what's good : audacity
A few cases for doing what pleases you
In poetry: I found this poem by Elizabeth Alexander only a few years ago, when I was already in my fifties [aka Old + Tired1] and took it as a wry look at one’s life choices. Wry because in the opening stanza, our narrator mentions a variety of actions that are certainly self-serving, possibly tinged with self-loathing (“rub my curdy/belly”) but also a undoubtedly freeing. Who doesn’t relish napping until our “…face is creased and swollen,/…lips are dry and hot”? And eating whatever we please, wearing pajamas all day, writing free form poetry. Then the stanza about her childhood intrudes with things that are lauded as right & noble amongst adults (“…only industry…”; “Line up your summer/job months in advance.”). Yet, they’re recited with a voice that feels unconvinced, suspicious, disdainful. Alexander was still relatively young (in her thirties) when she wrote this, so it could simply be her expressing rebellion against those stifling expectations while lamenting the need to live up to them. At that time, she was not yet a mother but almost a wife. Bringing a poet’s biography too far into her work is tricky, but everything about us as humans gets reflected in our writing, even if we don’t know it right away. And, what [think] we meant can change as we grow. Alexander called this Blues - would she name it differently today, at 61?
At the end, our narrator tells of avoiding sleep to replay fearful [imagined?] stories but also hoped to dream of “poems in the shape of open/V’s of birds flying in formation,/or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.” It sounds, to this middle-aged woman, like someone who was relieved by her aging, ready to call her perceived laziness freedom instead.
When I went to grab a link for this poem, I also discovered a discussion forum from 2012 with vastly different perspectives on Alexander’s themes & intentions - please, feel free to read and comment with your thoughts.
Blues by Elizabeth Alexander I am lazy, the laziest girl in the world. I sleep during the day when I want to, 'til my face is creased and swollen, 'til my lips are dry and hot. I eat as I please: cookies and milk after lunch, butter and sour cream on my baked potato, foods that slothful people eat, that turn yellow and opaque beneath the skin. Sometimes come dinnertime Sunday I am still in my nightgown, the one with the lace trim listing because I have not mended it. Many days I do not exercise, only consider it, then rub my curdy belly and lie down. Even my poems are lazy. I use syllabics instead of iambs, prefer slant to the gong of full rhyme, write briefly while others go for pages. And yesterday, for example, I did not work at all! I got in my car and I drove to factory outlet stores, purchased stockings and panties and socks with my father's money. To think, in childhood I missed only one day of school per year. I went to ballet class four days a week at four-forty-five and on Saturdays, beginning always with plie, ending with curtsy. To think, I knew only industry, the industry of my race and of immigrants, the radio tuned always to the station that said, Line up your summer job months in advance. Work hard and do not shame your family, who worked hard to give you what you have. There is no sin but sloth. Burn to a wick and keep moving. I avoided sleep for years, up at night replaying evening news stories about nearby jailbreaks, fat people who ate fried chicken and woke up dead. In sleep I am looking for poems in the shape of open V's of birds flying in formation, or open arms saying, I forgive you, all.
In music (and bonus poem): Another Internet rabbit hole led to a different Elizabeth Alexander, interestingly born the same year as the poet, who composed music for a tiny poem by Langston Hughes called Advice. The choral arrangement linked here uses piano + a range of voices to create a marvelously rich experience with these 19 simple words.
Hughes was a terrifically layered, complicated man - most know him mainly for his deep, pointed poetry about being Black in America, though he was also a novelist, playwright, columnist, editor, and political activist. I adore this brief but powerful (audacious?) remark on how to live life properly, with “a little loving.”
In books: My glorious Tea and Vintage Book Club subscription from Bookishly delivered another unexpectedly fascinating old novel last month - Tea at Gunter’s by Pamela Haines. Its cover is one that I, never good at not judging a book this way, would have passed by with vigor; a grainy photo of a man & woman leaning toward each other, strangely somber, dressed for a bad dinner theater production maybe. But I was drawn in on page one by the first person narrator, Lucy, recalling her first visit, at 7-years old as England entered WWII, to a posh London restaurant [that I immediately looked up and was sad to find long closed]. She is excited but also nervous - her mother treats the occasion as equivalent to an audience with the Royal Family. We quickly discern that Lucy’s mother is unhappy with her husband, and possibly motherhood as well. She has been meeting her first love Gervase at Gunter’s annually for more than a decade, revisiting memories of their life together before he was gravely damaged by his service in WWI. As Lucy grows into a young woman, these visits to Gunter’s and her mother’s obsession with the past shape her own perceptions & desires and eventual choices.
Despite being written in 1974 and set in the post-WWII era around London, it feels smartly relevant to life today: unreasonable social constructs, now magnified by social media; devastating effects of war reaching through generations; struggles for body autonomy + the right (and means) to choose our own paths. Haines imbues every character, including the household cat, with at least a hint of audacity. The ending might make you want to slam the book down in agony as I nearly did, but I think that’s a sign of very good storytelling.
I just wish I could still get tea at Gunter’s someday.
Tired in general, yes, but mostly of playing games like people-pleasing and feeling guilty about anything not an actual crime; it’s a fair trade-off for aging, I think.
I enjoyed both poems. Thanks for sharing. In fact, I've written out Langston Hughes' "Advice" to post above my desk.