Gossamer Depictions..Blevins’ Rant Behind The Gossamer

I did several double takes on “Poem for My Daughter Disparaging the Gossamer Depictions of the Women of Certain Southern Texts”, by Adrian Blevins and my last impression, to sum up the previous ones, is that this poem is essentially a feminest rant using the narrator’s present and ‘journey’ (I hate that cliché) back into her past to justify what is, what shouldn’t have been, what was..and as a result of many of the personal, psychological and stereotypical observations in this poem, are caveats for her daughter.

I am not averse to rants or feminism, but I am averse to one dimesnional depictions of the various ‘types’ and ‘situations’ that taken together, are adjudged to conspire to limit, demean and prevent woman/women from being ..’all they can be,’ (another cliché)..and in this demeaning of women/woman, I also see a demeanng of the ‘demeaners.’ Bevins’ poem is a one note Charlie of cautioning laments and social diatribe.

One cannot help noticing that the ups and downs of this poem, tidied and untidied..loosened and not quite lifted are in her ongoing metaphors of a woman’s hairnet and hair. At least a do-rag didn’t enter into this evoko feminist hair-sweeping panorama of place, time. sex and an Agnes De Mille choreography of folk characters in action..if only!

Blevins implies in the title of her poem that we will be getting a spoof of some kind, a riff of ‘Certain Southern Texts.” ..But as her poem progresses, Blevins is no longer riffing..She is grooving in her testimony to Southern discomforts. She begins with a feminist style universal cliché grab bag:

“Since it's true the women not only of the South but probably all over dole out iced tea in books while they slowly thrust off their blue panties and do things in the kitchen with pasta and herbs and nuts and oils while removing their hair from nets”
...likened to those in the boats of fishermen"

Was that a touch of Ezra Pound?

“in aprons near the clothesline .. and in gardens with their hair all up but coming down while humming low-slung tunes
I feel I ought to walk around the neighborhood
with babies in slings talking home remedies. Oh August and Everyone: since the girls are always in some mode of surrender:”

Tsk, tsk..are these girls Southern breeders?

I can see Hip-Hop pants..low slung, coming down here as Southern women hum hopefully, their hair up again in anticipation..And . Oh! We have a touch of Hip-Hop or ethnic vernacular..similar to the ‘white’ nuceler,’ she writes:

“by the warring sounds in words like truck and ax”

Then Blevins segues into the thrust of her poem. She stops the nasty generalist riffing and moves in ‘her South.’ Which is:

“in the blue series of hills I-swear-to-God called Arcadia where we used to camp sometimes and where I threw up my first Southern Comfort while a series of boys
tried to get me to live with them... because despite being illiterate they wanted the combination of Ruby and Ada in Cold Mountain.”

Poor bastards..Illiterate though they were, they dared to dream of women with a kind of longing for local class.

“because in addition to the glistening they wanted the ginseng and the pigs because they wanted a girl”

(More money in ginseng than in moonshine) What is it about the pigs?
Ah!
“and salt and store and trade the products of the barns and the fields”

Here we go again:

“with their hair all up but coming down against dresses also nimbly-rainy and blue panties that exist in order to be eliminated”

And..Where is W.B.Yeats when one needs him? He is comfortably situated with his masterpiece “Prayer for my Daughter,” that no doubt here..Blevins has read, and read again but not made her own. This becomes more obvious when Blevins cannot resist a blatant touch of Yeats when she writes the lines: “Turning and turning..” straight out of Yeats poem, as in “The Second Coming:”

"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,"

I guess she couldn’t get Yeats out of her hair..or the narrator’s daughter’s hair.. Or that repetitive gyre. Blevins:
“so you might remember me as forthright and honest..
and turning and turning now?..
to a depiction of the seeing eye unwrapped and the unbeautiful mouth
I am for the sake of the truth and for the sake of your future self..”
and for your brothers too turning now to a depiction of women..

Here comes the Goddess:

“spectacularly unbolted for I am talking witchcraft here!
because I am versus the folklore though I know it's tender.."

Here comes the inevitable (buzz word) ‘Patriarchy’ to follow the ‘Goddess:'

“and therefore versus the fathers
who never once laid themselves down
in what they'd call the tall reed grasses to conjure you up
out of a yawning lode of shadow and plasma to carry for you”

Ye Old Patriarch is old Hades in the shadow.. He ain’t no Ceres.. (like the narrator) to her daughter. Maybe this poem should have been called ‘Caveats for Persephone' at this point of the narrative. The poem ends with a homily to the burden of a Mother’s obligation with a dash of old time religion:

“and for your brothers and for all I know for the Lord
the old burden although it is a splendor
and the hindrance and the weight.”

Rita Dove, where are you when we need you! Yeats has left his trail of golden seeds and ever blooming flowers..and you Rita Dove: Please grace American poetry with more of your authentic voice, the breath of your compassion and seeing beyond cliché and stereotypes. Please leave a sprig of your immortal ‘Parsley’ here so that we may remember what a poem can be made of.
A

I am not averse to rants or feminism, but I am averse to one dimensional depictions of the various ‘types’ and ‘situations’ that taken together, are adjudged to conspire to limit, demean and prevent woman/women from being ..’all they can be,’ (another cliché)..

I guess I am more willing than you to accept Blevins' depictions since the narrator says she herself has been in the situation she describes. ("look, I guess I've done it.." -- "fritter and waste") Plus, she's the one who fell for the James Wright poem ("twilight bounds softly on the grass").

and in this demeaning of women/woman, I also see a demeanng of the ‘demeaners.’ Bevins’ poem is a one note Charlie of cautioning laments and social diatribe.

In her last stanza, I see the narrator/poet/mother as exulting women with her references to being able to create life and to the Lord, and her use of the word "splendor." If anyone was demeaning women, I think it was her daughter and sons, who are "turning to a depiction of women / as arid and heady and defiant an uncouth." In other words, in their modern desire to be something other than "genteel," they might be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Her use of "turning and turning" is, I think, wordplay, rather than a reference to Yeats. She says to her daughter that she is saying this "so that you might remember me as forthright and honest / and turning...." Then she switches gears and says, "and turning now / to a depiction of the seeing eye..." In other words, each "turning" is a different part of speech.

Nor do I necessarily think she is exulting the Goddess at the expense of the Patriarchy, since men are a necessary part of getting pregnant. It's just that men aren't the ones who give birth ("conjure you up") nor can/do they ultimately take care of kids (4th stanza).

At the end of your post, are you, perhaps, referring to Dove's poems titled "Adolescence," rather than the "Parsley" poems, which are about Dictator Trujillo of the Dominican Republic?

MaryAnn..

I didn’t mention ‘Parsley’ as having anything to do with Blevins’ poem. I just wanted to
mention a Dove poem with the kind of grit that would sand Blevins’ poem away from my mind. I wasn't tying a bow between the two poems.

I top posted Yeats’ Prayer for my Daughter,’ because in it, he leaves,. gives no legacy of hate for his daughter, and that is what Blevins’ poem IS all about..A legacy of limited, tunnel vision without emotional dimension. In effect, a rant dressed up to indoctrinate ‘a daughter’ into the mother’s social vision...and mea culpa self pity.

Control through perpetrating a ‘long suffering’ bond between a parent and child disguised as ‘advice,’ spiced up with the parent’s denigration of her own roots is nothing new as a family M.O. but here, Blevins' is giving this to us in a poem, and I have to say no thank you to the poet and the poem.
A

Well, we both agree Blevins is no Yeats.

But I think Blevins is examing the various aspects of a woman's sexuality -- something I don't think Yeats dealt with so explicitly in his own poem.

I also like Blevins' clever wordplay throughout her poem. I wonder if her verbose style is a not-so-subtle reference to the extended sentences of Southern writers like Faulkner and O'Connor.....

MA

MaryAnn..

You must be kidding! To think of Blevins having anything in common with the writers you cite is like saying the sequel to ‘Gone With the Wind’ was a great book. Verbosity and intelligence
don’t always beat to the same drum though nowadays, filler is often confused with the thinking process.

What knowledge of women’s sexuality (or male’s) comes through in this poem and probably elsewhere in her work, is so surface and shallow that a tadpole could drown between her parentheses.
A

GOD - I love that description. Best laugh I have had all day.

LOL

d;-)

I think her "wordiness" is quite appropriate to the lazy, layback environment that she is trying to portray. It bothered me at first, until I got into the poem a bit. And then it had a "dreamy" quality about it which suited the picture she was painting.

d;-)

Thank God you saw it Denny..I can't always count on MaryAnn. I made myself laugh too!
A

Good Lord, Artemesia, I certainly didn't compare Blevins with Faulkner or O'Connor. What I did do is speculate about her style, wondering aloud if it was a reference to the styles of Faulkner or O'Connor, since her poem is about "certain Southern Texts."

MaryAnn..

The word ‘certain’ in Southern Texts didn’t resound to me of any writer in any sense that you mentioned. The closest candidate could be Erskine Caldwell and his ‘God’s Little Acre;’ although without the humor and satiric brush. It would be the caricatures, stereotyping and juvenile sex in his novel against the dismal setting of wishful pie in the sky thinking run amok!
A

Excellent critique Artemesia!

But what really got me was when you said later on ...
"a tadpole could drown between her parentheses."
((( LOL ))) that is priceless! ((( LOL )))

~ Galatea

denny:

GOD - I love that description. Best laugh I have had all day.

LOL

d;-)

I loved it too! Angel thought my "filibuster" line scathing, but in my opinion you've easily topped it with this one.

wr ()()

MaryAnn

Nor do I necessarily think she is exulting the Goddess at the expense of the Patriarchy, since men are a necessary part of getting pregnant. It's just that men aren't the ones who give birth ("conjure you up") nor can/do they ultimately take care of kids (4th stanza).

To me, the above hits the crux of Blevins' core of the poem. I see her not as the feminist, but the realist. She's imploring and cajoling a daughter to understand that regardless of passion, intent or poetic condescension; she can get pregnant. That meaning the daughter will then have another life to be responsible for, let alone the man she thought to have as her own.

This last tidbit being a cliche' of the man as child to the wife.

Regardless of Blevins' overall intent the pregnancy is just intent to rant about the heathen male, the neanderthal propensity for possessing women's bodies, etc....

Regards,

RyckNelson

"Nor do I necessarily think she is exulting the Goddess at the expense of the Patriarchy, since men are a necessary part of getting pregnant. It's just that men aren't the ones who give birth ("conjure you up") nor can/do they ultimately take care of kids (4th stanza)."

My first time back, for months, I seet the new format still hasn't a recall to edit, but a delete (cut-paste) option.

But, instead of that, I am now seeing what will nest a response within the thread. That is, will this "quick reply" show as a response to MaryAnn as I originally intended?

Regards

RyckNelson

Hey, Ryck -- long time, no see. Hope you continue to post on the PoemsFray.

Mary Ann