Jonelle Seitz

Unrest: Poems

admin — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 01:00:00 +0000

The poems in Joanna Rawson’s recent collection, Unrest, have the quality of things scrawled in the harsh fluorescent light of insomnia. The lines scurry in jagged lengths, infesting the broad pages with buzzing images of immigrants suffocating in a boxcar, feverish babies, a suicide bomber, and war. This pervasive sleepless quality doesn’t preclude craft, though: each line is balanced, as is the book, despite its overwhelming intimacy of terror.

Rawson, a former journalist, used interviews as some of the material for the fifteen poems in the book. The poems based on real events are stark but not trite, woven of fragments of stories and shards of imagery. “Requiescat” is constructed of those elements, but an elevated degree of hope occurs when a cellist continues playing long after the audience is annihilated. The cellist returns day after day, until suddenly “We’re talking now about years into the terror.” After twenty-two performances, “as if to oppose utter mortalness itself, he lay down in the heat’s siege/sawing at the animal guts of that instrument./By then no one else could hear it.” Here, the cellist’s refusal to allow mortal silence to fall over the rubble is tragic and lovely.

The poems offer few other moments of respite, and fear is alternately elicited through treatments of violence and war, and sick children and domestic unease. A sole moment of near-serenity occurs in “Return Trip by Night”:

Low-slung rain reddened at dawn and made of the whole air a wild vow.

Hush. It was exactly then—

then that the puncture wounds we’d put for so long into wherever of ourselves was left started to green at the edges, turn into history and heal.

The shaking eases up by late autumn, and then the pallor, as the blue asters open.

In this poem, tragedy retreats in a shadow, allowing quiet, sleep. Yet the scars of trauma and tendency toward restlessness are still evident, and when the neighbors break bottles in the alley, “the noise is a fury.”

Written by: Jonelle Seitz, December 27th 2009

Violet

admin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:01:00 +0000

By Tania Duprey Stehlik, Vanja Vuleta Jovanovic

Second Story Press

A first day in a new school. Stomach butterflies, lunchroom trades, art projects. Kids asking why you’re not the same color as your dad. This is the story of Violet, a children’s picture book by Tania Duprey Stehlik with edgy illustrations by Vanja Vuleta Jovanovic.

Violet’s mom is red, her dad is blue, and Violet is, well, violet. Back home at the kitchen table after school, Violet asks her mother to explain. She brings out the paints: “If you take red and mix in a little blue, you get a lovely purply-violet.” When Violet asks whether there are others like her, her mother responds by assuring Violet that “...many children are mixed, just like you.”

Ouch. The word “mixed” as a description of a person’s ethnicity is jarring, especially in this storybook context. Doesn’t a “mix” refer to a dog or Betty Crocker? Connotations aside, the word is more problematic than meaningful. A heck of a lot of people, especially in North America, have some element of mixed ethnicity. Another approach to Violet’s story would be to emphasize this fact and dispel the myth that skin tone can be classified into a set few colors. Surely of the red, yellow, and blue kids at Violet’s school, some had lighter skin and some had darker skin, each with a distinct shade and tone. But in an illustration depicting the schoolyard, the matching skin colors of the children are starkly in contrast with the careful individuality Jovanovic gives the rest of the children’s features, clothing, and expressions.

Nevertheless, Violet seems to find her mother’s explanation sensible and confidence-building enough to proudly use it herself. Perhaps the matter-of-fact explanation of color-blending is just the ammo Violet needed to quickly mollify her bewildered classmates and get back to art projects and making new friends. However, one hopes the teachers at her school will look into some activities with multicultural play dough.

Written by: Jonelle Seitz, December 8th 2009

Poems from the Women’s Movement

admin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 16:30:00 +0000

Edited by Honor Moore

Library of America

It’s debatable whether collections of work by “women poets” (or, shudder, “poetesses”) are legitimate groupings. I tend to regard these types of collections with a raised eyebrow, imagining a group of women having an outdoor party, having been shut out of some stuffy jackets-required club, now herded together and pushed through the doors all at once to their dismay. But in Poems from the Women's Movement, the poems are linked with a real thread, a socio-political movement, making this anthology a historical, artistic, and literary record of the consciousness of the movement in both its broadness and diversity.

In a concise, warm introduction that places the poems in a context of not just the movement, but the greater American poetry landscape, Editor Honor Moore, explains that the scope of the volume begins with Plath, whose posthumous Ariel was published in 1966, and ends with the early 1980s. The first poem in the volume, Plath’s “The Applicant,” is a shudder-inducing representation of what the movement fought against: the repeated manipulation of a woman-object in morphing professional and marital tests ending with a repetition of “marry it, marry it, marry it” that is frightening as hell.

With anthologies always come quibbles of overrepresentation or exclusion (and those more widely read than I can take it up below in the comments), but the former doesn’t seem possible with this smallish volume—under 250 pages all told—and it seems that Moore has taken great care to include poems on diverse topics and poets with varied perspectives. There are poems on previously taboo subjects like abortion, pregnancy, and rape, as well as those that arise from a collective female and simply human conscience.

Marge Piercy, whose “Secretary Chant” is anthologized all over, is represented not by that poem, but by the more serious “Rape Poem” and the resonant “The Nuisance”—“I want you to want me/as simply and variously/as a cup of hot coffee.” This theme, the want of a woman to be wanted—probably a want of men, too, but perhaps they’re historically less likely to say it—and a can’t live with/without ’em scenario also appears in Maureen Owen’s “Wanting You”: “this need I have to sleep beside you / that has caused all the trouble in my life.” And I can’t stop thinking about the feeling of collective motherhood expressed in Audre Lorde’s “To My Daughter the Junkie on the Train”:

Little girl on the nod if we are measured by dreams we avoid then you are the nightmare of all sleeping mothers . . . My corrupt concern will not replace what you once needed

Reading the poems in this volume feels familial: the secrets and stories within them are directly responsible and continue to nurture the privileges I exercise today, without serious conflict, as a woman, writer, wife, and mother. This great little volume is well designed and full of wisdom, and I’m thankful to have it in hand.

Written by: Jonelle Seitz, July 6th 2009

The King: Poems

admin — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:37:00 +0000

By Rebecca Wolff

WW Norton

I’m trying not to look at Rebecca Wolff’s new book of poems, The King, as a self-help book, which, of course, it’s not at all. But as a fellow writer and mother whose venture into the latter ’hood punted me way out of my cozy work-life comfort zone, I can’t help but look for clues and compare notes while reading Wolff’s crystallizing poems. After all, she’s got it together enough to write books.

In The King, Wolff begins with poems on the fragmented physical and emotional, or perhaps biological and psychological, experiences of pregnancy. “Creative Visualization” suggests thoughts appearing in a prenatal yoga student’s consciousness, while printed on the facing page is “Poem on Colostrum,” which both explains and wonders at the pre–breast milk excretion. The next group of poems, the first of two sections called “The Baby,” begins so matter-of-factly, so succinctly—“it was inevitable—/I was pregnant”—that a spiral into darker territory seems inevitable. In “The Letdown,” Wolff elicits fury at the twisted powers every mother is granted:

and writhing
I wiped that smile
right off your face
and by withholding
the milk from my breast
make a man out of you
and with my raving
I wouldn’t wish this
on anyone
not even a mother

Today, we’re constantly reminded that motherhood is a choice. One can have a complete existence without it, and thus if it is chosen (of course, there are still lots and lots of women for whom it isn’t), it can feel all the more disruptive. At times, the child and mother-becoming are viewed as biological oddities, and I imagine that maybe Wolff sometimes looks, as I do, across the dining room table at her children and wonders “Who are those beings? What happened to make them come here? Why, oh why, are they under my watch?”

In the section titled “The Man,” the narrator seems to be redefining herself as an adult individual, perhaps having been changed by the child, unmentioned but inextricable: “You must look into his eyes/as though you really knew him.” The final section, “Depth Essay,” is like an apotheosis, the narrator having settled in, somewhat (do we ever really settle in to this?) to life punctuated by therapy, childhood illnesses, the unease of the narrator’s own youth ever-receding in the distance, and homemade cookies.

The middle section, which gives the book its title, seems to explore the key (I’m going to try it, at least) to achieving this appearance of semi-balance. The first and last lines of “Content is King”: “I queen it/over emptiness./...The king is content.”

Written by: Jonelle Seitz, June 18th 2009

Let Me Down Easy (4/28/2009)

admin — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:52:00 +0000

Zach Theatre

Austin, Texas

If you're squeamish, like I am, on the topics of death, dying, and illness, you shouldn't let that stop you from experiencing Anna Deavere Smith's Let Me Down Easy. However, you might not want to see it during a global health scare. On April 28, one of the first days of the swine flu panic, Smith's documentary production, in which she single-handedly portrays a slew of people who face death in some way, resonated a bit too robustly.

Austin's Zach Theatre is the show's last regional stop before Broadway, and, according dramaturg Gideon Lester, Smith has reshaped and refocused her masses of material—monologues gleaned from interviews she conducted with hundreds of people—since the play's 2008 opening in New Haven. In Austin, Smith began with energy and humor, portraying choreographer Elizabeth Streb as she re-enacted a flubbed dance effect in which she accidentally set herself on fire.

Next, Smith became cyclist Lance Armstrong, slouching on a sofa and discussing his bought with cancer and his competitive streak, as well as his lack of familiarity with her genre: "I gotta tell ya, I never seen a play, for starters." This kind of hilarious, self-conscious meta-commentary came up again in a couple of interludes in which Smith portrayed New Yorker theatre critic John Lahr grappling with the concept for the play.

After a series of characters whose claim to the "death" theme is that they willingly put themselves in danger of it—rodeo bull rider, boxer—Smith turned to the topics of illness, being a patient, and health care. It was at this point that Smith seemed to disappear, her physical presence taking a backseat to the language and manner of the material. A sixteen year-old girl with leukemia discussed her illness alongside her mother, who groped her memory in an attempt to pinpoint exactly when something went wrong. A monologue in the character of Philip Pizzo, the dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine, got a forceful round of applause after he identified the U.S. health care system as "broken" and in desperate need of a change from market-driven to government run.

The voice with the greatest clarity, for me, was Kiersta Kurtz-Burke, a physician at Charity Hospital in New Orleans, a public hospital where nurses and doctors cared for patients without electricity, relief, or adequate food for nearly a week post-Katrina, even after private hospitals had been evacuated. As Kurtz-Burke, Smith explained the realization, from the perspective of a "privileged" person, that the patients knew long before she did that their government would not make rescuing them a priority. "That was the first time in my life I've ever been abandoned by my government," she said. But for the low-income patients, those who have been given "the shit end of the stick" their whole lives, the neglect wasn't a surprise. Wham.

Smith ended the play with treatments of death itself. As a Brahmin-accented reverend, she discussed the important of closure for the living: "I insist that you see the box go down into the ground." As Trudy Howell, an orphanage director in Johannesburg, she explained the heart-wrenchingly practical process of helping children with AIDS accept their own deaths. To end the play, Smith became a Tibetan monk with a swift image: the just-dead as a cup of tea turned upside down. The liquid poured out. Silence ensued. The lights went out. Fin.

Written by: Jonelle Seitz, May 21st 2009

The Clean House 7/10 - 8/17/2008

admin — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:13:00 +0000

Zach Theatre

Austin, Texas

Sarah Ruhl's play The Clean House opens with Mathilde, a Brazilian housekeeper, telling a long and very funny joke - in Portuguese. I don't understand Portuguese, and I doubt very few of my fellow audience members in Austin, TX did, either. Luckily, Mathilde's self-induced laughter, gestures, and a summary translation projected for the audience onto a screen make it easy to get the gist. The joke is dirty, and it's hilarious.

Mathilde goes on to tell the story of her parents: They were in love, and they made each other laugh. Her mother died laughing at a joke her father told, and then her father killed himself. After their deaths, Mathilde came to the United States to become a comedian. She is always trying to come up with the perfect joke, which she describes as "somewhere between an angel and a fart."

Mathilde, played by Smaranda Ciceu in this production, cleans house for Lane (Lauren Lane), a doctor who prescribes Mathilde antidepressants when she neglects the dusting and silver. Lane's sister, Virginia (Barbara Chisholm), is of the obsessive neat-freak type – à la Monica on Friends – and offers to help Mathilde out by cleaning Lane's house herself.

When Lane's husband, Charles (Tom Green), also a doctor, leaves her for an older cancer patient, Virginia and Mathilde are caught, and the plot turns to focus on the relationships that ensue. Charles, stupefied and awed by finding his soul mate Ana (Alicia Kaplan), brings her to meet everyone, and the preposterousness of the situation has Lane beside herself. At the end of the scene, Mathilde agrees to split her time between Lane's and Ana's houses (even though now everyone knows she doesn't like to clean) and joins Charles and Ana to go apple picking. Apple picking!

As Lane sulks at home, playing cards with Mathilde while Virginia continues to clean, Ana's cancer returns, and she refuses to go to the hospital. "I don't want a relationship with a disease. I want a relationship with death," she says. Charles, doing what any honorable man would, dons a parka and disappears to Alaska to find a yew tree, which he thinks has healing properties. By the time he re-enters, carrying an entire tree, Ana has died as the result of laughter induced by Mathilde's perfect joke.

The play is pretty smart. Characters that may have seemed fresher four years ago when The Clean House premiered at the Yale Repertory Theatre could come off as flat and stereotypical, but the way they are manipulated by the actors makes them meta-aware of the play's symbolism. For example, in the "what-do-you-have-that-I-don't" conversation with Ana, Lane exasperates, "You have a balcony!" - a balcony being the setting for Ana's carefree, giddy life with Charles. This production was played in the round with a crisp and imaginative set by Michael Raiford

Though Dave Steakley's direction worked well during comic scenes, heated discussions between Lane and Virginia seemed overwrought and abrasive. It bothered me that Chisholm could not convincingly hold and drink from a coffee cup, although her costume, a frumpy getup straight out of a Swiffer commercial, was perfect for Virginia (costumes by Susan Branch Towne). I questioned the casting: Lauren Lane seemed to play Lane older that the script suggested, and Kaplan and Green had playfulness, but not sensuality as the lovers Charles and Ana. However, Mathilde was played superbly by the enchanting Ciceu; she was wonderfully funny, fresh, and eager. I kind of wanted to take her home too. With a friend like her, who needs a cleaning lady?

Written by: Jonelle Seitz, July 28th 2008