![]() ![]() So it's not a specific one woman- in fact, it's all the women that you keep to yourself, which form the woman you get to yourself. All those selves that were not acceptable, or that people found irritating or didn't understand, they went on paper. And Mami, with her chancletas, would come down the hall, turn on the lights, and she would say, "Why can't you be considerate? Keep it to yourself." And says that this self that she kept to herself is what drove her to poetry. To set the scene of the poem, it's something that really did occur: At night, my sisters and I would be in the room with the lights off, and I would start reciting poems that I had memorized. How did you become the woman that you are, then, and who specifically is the woman you kept to yourself? nothing prepared the way, not a dramatic, wayward aunt, or moody mother who read Middle-march, or godmother who whispered, 'You can be whatever you want!' and by doing so performed the god-like function of breathing grit into me." ![]() It's called "By Accident," and in it, you set up this story of how you almost feel like you became the person that you became by chance. I wanted to talk a little bit about the poem that you get the title The Woman I Kept to Myself from. I love the Toni Morrison quote, "The function of freedom is to free someone else." And I feel that when you give word to these secret selves, hidden selves, outlier and outlaw selves, that you kind of liberate. And because there is a listener, there is community, and there's a sense that you are connecting with a reader at those deepest levels of the self, and therefore maybe liberating them. I always think of that line from Dylan Thomas: "I sang in my chains like the sea." There's something about singing that, even if you're feeling chained, even if you're feeling oppressed, the song in itself is a liberation. Did you find freedom in speaking to those selves, in the process of writing those poems?įor me, maybe because I am a writer, naming is a kind of liberation. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |