women’s poetry

Kalliope and the Communities of Women’s Poetry

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Kalliope 10th Anniversary Issue

Shelley famously declared that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” I find that women poets are often community organizers in the literary world. The collective that formed Kalliope (1978-2005), an internationally acknowledged journal of women’s literature and art, has ties to my local community of North Central Florida. The journal was published at Florida Community College at Jacksonville (FCCJ), and long-serving editor Mary Sue Koeppel’s papers are housed here at UF. Appearing in its pages were emergent writers alongside such established figures as Maxine Kumin, Denise Levertov, Joy Harjo, and Naomi Shihab Nye. Kalliope also interviewed Margaret Atwood, Gwendolyn Brooks, June Jordan, Iris Murdoch, and Alice Walker. Koeppel explains that these women’s insights to the writing process “might serve as models or inspirations for others” (1). In addition, the journal published translations of Colette and Marina Tsvetaeva.

Reproductions of women’s photography, paintings, sculpture, and woodcuts also filled the journal’s glossy pages, shaping what I call the image-text of women’s poetry studies (2). As we see from this page pairing in the 25th Anniversary issue–a poem by Marge Piercy and a bronze sculpture by Sarah Haviland—Kalliope’s layout reminds us that visual culture offers more dynamic contexts for women’s writing than the nudes and Madonnas of art history. Piercy, Kumin, and Harjo were key Muses for the Kalliope collective, supporting the journal and its community projects. Harjo also inspired the journal’s volume of poems geared toward children, Lollipops Lizards & Literature (1994).

Page Layout from Kalliope journal

statue of the Muse KalliopeThe journal’s namesake, Kalliope (also Calliope), was the ancient Greeks’ Muse of epic poetry–traditionally the most elevated mode of Western poetry since Homer. Founding editor Peggy Friedmann explained the Kalliope collective’s epic task in her introduction to the Tenth Anniversary Issue, noting the great difficulty women writers had getting their work published in the reigning literary journals of the late 1970s. (The journal received 8070 literary submissions in 2001.) The journal’s namesake also appeared in the quote from Anne Bradstreet printed in each issue. It begins “I am obnoxious to each carping tongue / Who says my hand a needle better fits,” and ends with these lines:

But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild
Else of our sex, why feigned they those nine
And poesy made Calliope’s own child…

Along with Calyx (founded in 1976), Kalliope offered women new opportunities to get their work into print, drawing submissions from around the world. Friedman noted that by 1988 women writers’ “epic journey” was “not over, certainly, but the road is becoming a little smoother” (3). In our own cultural moment of The VIDA count, we can say that the journey of women’s writing is ongoing. Like VIDA, headed by Cate Marvin and Erin Belieu, Kalliope began with women poets’ vital work as community organizers. As Koeppel explained to me recently, “the inability of the world to support women made us choose ourselves for this mission” (4). As Muses and organizers, questioners and questers, women poets acknowledge the need for more legislators in a more diverse literary world. –MB

(1) Mary Sue Koeppel, “Kalliope at 20: A Brief History,” 20.3, 1998.
(2) See the closing Manifesto to Women’s Poetry and Popular Culture, 2013.
(3) Peggy Friedmann, “Kalliope: The First Ten Years” 10.3, 1988.
(4) Interview, July 2014.

 

 

From Siouxsie Sioux to Suzie Bonebreaker: Femininity on the Edge

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Last night I got to Talk-Back with other edgy women at the Hippodrome Theatre in downtown Gainesville. The event: a post-screening panel discussion on Gender, Feminism & Pop Culture: Riot Grrrl & Beyond. The film: The Punk Singer, a documentary about Kathleen Hanna and her high-energy bands (Bikini Kill and Le Tigre). PunkTalkBack at The HippHere I am with my co-panelists Trysh Travis and Hazel Levy. Riffing on my recent courses, I kicked off with these talking points about subcultures, punk women, and poetry:

  • Dick Hebdige parses punk as “resistance through style,” reminding us that subcultures inhabit subterranean spaces, an Underworld. We pit punk expression against the mainstream. Underground is an edgier space than alternative.
  • But what happens when punk and other subcultures gain followers and publicity? Hebdige calls it media recuperation: mainstreaming subcultures by making them look “both more and less exotic than they actually are…dangerous aliens and boisterous kids” (Subculture 97).
  • Siouxsie Sioux later complained that the media had “distorted” punk, turning it into “cartoons.” Kathleen Hanna’s power lyrics and girlish sexuality got her noticed, but also got her labeled as wayward girl/girl victim. Bratmobile rocked the riot grrrls, but Bratz dolls followed in their wake.
    Siouxsie Sioux
    Siouxsie Sioux
  • Must the mainstream domesticate punk expression? Does the safety pin always return to the nursery? Did Kathleen Hanna poach-proof her punk?
  • Where do we find the inheritors of punk women and riot grrrls now? I located two sites: poetry on the page/stage, and poetry-in-motion.
  • Poetry has always been part of punk. Baudelaire was a male Muse for the young Patti Smith. After all, he wrote the book on lust, disgust, piss, vomit, and urban edginess. Kathleen Hanna credits Kathy Acker as the Muse who beckoned her to exit the spoken word scene and be in a band.
  • I find punk expression in the “new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics” that poet Arielle Greenberg named the Gurlesque. (She came of age in riot grrrl culture.) Case in point: Brenda Shaughnessy’s slap-down of romantic love poems, “I’m Over the Moon.” Hey diddle diddle, Shaughnessy is not moon-struck because “It’s like having a bad boyfriend in a good band.” This poem appears in the Gurlesque anthology.
  • Finally, I see the poetics of punk femininity in roller derby–and here is where Gainesville Roller Rebels jammer Suzie Bonebreaker comes in. Talk about resistance through style: derby girls can have push-up bras & elbow pads, fishnets & tats, ruffled panties and roughhousing. Suzie Bonebreaker’s fave color is Sparkles!, and one of her signature moves is The Johnny Crash. I doubt that this derby girl can be Bratzed. After all, she’s already taken down Suzy Homemaker.  –MB
    SuzieBonebreaker
    Suzie Bonebreaker

Revisiting Plath and Her Cultural Afterlife at 50

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ElizabethWinderMB2This academic year I offered fall courses to coincide with the 50th anniversary of Sylvia Plath’s death and her novel, The Bell Jar. (My last Plath course coincided with the U.S. publication of Unabridged Journals, an experience I wrote about in an article for the journal Pedagogy.) In “Sylvia Plath and Her Cultural Afterlife,” students explored her poems, fiction, and journals in conjunction with her media image, including Christine Jeffs’s film Sylvia (in which a pre-Bond Daniel Craig plays Ted Hughes). The web gave us ready access to ongoing critical and popular conversations about Plath, especially the online journal Plath Profiles and Sylvia Plath Info Blog.

A highlight was our October visit from Elizabeth Winder, author of the most poetic book about Plath this anniversary year—Pain, Parties, Work. My students were drawn to the book’s artful reconstructions of Plath’s material world of fashion and femininity in the summer of 1953, the year of her Mademoiselle internship. Afterward, Elizabeth and I discussed our sense that the current generation of college students may very well be Plath’s ideal readers. Their understanding of sexuality and gender identity often yields a Plath more contemporary than conflicted, more mainstream than extreme. The men defended her from sensation journalism as ardently as the women did. And the women saw the collegiate Plath as someone like them. Teaching an entire course on Plath brings a level of intensity to the classroom that most subjects just don’t. It also fuels students’ creativity. Plath proves a most powerful Muse, disquieting as that may be. –MB