Post by ekswitaj on Aug 20, 2008 21:15:40 GMT 2
The Unnamed She: Writing and Living Within the Consequence of Being the “Second Sex" - Lois Roma-Deeley
One of the goals for my poetry is to challenge the contemporary poetic aesthetic. I want to push the borders and boundaries of what poetry is and can be. I want poetry to be "bigger." I believe poetry has the power to shape perceptions: that makes poetry a powerful force in the world. And it is a great responsibility for the poet.
However, I can not come to the page without the knowledge that I am–that my imagination is-- as Simone de Beauvoir first points in her seminal book which was published in the very year that I was born--The Second Sex. “...humanity is male,” writes de Beauvoir, “and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him....(xviii).
The question then becomes for me as a contemporary woman writer: “How does this ‘being the second state in all aspects of my life, influence my imagination?” Or, to put it more precisely, “Is there such a thing as the female imagination and, if so, how does that consequence of that state of being effect my imagination? And then, by logical progression, how does that consequence effect
my perceptions which create poetry? How does that consequence effect the reception of my work?
Never were these questions more tested then in the critical response to my newest collection of poems, northSight.
The woman critics who read and wrote about my work had a clear understanding that the “voices” of these poems were speaking from that marginalized place to which the female persona–both in style and content–is so often regulated. And these feminist critics praised by my poems for putting first the voices of contemporary women and thereby “breaking the silences” of which Tillie Oslen has so famously written.
However, my male critics–who also highly praised by work–seemed confused by one small issue in the collection. “Who was,” many of them asked over and over again–in person and in print–this “unnamed She” of whom I was writing. “Who was She? Why would I not name her?”
Yet in several poems in northSight, there is are specific “guides” as to who is this “unnamed She.”
For example, the very title of the poem “The Women I Knew,” first published in the American Book Award-winning anthology Looking for Home, not only explores explore how gender as it intersects issues of class and race but offers the poem suggest that role models for authentic womanhood .
In northSight, the poems not only chronicles my grandmother’s plight but also examines the larger forces that shape attitudes about women and poverty as well as ethnicity. Indeed, in northSight, many of the poems deal with the lens through which society sees women and how those perceptions are often internalized by women themselves.
Clearly, the trio of poems in northSight titled "Explicit," "Implicit" and "Complicit" illustrate this point. In the first poem, gender perceptions have turned negative and are internalized by the female subject of the poem. In "Implicit," gender perceptions have turned into gender prescriptions. And, by the time the reader has reached "Complicit," the reader is a character in the poem itself—that is, has become complicit in reinforcing the assumptions made about women in society.
Turning to the poem "Apologizing for the Rain," in what ways does the speaker accept—and then reject—society's prescriptions of womanhood and the strength it takes to define oneself on one's own terms? At what point in the poem does the stance of the speaker “turn” from one of passivity to one of assertiveness?
However, I must confess, I do not consider my "Obligatory Sex" poem in northSight to be a poem "about" morality or immorality. It is not a poem "about" sex and/or sexuality. It is, for me, a poem "about" something much more powerful. It is, for me, is a poem about imagination and perception.
For example, in the poem "Obligatory Sex,” stanza #1 there is nothing but verbs, stanza #2 uses all nouns, stanza #3 employs adverbs, stanza #4 returns to the use of nouns (here, all placed-based nouns), and lastly, stanza #5 is filled with all prepositions. This poem is meant to challenge our perceptions of sex and sexuality. The reader's imagination "fills in the gaps" of the "plot" of the poem as he or she make the imaginative connections between and among the various parts of grammar. The form of the poem is really an "exo-skeleton,” the form and meaning being created by the prose form, white space and use of the virgule. (/////////)
The making of a poem, a poem's content and its ultimate "meaning" are often--for poet and reader-- separate entities and end up being greater than the sum of their parts. These elements can conspire to create a poem which is the summation of happy coincidences. The writing of "Obligatory Sex " happened something like this.
While working on northsight, I had a sabbatical year in which I read well over 50-75 books of contemporary poetry. As I am particularly interested in poetry written by contemporary women poets, I had quite a collection sitting on my shelves. The stack of poetry books was so large that I decided to organize them--and then read them--in alphabetical order. Every morning--when my eyesight is at its best--I took a book down from the shelf and read until I finished it. Then, somewhere between the poets whose names began with "D" and those whose names begin with "H," I began to see at least one pattern emerge.
Every one of these books had a poem about sex.
No matter the subject of the collection, there always seemed to be a poem about sex. Indeed, no volume seemed complete unless it included an obligatory sex poem.
Suddenly I realized--and forgive my pun here--my body of work decidedly did not include such a poem. Not a one.
And I wanted such a poem!
Was I not--I reasoned--a contemporary woman poet too? Should I not have such a poem to prove my worth as a woman and as a poet? Was I not daring and gritty too?
At that time, I had also been reading various experimental poetry. Those works which included lots of )))))))))))))))))) and :::::::::::::: and ;;;;;;;;;; aNd interESTing uSE of PunCTuATION to mitigate the flow of form and content. To challenge the reader.
It was then I decided that I too would write my obligatory sex poem AND play with the use of lang-uage.
First, I devised rules for doing so. I would avoid any vulgarities, as that would be "cheating"--certain words and phrases command immediate, thoughtless, reactions. To my mind, vulgarities take the reader out of the poem. I wanted my reader to participate in the making of my poem not in creating his or her own overreactions.
I saw the "Obligatory Sex " poem as a word/imagination puzzle--a game of ideas whose sole object was to allow the reader to connect the dots and arrive at his or her own conclusions.
Then, mid-way through the writing of this poem, I ran out of words!
After all---and perhaps this is no excuse but here it is anyway--I was brought up in a conservative Italian-American home. Language of this nature was not used, ever. And, in my grown-up personal life, I tend to be shy about such things. It appears I am bereft of a certain kind of street education which some might feel hinders me poetically.
Yet, as I was writing this poem, there on my shelf-- somewhere between The Complete Rhyming Dictionary and A Dictionary of Symbols --was the book Our Bodies, Our Selves. And in this book, which is intended to inform and educate women --in a medical way--about their bodies, I found more than enough words for male and female body parts. Now I could continue and finish my poem!
I had great fun writing this poem. However, after publication of the collection I was--I am-- surprised--and often embarrassed--when the others see this poem in purely sexual terms.
Yet it proves my mother was right when she said: "Sex is in the mind."
Reader’s Guide for northSight
Lois Roma-Deeley’s second collection of poems
1) Theme
How would you describe “the road” metaphor that opens this book? Where does it lead? Where is it going?
Who are the “traveling companions” on this road?
In what ways is this book mystical? Can you cite specific poems which support this point of view?
Critic Barbara Crooker in her review of northSight writes: "These are indeed words for our time, words to travel by." Do you agree or disagree? Why?
How does each section–which has an epigraph, lines from Lisel Mueller, Denise Levertov, Patricia Hampl, or Robinson Jeffers–become a "blueprint" for each part? How do the sections relate to the theme(s) of the book?
2) Ethnicity/Race
Lois Roma-Deeley is the grandchild of Italian immigrants. Both sets of grandparents arrived in America by boat—from Rome (paternal) and Sicily (maternal). Frances Masucci, Roma-Deeley’s maternal grandmother, was beaten by her father for wanting to learn to read and write–English or Italian. As a consequence, her grandmother was illiterate all her life.
Her poem “The Women I Knew,” first published in the American Book Award-winning anthology Looking for Home, is now part of her newest poetry collection, northSight. How does that particular poem explore gender as it intersects with issues of class? issues of race?
In what ways does the poem suggest that gender sometimes supersedes issues of race? Does the poem suggest that role models for authentic womanhood were found in the "sighs" of the Black girls? Please explain.
3) Gender
Roma-Deeley not only chronicles her grandmother’s plight but also examines the larger forces that shape attitudes about women and poverty as well as ethnicity. Indeed, in northSight, many of the poems deal with the lens through which society sees women and how those perceptions are often internalized by women themselves.
Clearly, the trio of poems in northSight titled "Explicit," "Implicit" and "Complicit" illustrate this point. In the first poem, gender perceptions have turned negative and are internalized by the female subject of the poem. In "Implicit," gender perceptions have turned into gender prescriptions. And, by the time the reader has reached "Complicit," the reader is a character in the poem itself—that is, has become complicit in reinforcing the assumptions made about women in society.
Turning to the poem "Apologizing for the Rain," in what ways does the speaker accept—and then reject—society's prescriptions of womanhood and the strength it takes to define oneself on one's own terms? At what point in the poem does the stance of the speaker “turn” from one of passivity to one of assertiveness?
4) Class
In northSight, there are poems which deal with the consequences of being sick in America—having cancer and no health insurance. Still other poems deal with the struggles of the working poor. How are the poems "Throwing a Chair Through the Hospital Window" and "Like Bullets Not Rain," by turns, arias of helplessness and despair as well as courage and dignity?
Are there other poems which center on issues of class? If so, what are they and why would you classify them as poems about class?
5) Form and Content
The poems in northSight can barely contain themselves on the page. There is a banquet of styles which serve to unify form and theme. For example, "Christina's Pilgrim State" is a formal poem (a sestina), while "Apologizing for the Rain" is a prose poem which employs experimental techniques.
Moreover, in “Obligatory Sex,” stanza #1 is nothing but verbs, stanza #2 uses all nouns, stanza #3 employs adverbs, stanza #4 returns to the use of nouns (here, all placed-based nouns), and lastly, stanza #5 is filled with all prepositions. How does the form of this poem extend the meaning of its content?
What other examples of poems can you find which use form as a way of expanding meaning?
6) Poetic Aesthetic
Roma-Deeley says, "One of the goals for my poetry is to challenge the contemporary poetic aesthetic. I want to push the borders and boundaries of what poetry is and can be. I want poetry to be 'bigger.' I believe poetry has the power to shape perceptions: that makes poetry a powerful force in the world. And it is a great responsibility for the poet."
Of Rules of Hunger, critic Peter Huggins writes in Phi Kappa Phi Forum,
"In reading Lois Roma-Deeley's first book of poems, Rules of Hunger, I am struck by the careful precision of her observations. Roma-Deeley marshals these observations in the service of a threshold experience: that moment when you put your hand on the door and then, taking the risk, you push through into the unknown. The poems in Rules of Hunger take us through, and we go willingly."
How would you define a “threshold experience?” In what ways does the entire structure of northSight mimic a “threshold experience?” specific poems?
**********************************************************************************************************************
Rules for the Journey:
Serendipity and The Sympathetic Imagination
My first collection of poems, Rules of Hunger (Star Cloud Press, 2003,
paper, $12.95) was not my first completed manuscript though it is my
first published book. However, the writing of this book could be said to
be the result of my own personal journey to and from "the self."
Further, it is a journey toward, away from and then back again toward
poetic form, themes and personal, gendered, history.
Poetic form has long been an obsession with me. I studied form with
Alberto Rios when I was pursuing my MFA degree in the late 1980's. In
that class, I learned, first hand, about the "magic" that can happen if a
poet allows the form to take hold of the "sympathetic imagination." When
speaking of poetic imagination and theory, one must refer to John Ruskin
(born 1819) who wrote extensively on the subject. According to noted
scholar George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History at Brown
University, who writes
... Ruskin believes in a visual imagination. Although Ruskin's ideas of
the imagination were heavily influenced by the writings of British moral
philosophers, such as Dugald Stewart and Sydney Smith, who described the
imagination as working with sympathies and emotional states, Ruskin
believes that the imagination works with images. In The Two Paths (1859)
Ruskin describes the visual nature of the imagination: "We all have a
general and sufficient idea of imagination, and of its work with our
hands and in our hearts: we understand it, I suppose, as the imaging or
picturing of new things in our thoughts" (16.347). In an 1883 note to the
second volume of Modern Painters, which contains his longer discussions
of the various aspects of imagination, he stated: "I meant, and always do
mean by it, primarily, the power of seeing anything we describe as if it
were real" (4.226n).
[http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/atheories/1.4.html]
For me, the study of form--a poetic technique which I, at first, rebelled
against with much wailing and gnashing of teeth--was a real turning point
in my creative life. I struggled mightily with the various techniques we
graduate students were required to study and use in our own work.
Moreover, when Professor Rios held up The New Book of Forms by Lewis
Turco and said to the class something like This is one of the best books
you will ever need on this subject--I could hardly imagine my future
would include not only that book but Professor Turco, himself.
I learned from working with form (and using Professor Turco's book) that,
as Ruskin said, "the power of seeing anything we describe as if it were
real" could be enhanced by using form. In essence, I learned my
imagination could surprise me by creating pictures and images that I did
not know existed in my mind. This was a powerful lesson I took to the
writing of Rules of Hunger.
Moreover, during the first stages of writing this book, I had attended a
writer's retreat in California. There, I listened to a lecture given by
Professor Brenda Hillman. Her work is noted for its cutting edge
experimentalism. Though intrigued, at the time I did not think her "take"
on contemporary poetic techniques would hold much value for me as a poet.
However, I could not get her work out of my mind. After the conference, I
read her work and read whatever critiques I could about her work. Still ,
I could not see how these new techniques would help me with my new
manuscript.
Then, through a series of poetic serendipitous events, I found myself
hosting Professor Lewis Turco at our campus. He was my college's first
Visiting Writer and Scholar. Professor Turco gave readings, conducted
workshops and was kind enough to allow me to interview him. It was that
interview--which was taped and is now lost due to technical
problems--which freed me to experiment with form in new and untried ways.
In Rules of Hunger, I decided to mix various metric patterns and
punctuation marks. These were some of what I had learned when studying
Turco and Hillman. I began to see that "new images"could be created by
mitigating cadences through punctuation marks as well as some other
literary devices.
Another poetic serendipitous event which contributed to the poetic themes
and personal history I decided to use in Rules of Hunger, came from a
simple remark made to me by my friend, the poet Jan Beatty. Though I had
taught many Women Studies classes at the graduate and undergraduate
levels, had sections of my Ph.D. dissertation devoted to women literary
theory and have written and published articles on the subject, somehow I
must have missed an obvious point when 'it' came to my own poetry.
In terms of form and themes, Jan Beatty's work may be viewed to be the
opposite of Lewis Turco's work. Yet, Jan's comment to me had the same
kind of effect that Lew's interview had had on me--it was another turning
point for my work. It was a chance for me to poetically open up and take
risks.
What Jan said to me is interesting in that the content of her comment was
something I knew intellectually but had failed to grasp emotionally.
She reminded me: "Women's stories are often thought to be uninteresting."
Once again, I felt free to take risks.
And so I began to write about "personal" stories and themes--which I
began to see that previously I had thought of as being uninteresting,
unimportant and unpoetic.
I began to write about my family, my father's cancer, my husband, my
youth. I wrote about being poor, lonely, depressed and desperate. I
wrote about food and love and about being an Italian-American woman. I
wrote about wanting to run away.. And I wrote about staying put.. I
wrote about the price one pays for holding onto dignity in a world that
would take it from you at each and every turn.
My second book, NorthSight, continues along these lines. It goes
deeper-- and, my early reviewer have said-- it is a book about hope--a
most "unpoetic" theme for the 21st century.
One of the goals for my poetry is to challenge the contemporary poetic aesthetic. I want to push the borders and boundaries of what poetry is and can be. I want poetry to be "bigger." I believe poetry has the power to shape perceptions: that makes poetry a powerful force in the world. And it is a great responsibility for the poet.
However, I can not come to the page without the knowledge that I am–that my imagination is-- as Simone de Beauvoir first points in her seminal book which was published in the very year that I was born--The Second Sex. “...humanity is male,” writes de Beauvoir, “and man defines woman not in herself but as relative to him....(xviii).
The question then becomes for me as a contemporary woman writer: “How does this ‘being the second state in all aspects of my life, influence my imagination?” Or, to put it more precisely, “Is there such a thing as the female imagination and, if so, how does that consequence of that state of being effect my imagination? And then, by logical progression, how does that consequence effect
my perceptions which create poetry? How does that consequence effect the reception of my work?
Never were these questions more tested then in the critical response to my newest collection of poems, northSight.
The woman critics who read and wrote about my work had a clear understanding that the “voices” of these poems were speaking from that marginalized place to which the female persona–both in style and content–is so often regulated. And these feminist critics praised by my poems for putting first the voices of contemporary women and thereby “breaking the silences” of which Tillie Oslen has so famously written.
However, my male critics–who also highly praised by work–seemed confused by one small issue in the collection. “Who was,” many of them asked over and over again–in person and in print–this “unnamed She” of whom I was writing. “Who was She? Why would I not name her?”
Yet in several poems in northSight, there is are specific “guides” as to who is this “unnamed She.”
For example, the very title of the poem “The Women I Knew,” first published in the American Book Award-winning anthology Looking for Home, not only explores explore how gender as it intersects issues of class and race but offers the poem suggest that role models for authentic womanhood .
In northSight, the poems not only chronicles my grandmother’s plight but also examines the larger forces that shape attitudes about women and poverty as well as ethnicity. Indeed, in northSight, many of the poems deal with the lens through which society sees women and how those perceptions are often internalized by women themselves.
Clearly, the trio of poems in northSight titled "Explicit," "Implicit" and "Complicit" illustrate this point. In the first poem, gender perceptions have turned negative and are internalized by the female subject of the poem. In "Implicit," gender perceptions have turned into gender prescriptions. And, by the time the reader has reached "Complicit," the reader is a character in the poem itself—that is, has become complicit in reinforcing the assumptions made about women in society.
Turning to the poem "Apologizing for the Rain," in what ways does the speaker accept—and then reject—society's prescriptions of womanhood and the strength it takes to define oneself on one's own terms? At what point in the poem does the stance of the speaker “turn” from one of passivity to one of assertiveness?
However, I must confess, I do not consider my "Obligatory Sex" poem in northSight to be a poem "about" morality or immorality. It is not a poem "about" sex and/or sexuality. It is, for me, a poem "about" something much more powerful. It is, for me, is a poem about imagination and perception.
For example, in the poem "Obligatory Sex,” stanza #1 there is nothing but verbs, stanza #2 uses all nouns, stanza #3 employs adverbs, stanza #4 returns to the use of nouns (here, all placed-based nouns), and lastly, stanza #5 is filled with all prepositions. This poem is meant to challenge our perceptions of sex and sexuality. The reader's imagination "fills in the gaps" of the "plot" of the poem as he or she make the imaginative connections between and among the various parts of grammar. The form of the poem is really an "exo-skeleton,” the form and meaning being created by the prose form, white space and use of the virgule. (/////////)
The making of a poem, a poem's content and its ultimate "meaning" are often--for poet and reader-- separate entities and end up being greater than the sum of their parts. These elements can conspire to create a poem which is the summation of happy coincidences. The writing of "Obligatory Sex " happened something like this.
While working on northsight, I had a sabbatical year in which I read well over 50-75 books of contemporary poetry. As I am particularly interested in poetry written by contemporary women poets, I had quite a collection sitting on my shelves. The stack of poetry books was so large that I decided to organize them--and then read them--in alphabetical order. Every morning--when my eyesight is at its best--I took a book down from the shelf and read until I finished it. Then, somewhere between the poets whose names began with "D" and those whose names begin with "H," I began to see at least one pattern emerge.
Every one of these books had a poem about sex.
No matter the subject of the collection, there always seemed to be a poem about sex. Indeed, no volume seemed complete unless it included an obligatory sex poem.
Suddenly I realized--and forgive my pun here--my body of work decidedly did not include such a poem. Not a one.
And I wanted such a poem!
Was I not--I reasoned--a contemporary woman poet too? Should I not have such a poem to prove my worth as a woman and as a poet? Was I not daring and gritty too?
At that time, I had also been reading various experimental poetry. Those works which included lots of )))))))))))))))))) and :::::::::::::: and ;;;;;;;;;; aNd interESTing uSE of PunCTuATION to mitigate the flow of form and content. To challenge the reader.
It was then I decided that I too would write my obligatory sex poem AND play with the use of lang-uage.
First, I devised rules for doing so. I would avoid any vulgarities, as that would be "cheating"--certain words and phrases command immediate, thoughtless, reactions. To my mind, vulgarities take the reader out of the poem. I wanted my reader to participate in the making of my poem not in creating his or her own overreactions.
I saw the "Obligatory Sex " poem as a word/imagination puzzle--a game of ideas whose sole object was to allow the reader to connect the dots and arrive at his or her own conclusions.
Then, mid-way through the writing of this poem, I ran out of words!
After all---and perhaps this is no excuse but here it is anyway--I was brought up in a conservative Italian-American home. Language of this nature was not used, ever. And, in my grown-up personal life, I tend to be shy about such things. It appears I am bereft of a certain kind of street education which some might feel hinders me poetically.
Yet, as I was writing this poem, there on my shelf-- somewhere between The Complete Rhyming Dictionary and A Dictionary of Symbols --was the book Our Bodies, Our Selves. And in this book, which is intended to inform and educate women --in a medical way--about their bodies, I found more than enough words for male and female body parts. Now I could continue and finish my poem!
I had great fun writing this poem. However, after publication of the collection I was--I am-- surprised--and often embarrassed--when the others see this poem in purely sexual terms.
Yet it proves my mother was right when she said: "Sex is in the mind."
Reader’s Guide for northSight
Lois Roma-Deeley’s second collection of poems
1) Theme
How would you describe “the road” metaphor that opens this book? Where does it lead? Where is it going?
Who are the “traveling companions” on this road?
In what ways is this book mystical? Can you cite specific poems which support this point of view?
Critic Barbara Crooker in her review of northSight writes: "These are indeed words for our time, words to travel by." Do you agree or disagree? Why?
How does each section–which has an epigraph, lines from Lisel Mueller, Denise Levertov, Patricia Hampl, or Robinson Jeffers–become a "blueprint" for each part? How do the sections relate to the theme(s) of the book?
2) Ethnicity/Race
Lois Roma-Deeley is the grandchild of Italian immigrants. Both sets of grandparents arrived in America by boat—from Rome (paternal) and Sicily (maternal). Frances Masucci, Roma-Deeley’s maternal grandmother, was beaten by her father for wanting to learn to read and write–English or Italian. As a consequence, her grandmother was illiterate all her life.
Her poem “The Women I Knew,” first published in the American Book Award-winning anthology Looking for Home, is now part of her newest poetry collection, northSight. How does that particular poem explore gender as it intersects with issues of class? issues of race?
In what ways does the poem suggest that gender sometimes supersedes issues of race? Does the poem suggest that role models for authentic womanhood were found in the "sighs" of the Black girls? Please explain.
3) Gender
Roma-Deeley not only chronicles her grandmother’s plight but also examines the larger forces that shape attitudes about women and poverty as well as ethnicity. Indeed, in northSight, many of the poems deal with the lens through which society sees women and how those perceptions are often internalized by women themselves.
Clearly, the trio of poems in northSight titled "Explicit," "Implicit" and "Complicit" illustrate this point. In the first poem, gender perceptions have turned negative and are internalized by the female subject of the poem. In "Implicit," gender perceptions have turned into gender prescriptions. And, by the time the reader has reached "Complicit," the reader is a character in the poem itself—that is, has become complicit in reinforcing the assumptions made about women in society.
Turning to the poem "Apologizing for the Rain," in what ways does the speaker accept—and then reject—society's prescriptions of womanhood and the strength it takes to define oneself on one's own terms? At what point in the poem does the stance of the speaker “turn” from one of passivity to one of assertiveness?
4) Class
In northSight, there are poems which deal with the consequences of being sick in America—having cancer and no health insurance. Still other poems deal with the struggles of the working poor. How are the poems "Throwing a Chair Through the Hospital Window" and "Like Bullets Not Rain," by turns, arias of helplessness and despair as well as courage and dignity?
Are there other poems which center on issues of class? If so, what are they and why would you classify them as poems about class?
5) Form and Content
The poems in northSight can barely contain themselves on the page. There is a banquet of styles which serve to unify form and theme. For example, "Christina's Pilgrim State" is a formal poem (a sestina), while "Apologizing for the Rain" is a prose poem which employs experimental techniques.
Moreover, in “Obligatory Sex,” stanza #1 is nothing but verbs, stanza #2 uses all nouns, stanza #3 employs adverbs, stanza #4 returns to the use of nouns (here, all placed-based nouns), and lastly, stanza #5 is filled with all prepositions. How does the form of this poem extend the meaning of its content?
What other examples of poems can you find which use form as a way of expanding meaning?
6) Poetic Aesthetic
Roma-Deeley says, "One of the goals for my poetry is to challenge the contemporary poetic aesthetic. I want to push the borders and boundaries of what poetry is and can be. I want poetry to be 'bigger.' I believe poetry has the power to shape perceptions: that makes poetry a powerful force in the world. And it is a great responsibility for the poet."
Of Rules of Hunger, critic Peter Huggins writes in Phi Kappa Phi Forum,
"In reading Lois Roma-Deeley's first book of poems, Rules of Hunger, I am struck by the careful precision of her observations. Roma-Deeley marshals these observations in the service of a threshold experience: that moment when you put your hand on the door and then, taking the risk, you push through into the unknown. The poems in Rules of Hunger take us through, and we go willingly."
How would you define a “threshold experience?” In what ways does the entire structure of northSight mimic a “threshold experience?” specific poems?
**********************************************************************************************************************
Rules for the Journey:
Serendipity and The Sympathetic Imagination
My first collection of poems, Rules of Hunger (Star Cloud Press, 2003,
paper, $12.95) was not my first completed manuscript though it is my
first published book. However, the writing of this book could be said to
be the result of my own personal journey to and from "the self."
Further, it is a journey toward, away from and then back again toward
poetic form, themes and personal, gendered, history.
Poetic form has long been an obsession with me. I studied form with
Alberto Rios when I was pursuing my MFA degree in the late 1980's. In
that class, I learned, first hand, about the "magic" that can happen if a
poet allows the form to take hold of the "sympathetic imagination." When
speaking of poetic imagination and theory, one must refer to John Ruskin
(born 1819) who wrote extensively on the subject. According to noted
scholar George P. Landow, Professor of English and Art History at Brown
University, who writes
... Ruskin believes in a visual imagination. Although Ruskin's ideas of
the imagination were heavily influenced by the writings of British moral
philosophers, such as Dugald Stewart and Sydney Smith, who described the
imagination as working with sympathies and emotional states, Ruskin
believes that the imagination works with images. In The Two Paths (1859)
Ruskin describes the visual nature of the imagination: "We all have a
general and sufficient idea of imagination, and of its work with our
hands and in our hearts: we understand it, I suppose, as the imaging or
picturing of new things in our thoughts" (16.347). In an 1883 note to the
second volume of Modern Painters, which contains his longer discussions
of the various aspects of imagination, he stated: "I meant, and always do
mean by it, primarily, the power of seeing anything we describe as if it
were real" (4.226n).
[http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ruskin/atheories/1.4.html]
For me, the study of form--a poetic technique which I, at first, rebelled
against with much wailing and gnashing of teeth--was a real turning point
in my creative life. I struggled mightily with the various techniques we
graduate students were required to study and use in our own work.
Moreover, when Professor Rios held up The New Book of Forms by Lewis
Turco and said to the class something like This is one of the best books
you will ever need on this subject--I could hardly imagine my future
would include not only that book but Professor Turco, himself.
I learned from working with form (and using Professor Turco's book) that,
as Ruskin said, "the power of seeing anything we describe as if it were
real" could be enhanced by using form. In essence, I learned my
imagination could surprise me by creating pictures and images that I did
not know existed in my mind. This was a powerful lesson I took to the
writing of Rules of Hunger.
Moreover, during the first stages of writing this book, I had attended a
writer's retreat in California. There, I listened to a lecture given by
Professor Brenda Hillman. Her work is noted for its cutting edge
experimentalism. Though intrigued, at the time I did not think her "take"
on contemporary poetic techniques would hold much value for me as a poet.
However, I could not get her work out of my mind. After the conference, I
read her work and read whatever critiques I could about her work. Still ,
I could not see how these new techniques would help me with my new
manuscript.
Then, through a series of poetic serendipitous events, I found myself
hosting Professor Lewis Turco at our campus. He was my college's first
Visiting Writer and Scholar. Professor Turco gave readings, conducted
workshops and was kind enough to allow me to interview him. It was that
interview--which was taped and is now lost due to technical
problems--which freed me to experiment with form in new and untried ways.
In Rules of Hunger, I decided to mix various metric patterns and
punctuation marks. These were some of what I had learned when studying
Turco and Hillman. I began to see that "new images"could be created by
mitigating cadences through punctuation marks as well as some other
literary devices.
Another poetic serendipitous event which contributed to the poetic themes
and personal history I decided to use in Rules of Hunger, came from a
simple remark made to me by my friend, the poet Jan Beatty. Though I had
taught many Women Studies classes at the graduate and undergraduate
levels, had sections of my Ph.D. dissertation devoted to women literary
theory and have written and published articles on the subject, somehow I
must have missed an obvious point when 'it' came to my own poetry.
In terms of form and themes, Jan Beatty's work may be viewed to be the
opposite of Lewis Turco's work. Yet, Jan's comment to me had the same
kind of effect that Lew's interview had had on me--it was another turning
point for my work. It was a chance for me to poetically open up and take
risks.
What Jan said to me is interesting in that the content of her comment was
something I knew intellectually but had failed to grasp emotionally.
She reminded me: "Women's stories are often thought to be uninteresting."
Once again, I felt free to take risks.
And so I began to write about "personal" stories and themes--which I
began to see that previously I had thought of as being uninteresting,
unimportant and unpoetic.
I began to write about my family, my father's cancer, my husband, my
youth. I wrote about being poor, lonely, depressed and desperate. I
wrote about food and love and about being an Italian-American woman. I
wrote about wanting to run away.. And I wrote about staying put.. I
wrote about the price one pays for holding onto dignity in a world that
would take it from you at each and every turn.
My second book, NorthSight, continues along these lines. It goes
deeper-- and, my early reviewer have said-- it is a book about hope--a
most "unpoetic" theme for the 21st century.