Favorite Bastard Poets & Ladysplaining
This morning (my favorite part of the day), I finished my last column for Letter for Home (this will run Monday, I think), and afterward, I started singing some nonsense song pausing midway through to clutch my chest and exclaim, “Damn, I miss _____.” The “_____” was one of my 6th graders from last year’s cohort. This kid was delightfully weird, and he was always making me laugh. I miss him.
My final column is a bit about grief, but mostly about love.
Just love. The kind we have the capacity to give and receive.
I quoted T.S. Eliot in my final column, because of-fucking-course I did, but here’s the thing: I love his work. If there is a cure for Modernist Lit, I don’t want it. In the column, I refer to Eliot as a Favorite Bastard Poet. Do you have a Favorite Bastard Poet, reader? Honestly, if you fell in love with any of the poets they teach you in most high schools, then you fell in love with a Bastard Poet.
What a struggle it’s been, all these years — as a lover of music, performance, comedy, literature — to make sense of the discrepancy between the creator and the beautiful creations.
As an educator, I have my line in the sand. There are writers I simply will not teach because 1) their work makes me & my students complicit in their grossness and/or 2) there is absolutely no reason to revere X poet/playwright/novelist when there is y poet/playwright/novelist who deals with the subject matter with greater precision, truer truth.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, as God as my witness, I will never teach the poetry of Robert Frost when we are surrounded by tremendous living American poets who can say what Frost said, and say it better. You want to know more about Bob Frost? Study American Lit in college.
I have many Favorite Bastard Poets, but Eliot is my Special Bastard Poet. I love his work. (If Frost is your favorite poet, fear not, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t a Bastard. Then again, he’s never piqued my interest enough to find out whether or not he’s a “bastard.” The idea of reading biographical information about Robert Frost sounds less exciting to me than watching bread go stale.
What do I mean by “Bastard”? I mean a shit human. Likely misogynist. Likely racist. Likely an arrogant asshole. Not good company. That’s what I mean.
Which brings me to “Ladysplaining.”
Everyone knows about “Mansplaining,” most of us women have been victims of mansplaining (once, I was the victim of a drive-by mansplain at a school event).
“Ladysplaining” is a thing I do, and many of my fellow Ladies Who Write on the Internet also do, but I’m just talking about myself now.
I Ladysplain on this blog constantly because I need to make it abundantly clear to my reader that I have, in fact, considered the nuances of what I’m discussing publicly. I anticipate all these voices (mostly male — sorry, but it’s true), saying “but don’t you actually mean . . .?”
The story of Women’s History is this: I meant what I meant, fucker.
So I’ve learned to get ahead of the questions by Ladysplaining so my reader, my listener, my student understands that I — a female human being with at least half a brain — have already considered the many subtleties of my subject matter. I don’t want to do this anymore. This is tedious.
So, as far as this blog goes, I shall endeavor to enumerate a number of questions I sometimes get (often from men) with regard to what I write here:
Q: Don’t you actually mean?
A: No. I don’t “actually mean” something else.
Q: Have you ever thought about?
A: Yes. I have thought about it. Extensively.
Q: But not all _____.
A: Stop. Go away. You miss my point entirely.
So I Ladysplain in anticipation of the inevitable reader who will stumble upon my thoughts and mistake me for some kid with a blog.
I’m a grown ass woman.
I’ve been studying literature and language for decades.
Plural.
I have been a classroom educator for nearly twenty years.
(Fucking hell. That is shocking to put to print.
Not because it reminds me of my age
— I am fine with being 45, it is a fucking gift —
but because it reminds me how quickly time passes.
Breathtaking.) And beyond the years of experience, beyond
the degrees, the accolades, the publications, is this
capital-fucking-T-intended Truth:
I am a student of life. I am awake.
I am learning more and more every day.
I am dangerous now in the best possible way.
All this to say, from this point forward, I will not be Ladysplaining
on this blog. Just trust that I know what I’m talking about. Unless we’re dealing with geography. If we’re talking geography, don’t believe a word that comes out of my mouth. I once told a roomful of college freshman that the location of Columbia was a “mystery to all.” (I was joking then, but I really didn’t know how to find Columbia on a map while “on the spot” in front of students.)
I would like to return to my love of Bastard Poets like T.S. Eliot.
Why do I think he’s a bastard? The reasons are manifold, but can be neatly summarized in two words: Ezra Pound.
I don’t care how “amazing” Pound’s poetry may be, the man was a fucking nazi. Not a “neo-nazi” but like an actual American supporter of the Nazis in Germany. If you keep friends with nazis, of any stripe, you are such a total bastard.
But the work of Modernist poets, like Eliot? Sublime in his ability to put words to the aching horror brought upon us and the aching horror we bring upon ourselves and others. And I like the layers. Maybe I just like layers, damnit.
Maybe the Brit in me, the Mary Berry part of my persona, just fucking likes layers: in cake, clothing, and poetry.
Yesterday, reader, I felt very afraid.
I don’t know why.
But today I am 140 days sober, & feeling more hopeful than I felt yesterday when everything felt wrong. Do you ever have those days? “Wrong days”?
Days where you feel wrong — in body, mind, spirit?
I felt wrong in mind and spirit.
My body, oddly enough, feels just fine.
Weirdly, I haven’t felt terribly ill since I left Flagstaff.
I get the Ibrance flu, but beyond that . . .? Not to tempt fate, but . . .
I feel pretty fucking good (physically, that is).
Today I feel good. Today is teasing us with the strong possibility for monsoon rains. Today I will have lunch with a new friend. Today I will soak up every second of my last Friday before the start of the school year.
Also, this song is stuck in my head on repeat and while it’s not a bad song to have stuck in one’s head, it leaves me curious as to why so many songs in the 90s were about marijuana. Wasn’t marijuana invented in the 1960's? I guess there’s a lot of music from the 60s about weed, but none as spectacular as this (Kim Gordon is up there for me with “sexiest female vocalists ever” — just listen to that hot voice.)
