Thrills and Chills

Susan Chast

37 minutes ago near Philadelphia · 

• I am so excited! My first poem to be published in the pages of a real book is “Word Wrapping” in The dVerse Anthology: Voices of Contemporary World Poetry, edited by Frank Watson. Plum White Press, 2013; P. 151. Hurrah. My poem faces one by Laurie Harris Kolp and is practically in the center of poems by poets who have been reading my work as it develops. Visit us at dVerse Poets Pub .

  
  

            The above is my status on Facebook today.  One little poem in one 269-page paper-back publication is making my heart beat fast.  Frank Watson did a great job with layout, order and style, right down to the feel of the paper--not the most expensive--but smooth to the touch.  And these matters of design are important to me as I consider self-publishing a full collection and a chapbook by early next year.  Can I do it?  

            I believe I can, but I'd like to finish the first draft of my novel first.  The poetry books can be the rewards.  Not that the steps of making any book are easy, but it is a work reward for doing good work.  Having just soaked up the wisdom of writers Marge Piercy (my hero) and Ira Wood all weekend up at Omega Institute, I am revved up to treat the act of writing more seriously while maintaining the light tone of the book.  I think.  I think it needs the light tone as it addresses serious matters, but the experience of the Piercy/Wood Memoir Workshop Lab  may alter that. 

            The last piece I wrote about my friend Doug's death is mainly serious and would not easily be translated into my fiction. Nor should it be. Something new is emerging, popping out from behind my privacy screens energetically and eagerly.  Why?  Will it wait for another book?  Or will it shove the one I have started into the back of the file drawer where I keep 50+ years of false starts?

            In my autobiographical novel, so far, I emphasize my theatre and feminist experience in the character of an aging performance artist and storyteller who is being pressured to break her safe routine and isolation by three unforeseen events:  (1) She has been invited to the 30th reunion of her old Women's Center and Theatre Company, both of which ended existence in the 1980s.  (2) She has been asked to update and publish her ancient 1990 dissertation now that her artistic director subject, Ellen Stewart, has died.  (3) Her favorite audience member, Greg, has just lost his mother to the struggle in Afghanistan.   These three events cause enough conflict to expose her experience with racism, feminism, lesbianism, community, theatre, and love's concurrent losses and needs. That is already a lot without drugs and suicides and sex and secretly transgendered lives. I don't lack for material and research to open up the culture of radical change and the stagnation of feminist community in the late 1970s and early 80s.

           In the next phase of writing I will re-outline, I think, in an attempt to separate the story lines so I can satisfy them all and let them re-entwine.  Then if I have to include love and sex to make the work sing I will.  But I really hope it isn't necessary.

  
  

            That's all for now--writing to think, thinking to write. The UPS wagon came down the street today and left a book with one of my poems in it at my feet.  Yip-pee!  I forgot to eat, but I'll go and do that now.
  
  

  

  I just sent this to dVerse Poets Pub where a gallery is growing.

  
  Copyright © 2013 S.L.Chast

  
  

  
  

Marge Piercy Assignment #2-3

This is a Marge Piercy and Ira Wood  assignment to write a dialogue that passes time, uses action and descriptive tags, and contains indirect as well as direct dialogue.  I chose the moment in my life when I got Very Bad News.

Doug's Death

      The phone's ring stirred me from a half sleep in my cozy Williamsburg bedroom. I was tired and achy from a day of digging over a new garden patch and plowing through plagiarized research papers, seeking the good stems among the weeds. Pulled by the phone, I wrapped a blanket around myself, scuffled to the kitchen, jerked the phone off the wall and nearly barked my hello.

      "Hi, Susan. This is Tom calling from Berkeley."

      His familiar voice brought out my smile. "Oh! Hi Tom. It's been a long time."

      "Are you sitting down?"

      "No. Barely standing. Do you know what time it is? How's Debbie and Doug?"

      "Susan, whoa. Sit down, OK?"

      "OK ...?" I say, putting my knee on a kitchen chair.

      "Are you sitting?"

      "Yes. Come on, friend, you're scaring me."

      "Doug is dead."

      I sank onto the hard chair, heart pounding so loud in my throat that I couldn't open my mouth.

      "Susan?"

      "No."

      "Yes, Susan. Doug died tonight. He had a massive heart attack and died before his friend Bob could take two steps toward him."

      "No."

      A woman's voice wound through my drumming. "Susan, are you alone? Is there someone you could call?"

      "Debbie, what's going on? This isn't funny."

      "I know."

      Damn. She was crying. Matter-of-fact Debbie was crying, I thought to the rhythm of the drum beat in my ears.

      "This can't be true, Debbie, this can't ... it's been so long since he and I talked. He can't be gone."

      Pause. "He loved you, Susan," she said quietly.

      "But he broke up with me seven months ago! We haven't even talked!"

      Pause. "What are you talking about? Just yesterday we were all talking about how we missed you, and Doug was saying how important you were to him..."

      "He didn't tell you."

      "No. He would've if it were true."

      "But it is! Because I wanted us to marry. Because he said it would never happen. Over the phone, Debbie."

      "Doug is dead, Susan. We don't know what to do, call his dad, arrange a burial, have a party. We think Doug would want a party."

      "Call his Dad and let him arrange to .... Deb, Doug wanted his body to go to science. Can you tell his Dad that?"

      "Yes."

      "I'll arrange something at the college. Deb, I can be there within two days."

      "Come home, Susan."

      So I did.

      Doug and I were both 46 years old. We had been together since I became a student at UC BErkeley and cast him in a play 8 years earlier. I needed to see his body to believe he was gone.

      His Dad arranged a viewing in the back room of a funeral home where Doug's naked and refrigerated body waited under a sheet. He had a look of surprise on his face that was not un-peaceful. he had lipstick on his lips and eye shadow, just like Tim Curry in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. When the funeral director handed me the bundle of black leather and piercing rings that emergency workers had cut from his body, I believed he was dead. Tom had walked with me into the back room while Debbie and Dad waited out front. They wanted to remember him as he had been, not how he was now.

      "He would have liked this," Tom observed. "A rapid death in front of a Goth Club called the Terminator, lots of drama. The viewing in back of a funeral parlor, your readings over his corpse. Doug was nothing if not an actor."

I had to agree.

      And now the tasks. Doug's Dad wanted me to find the new car not yet paid for and return it to the dealer. Left on the street for more than 24 hours, it had been towed to the impound lot. A ransom would have to be paid to free it. By the time time Tom and I found it within row after row of cars by the San Francisco Bay, Tom had me laughing too. How Doug would have loved this!

      And then came the task of taking apart his apartment. Debbie came with me. I unlocked the door to find myself everywhere in pictures and opened letters mixed in with marijuana and ecstasy and fen-fen, and then I cried thinking that Doug had considered suicide--or at least an early death--when love just might have been enough. I took only a small carpet Doug had told me stories about and the coffee table he had designed and mocked up, a manufacturing line in mind.

      Tom sold all of Doug's woodworking tools and saws and machines, and bought drugs and wine and snacks to throw a huge party like an Irish Wake. Doug's body was not there, but I had rented a car to fetch his father.

      And then I left Tom and Debbie's house to spend one last night at Doug's. I lit candles everywhere and wrapped myself naked in our favorite quilt. I curled into his bed and felt him there, alive and laughing, red hair standing up every which way, and him refusing, as always, to coddle my excess emotion. "It won't work," I heard him saying. "I'm gone, Susan. Let me go. It was a good death. I loved you." And I replied, "Doug, I love your restless experimental soul. But you were right, I wouldn't have had your drugs in my home, and your Gothic fantasies went further than I could go. I'm glad you felt free before you died, baby. I will miss you. Go." I dried my eyes, and fell asleep peacefully in his scent and warmth. In the morning I dressed in his jeans and favorite shirt.  

     Today I would fly back to Virginia to resume my teaching duties in the theatre department at the College of William in Mary. In a month, I would get my first anti-depressants when I could not be in a rehearsal without crying. In a year I would try to move on.  I still look for him in the crowd scenes of movies, I still use his coffee table, I still stand on his rug, I still wear his jeans, but they are getting tight.

 Copyright © 2013 S.L.Chast

Homework for Marge Piercy

I'm at Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY, writing a one page or one paragraph seductive dynamic opening for a memoir.  I will receive feedback on this in an hour or two in my class with Marge Piercy and Ira Wood:  

          The dark and dirty circle swirled and deepened like a clay pot on its wheel, fingers raising the edges and deepening the hole--but it is a recurring nightmare and the hole was a pit I fell into.  "Mommy!" I called, and Dad came running to me half dressed, I suspect to get me before  I wet the bed and all the bedding would need to be changed.
          At 62, I still have this dream occasionally though it doesn't panic me anymore.  I know about Alice and wonderland, Orpheus and Erudice, Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, and every science fiction/fantasy writer and would-be Lord of the Rings the English-speaking world has to offer.  And I think about the 7-year old I was  discovering imagination and storytelling and faith in ceiling tiles a leg-length away from the top bunk.  This was my private space unless I fell asleep and the nightmare came.

Copyright © 2013 S.L.Chast

 

  

The Drones and the Zimmermen

I read Octavia McBride-Ahebee' s blog because she is an accessible local poet with a powerful voice.  She tells the truth through art that tears through the fog and the will to be blind.  In her post today, Octavia asks Obama to put himself in the place of drone victims as well in the place of Trayvon Martin.   In my mind, the drone program is also Racial Profiling.  (See Guilty, Not, my previous post on this blog.)   

Octavia McBride-Ahebee's posting today introduced a poet new to me, Solmaz Sharif.  In his poem "Drone," he personalized an attack and I saw the connection.  Go to her blog--click on the bold title below--read the poem!  Come on back and let's talk.


Octavia McBride-Ahebee: Drone by Solmaz Sharif:     Victims of Drones   I am horrified by the Zimmerman verdict. I am equally confounded not by President Obama’s response to the ve...

Guilty, Not

A hand that could curl around the handle of a gun 
and reach with the trigger finger could surely throw 
a punch up close and effectively.  Maybe not.

Racial Profiling was at play in the beginning 
and end of the action, in the "not guilty" of the verdict, 
when we were so certain of the guilt.  Bewildered.

We had such clarity that we didn't even call for
a Jury of His Peers until too late--because
who would've thunk?  Ugly. Small. Law.

Since the murder of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of George Zimmerman, my hands have been cold and my head has been spinning.  Lyrica and Ibuprofen have been ineffective.  Only poetry has helped.  And thoughts of new ways of treating conflict proven by Nelson Mandela in South Africa.  And lots of prayer.

These poems and poets in particular have given me minutes of clarity:

(1) Velveteen Rabbit and her JULY 17, 2013  poem after Tisha b'Av "WATER FROM THE SOURCE" which addresses blessings fasting and growing while in "the fallen temple of justicemothers wailing for their sons --"

(2) Mama Zen at Another Damn Poetry Blog, where her poem "Not Yet" releases both astonishment and anger.

(3) At her blog, LaTonya's "Lobster Boil" releases both hopelessness and anger.  

       (4)  At Blog Over Easy: We stand our Ground

 

And there will be more to expand this list.

Add your links, please.

Posted at Poetry Pantry #159 at Poets United.

Doves and. Machines

Let this blow your mind as it blew mine:

It is from the 1969 film Picasso Summer starring Albert Finney and Yvette Mimieux.  Adapted into a screenplay by Ray Bradbury from his short story “In a Season of Calm Weather,” it is set to music by Michel Legrand.  Despite a weak plot, the music and three animated sequences by Wess Herschensohn moved me no end!  Not only did they explore Picasso in a way that helped me to see his work more clearly, the one sequence above also widened my perception of war. After watching the above, I turned off the film to search it on the web, and found this:

and this:

Together, these three videos entered my life as Picasso's Guernica never had before!  In my search, I found that the creative reactions to Picasso's Guernica may rival commentary on any Shakespeare play.  

Here is my own:

Slate grey noon and rain in June

sat me down to pull war and people

from out my 2D cartoon-framed

vision in a sheltered life not Iraq,

Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan,

Israel, Palestine and elsewhere. 

   Horses

are gone but not foot soldiers engaged to

dishearten from land mines and hidden bombs:

providers, mothers, priests, and young ones with

explosives strapped to their childhoods.

      Doves

are there too close to open-eyed blood we

pour in to food, zapping out strength and hope

drowning all openings to the villains’ millions,

         billions—not humans, but dollars—trillions.

Copyright © 2013 S.L.Chast

Posting for dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night ~ Week 103.

Birthday Carol

My chosen birthday cake:
Chocolate Babka with streusal topping

At age 62, I have major-sized messes

so beautiful that it doesn't take a mother’s

instinct to see me ... and this is my Birthday poem:

Today in South Africa Nelson Mandela

lives on, a prism spreading more Light

the longer he lingers on his death bed,

a man whose choices turned theories into practice

that transformed prisoners and masters into human

beings as restorative justice re-placed violence

with recognition—This is not magic, it is discipline.

Today, I woke privileged: expecting to find

coffee supplies and cat where I left them, to get

potable water from the kitchen tap, fill bowl

for cat, make coffee, and drink in peace at my own

computer—this too is not magic—it took

discipline to earn it within a country of

opportunity—and I want it for everyone.

At 62, I am no longer teaching

theatre,  literature and writing, but learning

to apply lessons to my own living.

I’m no Mandela, but neither am I naïve

about causes and effects of poverty here

and there, about the many rewards for letting

go, relaxing, and forgetting now that I have

achieved my quarter acre of heaven on earth, my

ticket to ignore my country’s complicity—

and I need discipline, since I have no magic.

What I have more than ever is time—time

as past experience, as reflections now, as

future words on paper—a regular Christmas

carol of possibility—that wants only

discipline to bloom.  Let me then turn this summer

Birthday into carol, an oral song of folk

festivals year round; let me stay inside the dance.

My 62nd birthday finds me a word spinner, trying to get behind my craft and add to the daily discipline of writing an effort to publish and let it fly out into the world. Within one year, let it be!

Copyright © 2013 S.L.Chast

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.