.

1996. Love is All There Is. A comic romp inspired byRomeo and Juliet.

1977. The Goodbye Girl. Romantic comedy that includes a production of Richard III.

1961. West Side Story. Film version of the musical inspired by Romeo and Juliet.

1953. Kiss Me, Kate. Film version of the musical inspired by The Taming of the Shrew.

From Shakespeare in American life at the Folger Shakespeare Theatre.

Creating a collection

Perhaps I should divide all my poetry--all my writing--into two new blogs (1) Personal and (2) Political.  Poems like Kitchen Eden and At the Train Station are more personal; and titles like Origami Memories and Kindness are more political.  To obscure the edges a little and accept that the line between the personal and the political isn't clear cut, I might call the personal blog "Life Goes On" and the political one "Urgency."  Or maybe the opposite.
         The question came up for me today when contemplating how to select poems for my first to-be-published collection.  I was never one to separate the personal and the political, though some of my writing provides more story-like detail and some less.  Readers seem evenly split on whether they enjoy the specifics or generalizations more.  I like best how the personal writing can be read allegorically and politically, though at times readers miss the larger relevance.  Recently, Friends Journal rejected three poems because my writing is "too personal."
          I have been thinking of gathering my poems that reference childhood to create a collection I could call Child Play or Sun Fishing.  But would that contain enough urgency?  And is there any reason to publish anything anymore that is not urgent?     I am, of course, asking again, why write, what is this Way that God has opened before me, here and now?  
          If anyone has the answer, please help me along the Way to enlightenment!  It may be that the question needs a committee for clearness.  It may be that I should just do it, something, anything--and then wait and see.

Wonder

Wonder.
How/when did I come to understand wonder?  
The connection between WOW and wonder?
Wonder Woman?
Wonder bread?

I have been trying to write a poem about wonder, a word close to wander, wonderful, one world and a word dear to my heart.  Instead of writing the poem, I am stuck in wonder like a broken record . . . and if you wonder what that is: it is a vinyl disc that contained recorded sound, sound released by a needle while the disc is turning at a certain speed on a device known as a record player.  Wonder.  A"broken record" isn't, like, smashed, but it has a deep scratch that causes it to play one sound, word, or phrase over and over as if the needle were stuck in a groove.  Indeed it is.  Stuck in a groove.  Where I am today with wonder.  Walking with wonder as if wonder was a playmate who took me out to play.  Or if Wonder asked me out to play and Mom said no, but O Wonder!  We did it anyway though I did not move an inch.   

Groovy.  Dadada dada dada.  Life is groovy.

I went to Goodreads and copied these thoughts on wonder for me, and for you.  Let them be friends.  Please add more wonderful readings on wonder in the comments!

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.”
― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

“I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering bout the big things and asking bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in't!”

― William Shakespeare

 

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”
― Rachel Carson

“A Second Childhood.”

When all my days are endin
And I have no song to sing,
I think that I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing.

Wherein God’s ponderous mercy hangs
On all my sins and me,
Because He does not take away
The terror from the tree
And stones still shine along the road
That are and cannot be.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for wine,
But I shall not grow too old to see
Unearthly daylight shine,
Changing my chamber’s dust to snow
Till I doubt if it be mine.

Behold, the crowning mercies melt,
The first surprises stay;
And in my dross is dropped a gift
For which I dare not pray:
That a man grow used to grief and joy
But not to night and day.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for lies;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Enormous night arise,
A cloud that is larger than the world
And a monster made of eyes.

Nor am I worthy to unloose
The latchet of my shoe;
Or shake the dust from off my feet
Or the staff that bears me through
On ground that is too good to last,
Too solid to be true.

Men grow too old to woo, my love,
Men grow too old to wed;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Hung crazily overhead
Incredible rafters when I wake
And I find that I am not dead.

A thrill of thunder in my hair:
Though blackening clouds be plain,
Still I am stung and startled
By the first drop of the rain:
Romance and pride and passion pass
And these are what remain.

― G.K. Chesterton, The Collected Poems of G. K. Chesterton

http://store.feminist.org/posterspecial.aspx

Please add more inspiring readings--or links to inspiring readings-- on wonder in the comments!


Thank you. 










 

Hal Sirowitz

GREEN LINE PRESENTED: 

             Hal Sirowitz

          at the 

          Green Line Cafe

4426 Locust st.

Philadelphia, PA 19104

on Feb 19 at 7:00 PM 

  

I went and had a WONDERFUL time!

          Treat yourself to a Hal Sirowitz experience.

The poems Hal Sirowitz treated us to at his reading tickled me--really--in the way a family member can when you don't want to break and laugh but have to.  Leonard's family moments hit me like that--I recognized the situations in my funny bone and couldn't hide the groans and laughter even at such things as brown spots on underwear.  I went home from the reading and read all I could find of, by, and about him on the internet.  

I had the presence of mind before leaving the Green Line Cafe to tell Hal that he had given me the courage to step down off of the pedestal of poetry where the set ideas live about how to make it denser and denser.  He gave me trust in the day to day as subject matter for poetry.  

Thank you, Leonard Gontarek, for presenting this evening and others like it every month.

See: 

1. Three Poems by Hal Sirowitz
2. http://www.halsirowitz.com/
3. Hal Sirowitz/Poetry
4. Hand Drawn Animation (You Tube)--poems by Hal Sirowitz

See Sirowitz's amazon.com author page here.

What is "True Vogue" ?

Chelsea Bednar blogs at  Artistic Adventures.

I am truly moved by Margaret Bedner's poem "True Vogue" and her daughter's drawings posted under that title on Margaret's blog:  Art Happens 365 - My Photography & Poetry.  Here is the poem's first stanza: 

Designer trends,

make a woman

or so they say

I hope you will go to her site to see the rest.

It is a short poem, about loving our selves and our own poetic souls. The drawings make it especially vivid.  

I, too, have written about this, over and over, but in poems so raw and youthful that they need major revision before I will post them again.  Irony?  

"True Vogue" is a good lens into a never fully-answered question:  Where do we live and create without pretense?  I went through various phases in answer to this question, and when I taught in high school I tried to help my students face the issue.  I wanted them to see they had to make strategic choices. This is a hard lesson to teach and learn as a writer who believes authentic voices are more and more needed.  

When I read "True Vogue," however, I am reminded of our craft as poets.  The need to "re-envision" has occasionally more to do with creating poetry than with trying to hide a creative soul.  The spareness of this free-verse poem that moves forward through images and metaphor--what is buttoned and unbuttoned--shows true art.  The poet does not try to do everything; she does not make the poem comment on itself.  She cuts all but impressions to underline her double-sworded title.  

Vogue means  "a temporary fashion trend." What is truly vogue?  In which phase of our lives--mine and yours--will it be popular to be as naked as our hidden selves?  At which point do we begin to take the real risks that could make our art worthy of being seen and celebrated?  

What is love?

Today's Poem-a-day: Sometimes with One I Love by Walt Whitman Sometimes with one I love I fill myself with rage for    fear I effuse unreturn'd love, But now I think there is no unreturn'd love, the pay    is certain one way or another, (I loved a certain person ardently and my love was    not return'd, Yet out of that I have written these songs.) I wrote a prompt on 13 February 2013 at Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads that gave some variety to the traditional Valentine's Day. Some gorgeous poems reside there, including mine.  I am astonished to finally be finding so many positive images in a growing up time that I used to love to hate.  Walt Whitman expresses that, too, in his tiny poem above.  What a switch to learn that love is returned, noted, felt and moved, moving in return.

Historic Day

President Obama’s second inauguration.
The Public one: 1/21/2013

Obama calculates his repetition
to be the jingle we all sing as we
leave and live:   We the People. 
We the People.
We the People.

He was made for this moment,
to stand and to stop “treating
name calling as reasoned debate.”
To reason, remake, reform,
revamp and re-energize.

Obama reminds citizens we must
execute God-given rights, that we
must be equal not only in God’s
eyes, but in our own eyes be
we, the People.


I had forgotten and worked with my poetry correspondance right through his inaugeral address.  I just finished listening to it at the  NYTimes and You Tube.  As impressive as his others, this one stripped away the icing and went straight to his points.  He said words like slave and strap and sword and, in general, made no bones about his agenda.  He never said the word compromise--he said "Do it for your children and grandchildren."  Everyone looked frozen except for Obama who is as if a torch in our midst. 

This is our history, he says. 
This is what we said we believe. 
We, the people, still believe it.



 

Check in for the new year

I have been silent for a while, living in family out there and living in poems in here, mostly posting them at Susan's Poetry and on Facebook.  I answer letters, respond to comments, and sit down for way too many hours in the day.

I have made two decisions based in the past year's experience which some may call New Year's Resolutions:  (1) boldly write about what I have been silent about, and (2) make sure to have an "artist's date" at least once a week.  The latter is from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way, a book I worked with almost 20 years ago. I plan to combine walking with seeing places in Philadelphia that I haven't seen: museums, parks, stores, riverside sites and more.  I started with a Pendle Hill retreat over New Year's eve and day.

One writing word-shop ended in December and another begins next week. There, my mentor Alison Hicks encourages the growth of my novel The Storyteller and I plan to bring in pages for the other writers in the workshop to read.  No longer shy about writing, liking my chapters, seeing the conflicts and plots grow--I am amazed to be insider to what is for me an extremely slow process.  V e r y  slow.

That's all for now, folks.  


 

Food for thought

Today, on Facebook, I read a posting from Claire, the marvelous Scots poet and bloggist of One Night Stanzas and Read This Magazine, and followed its invitation to read the guest blog: 

Claire Askew

There's a guest post today at One Night Stanzas from poet Mark Antony Owen, on why he never sends his poems out to magazines. Please do have a read and leave him a comment! http://www.readthismagazine.co.uk/onenightstanzas/?p=1609

I found this readable editorial very intriguing.  Mark Anthony Owen believes quite simply that his poems hold up better in collections of his own work, that a reader can get a false impression of his work when they read one poem singly in the context of multiple poets.  

Do you have similar experiences and stories? I would love to know your thoughts,  especially if you have put a collection of your own together or even considered it.

I am in the consideration stages now.  Although I continue to improve with practice and may yet be too raw for serving, I have been playing with a collection of childhood poems to be called "Feeding the child" or something like.  Many of my poems mine my childhood in ways that seem premeditated but that keep surprising me--and feeding me.  Unexpected poems arise prompted with a spark, perhaps, from one of my poetry workshops*.  And while I have a few poems that gloom about the discomforts of being a child, there are an amazing (to me) number of pleasures: a climbing tree, story time, a cold forehead, roasting marshmallows, a table, a dream.  


 *I post with five word-work-shop blogs: I am a member of Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads and Poets United, and participate in dVerse Poets Pub, Theme Thursday and Haiku Heights.  I can recommend others I have participated in as well.  I leave my poems up on my poetry blog only for a few days, keeping them unpublished just in case I want to publish them in other venues.


 

Alice in Wonder, Chapter Two

My last post was the completion of Chapter One, so here is Chapter Two for those of you who said you would like to keep reading my novel-in-progress, Alice in Wonder, or, The Storyteller.   Remember that I am interested in what you want to know more about, and what ever else you want to say.  

 

Because I expect this to be a novel someday, I ask you to respect the copyright and leave it here on my Blog.  

 

 Copyright © 2012 S.L.Chast: Copying/using any part of this text is prohibited.  

 

Alice in Wonder, Chapter Two

            Alice is a librarian in a library that is as white as cream and as vast as an ocean, and the only things that break up the whiteness are bookshelves and rules.  It is neat as a pin and quiet as a stone, and Alice likes it that way.  Before she leaves for the day, she shelves all the books left behind by the hourly staff, pushes in all the chairs, and smiles at it all as if to say, "I enjoyed you today!  I'll see you tomorrow."  Which is exactly how she feels. 

            Storytelling is her specialty.  She started the tradition of story hour at her library many years before and she had read to children daily ever since, even if it meant coming in on her days off.  She loves pulling out the low stool, opening books wide for children to follow the images and to see the words and letters that made up the sounds she voiced. 

            Lately, Alice has been performing her own versions of the old stories, and she likes this storytelling even more.  Sometimes she tells children the Jungian symbols behind fairy tales, sometimes she explores the wounds and emotions inside  characters, and sometimes she simply puts the children in front of her into the stories.  For the younger children, she has made what she calls a storytelling apron with four rows of four pockets, each of which holds an object or toy animal, truck, or doll. She lets one child pick a pocket and discover the character, and even tell a story about it if he or she has one.  Otherwise, she spins the yarn herself.  In short, Alice is a gem.  The library loves her, the children love her, the parents love her, and she?  She seems to love herself as well.

            Alice's home is as neat as her library, but not half so populated.  She lives alone in walls that are far from white, in fact their colors vary like flowers in a bouquet: rose pink here, daffodil yellow there, iris blue in another place, and tulip crimson as well.  The place seems even more jewel-like because fake oriental rugs soften the pool-table effect of the green wall-to-wall.  She has few furnishings besides the paperback books crammed into built-in bookcases on either side of a working fireplace.  The long  3' by 4' mask of  her Grandmother lives over the mantel while the round tile and wood box lives on it with her Mother mask in its womb-like interior.  Alice made the sculpted Grandmother mask years ago as one of the huge street puppets in an anti-Apartheid rally.  It remained unpainted, with eyes that seemed to look wherever Alice stood.  In Alice's mind it continually watches and judges as her actual Grandmother had done with Alice's Mother, but Grandmother had been Alice's soul mate and Alice feeels no malice in the gaze. 

            Alice had hung the framed art of  her Grandmother and her Mother equally so that neither of the two could overpower the other.  Many trees clustered on the daffodil walls, some with leaves and others without, in oil, pastel, pencil, wood print, etching and embroidery.  One was actually a carved tree itself that looked like an old man or woman of the green as in old Irish legend.  The trees were Alice's favorites. 

            On the Iris walls were other etchings of towers and flowers, of men and women and of scenes in Mexico or in imaginary underworlds.  The rose walls carried oil, acrylic and tile still-life squash and jars and African images and sun flowers and squiggles.  On the tulip walls one mirror Mexican tin mirror flashed its light, while the windows sparked with crystals, stained glass and white lace.  And here and there were photographs of performances and of people, including a few of Alice herself at 2 and 10 and 17 and 22 and 50.  In one she holds a doll and stares into the camera pouting and angry.  In one she is surrounded by books, and in another she is playing chess.  In one she is getting married, and in the final one she is holding her great mongoose of a cat, Little Kitty.

            She has a double bed and a double dresser and a double couch and a double coffee table and two of everything else from cups to tables to pens to blankets.  And Alice lives alone.

            Before she leaves home for the library each morning, Alice packs herself a knapsack for a lunch of raisin bread and cream cheese sandwiches, an apple, and a bottle of juice.  She rinses out the cat's bowls and leaves her fresh water along with dry food and a half of a tiny can of Fancy Feast Whitefish and Tuna.  She sets the alarm on her door and closes it carefully.  She says good morning to the lilac trees and azaleas whether or not they are in bloom and heads out her gate, turns left, and walks to work thinking about the story for the day before taking a minute to notice God in something--her walk, her neighbor, the sky, something.

  Chapter TWO ends here. 

 Copyright © 2012 S.L.Chast: Copying/using any part of this text is prohibited.