Reiter's Block

Tupelo Press Poets Talk About Their Faith

Jendi Reiter — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:29:00 GMT

The Poetry Foundation website has posted a substantial excerpt from a forthcoming essay collection from Tupelo Press, A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith. This volume, edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Katherine Towler, gathers reflections from 19 accomplished poets about spirituality and the craft of writing. Here are a few choice passages to encourage you to read further. The book can be pre-ordered now and will be released in March.

Jericho Brown:
"Hope is the opposite of desperation—it’s not as comfortable as certainty, and it’s much more certain than longing. It is always accompanied by the imagination, the will to see what our physical environment seems to deem impossible. Only the creative mind can make use of hope. Only a creative people can wield it.

"Today I believe that anything one visualizes consistently becomes reality. Isn’t that what prayer is? Maybe that means my beliefs have not changed at all: lift every voice and sing till earth and heaven ring. I am a believer. True believers see their way as the way. That doesn’t mean I can’t stand someone else’s way. It means that I am capable of joyfully getting lost in my own. Spirituality is important to me because I think there is something among us greater than the physical, something we know exists and can address directly. I love God. I love liberty. I shame one if I lose the other. I think of God now as way more patient than I could ever be. I have to believe that God is better than I am, and better than all of us. That’s the only thing that could make God God."

Kazim Ali:
"Prayer is speaking to someone you know is not going to be able to speak back, so you’re allowed to be the most honest that you can be. In prayer you’re allowed to be as purely selfish as you like. You can ask for something completely irrational. I have written that prayer is a form of panic, because in prayer you don’t really think you’re going to be answered. You’ll either get what you want or you won’t. It feels to me like that, a situation where you’re under the most duress. Often people who are not religious at all, when suddenly something terrible happens, they know they have to pray. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. We all engage with the spiritual at different points. Prayer is not a refuge or shelter so much as it is an opening of arms, an acceptance of whatever storms exist in the world. You don’t really pray for your situation to change, you pray to be able to handle your situation. It’s not the world you want to change; it’s you that you want to change."

G.C. Waldrep:
"Most Americans, I think, compartmentalize, because it is convenient: we find our modern lives intolerable otherwise. Now I am a teacher. No, now I am a consumer. No, now I am a parent, a man of faith, a poet, an investor in off-shore oil drilling, etc. It tears the soul. Even a serious faith commitment can become simply one more compartment.

"The Anabaptist conception of faith, on the other hand, is encompassing. Whatever one is doing, one should be doing it with a spiritual aim and value, hopefully in some connection with the life of the body, which is the church. It may seem inconvenient, but our lives are united and made complete in Christ, and in the community and fellowship of fellow Christians. Of course I know (non-Christian) poets who feel the same way about their art, about the community of work and feeling that poetry convokes. When I am someplace like the artists’ colonies of Yaddo or MacDowell, I tend to hear quite a bit about this. But for me, poetry inheres within the whole defined by Christ, His Word, and the church.

"Prayer is that which conveys a message to God, who is either known or knowing, more or less by definition. Poetry is that which conveys a message to a stranger."

Joy Harjo:
"Incantation and chant call something into being. They make a ceremonial field of meaning. Much of world poetry is incantation and chant. The poem that first made me truly want to become a poet was sung and performed by a healer in Southeast Asia. As he sang and performed the poem he became what he was singing/speaking, and even as he sang and spoke, his words healed his client. When I saw that in the early seventies on a television program, the idea of what it meant to be a poet shifted utterly for me."

Gregory Orr:
"I have faith that when the emotional, imaginative, and spiritual life is activated inside a person, when one becomes fully human, feeling and caring deeply, this represents a resurrection of some kind. This happens for me often when I read poems or hear songs. The feeling of being moved represents a resurrection. Every time meaning or feeling flows into your experience, that’s resurrection. I choose to believe that this has something to do with the beloved. One of the perils of being human, and of lyric poetry, is narcissism, the solipsistic sense that the self is all there is. Likewise, one of the perils of trauma is extreme isolation of the damaged self. To me, the beloved is that figure that exists independent of the self, that figure that calls us into relationship with the world and saves us from what I consider the emotional, spiritual, and psychological error of solipsism and narcissism. The beloved calls us out into connection with the world, into reciprocal relation with the world."

Jane Hirshfield:
"No one undertakes something as difficult as Zen practice because they already feel the perfection of 'things as they are.' We humans turn toward a spiritual practice in part to restore ourselves from some felt form of separation or exile. We feel something is wrong, or missing. This is not my usual vocabulary, but one of my poems, 'Salt Heart,' has a passage that may be relevant here: “I begin to believe the only sin is distance, refusal./All others stemming from this.” Separation from others, separation from self, are close to the root of suffering. Christians might say 'separation from God,' Sufis might say, 'separation from the Beloved.' Jung might call it a failure to recognize all parts of the psyche as parts of one self; that shadow-self, refused, grows perilous. Buddhism proposes that the separation of selfhood itself is a mistake of the mind, an attitude in some way reflected in our English use of the word 'selfish.' While Zen is the particular practice that drew me, I certainly don’t believe there’s only one 'right' spiritual path—if something is true, it will be findable anywhere, and there are as many spiritual paths as there are people, and probably sparrows and frogs and pebbles as well. Still, for me, this not uncommon sense of being exiled from full presence in the world brought me to both Zen and poetry."

I Don't Know What I'm Talking About

Jendi Reiter — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:02:50 GMT

"Truth is I thought it mattered. I thought that music mattered. But does it? Bollocks! Not compared to how people matter." (Chumbawamba, "Tubthumping")

I used to think theology mattered.

Because, for a long time, I understood ideas better than people...

Because I hated how it felt when certain authority figures didn't trust my word, and played armchair psychoanalyst to accuse me of motives I didn't possess...

Because I saw the suffering in the lives of friends who acted on impulse, and who never sought the guidance of tradition about what was moral and good for human flourishing...

Because I experienced emotional chaos and "gaslighting" in my family and unchecked bullying in my peer group...

...I overestimated the importance of explicit, conscious beliefs, as compared to subconscious beliefs and psychological patterns, as determinants of people's behavior.

...I imagined there could be a system of thought that would make people humble and trustworthy, and insulate their community against abusive dynamics, if only they properly understood and thoroughly implemented those beliefs.

...I cared too intensely about establishing a community where everyone agreed on the fundamental facts and values--one where each individual was not stuck inside her private and uncommunicable "true-for-me". Though I didn't realize this for years, that politically correct liberal ideal was triggering memories of being in a relationship where my pain was not visible to the other person and her version of the facts was impervious to correction.

...I needed the privacy afforded by abstraction, when talking about matters that were close to my soul. (This is still somewhat true, and will be the subject of a follow-up post if I ever find the time.) Theological discussion, unlike the personal sharing that goes on in Christian small-groups, allows people to connect via their common passion for knowing God, without exposing personal vulnerabilities that the other person may exploit to attack your theological position. Again, I did not realize right away that this was my concern; under the lingering influence of Objectivism, I was more likely to dismiss personal factors as irrelevant, rather than simply unsafe to reveal indiscriminately.

Why am I writing about this? First, to apologize for being a self-righteous bunghole in any of my past theological screeds. Second, because I don't think my particular sore spots and accompanying defenses are all that unique.

Based on my recent explorations of trauma theory, I think it's safe to say that at least 10-25% of any congregation has an abuse history or some other serious traumas in their past and/or present. The ones who are temperamentally inclined to resist rather than reenact the chaos of their past may well be drawn to fundamentalism (religious or otherwise).

Be compassionate to these people. Not in a patronizing or intrusive way, but in your own heart. Understand that their "attachment to views", as the Buddhists would say, may have been a life-preserver when their attachments to other human beings were disrupted by loss or betrayal. Call them out (discreetly) when their ideology or methods are hurting others, but first establish a safe space, founded on God's grace, for them to face their faults.

If you want them to believe that people matter more than theology...first show them that they matter to you.

Two Poems by Louie Crew

Jendi Reiter — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:59:29 GMT

The poet Louie Crew (a/k/a "Quean Lutibelle") is an Emeritus professor of English at Rutgers University, and a widely published advocate for GLBT Christians in the Episcopal Church. He has kindly permitted me to reprint the two poems below, which were recently featured in issue #99 of Caught in the Net, a poetry newsletter from the UK-based writers' resource site The Poetry Kit. Thanks also to The Poetry Kit's Jim Bennett for permission. Check out Louie's list of recommended poetry publishers here.

Don't Hang Up

Don't hang up,
I'm not a heckler.
I NEED your help
but I can't tell you my name.
I'm in a phone booth
while mom buys groceries,
so I won't take long.
I heard your talk show
and I'm scared. Last summer,
when I was just thirteen,
I balled with a guy
I met at the bus station.
Now I've got these purple spots
all down my stomach.
I drink five shakes a day
and I have lost fifteen pounds
in just three months!
I'm afraid to go to our doctor
cause he's my dad.
He'd beat the shit out of me
for liking guys.
Can you tell me somebody else
to call?
Cripes! Here comes mom. Bye!

****

Fay

My one earring stores my powers.
It charms my lover into bed.
Worn aisle-side on buses and trains,
    it reserves me a double seat
    until all others are filled.
On campus it keeps me off all
    but the most enlightened committees.
It is 99% foolproof in protecting me
    from wasting time on racists.
At times it has made otherwise sane folks
    dangle from dormitory windows to giggle,
    "Where's your husband?"
Worn with a cap and gown, it wards off
    any threat of Respectability.
In class, it assures that students question
    what I say and not vainly agree
    because of who said it.
In church, it has made stranger priests
    spill me a double portion of the Mass....
When I take it off, people take me
    for any other mortal.

Massachusetts Considers Punitive "Three-Strikes" Law

Jendi Reiter — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:32:55 GMT

Even as pressure builds in California to overturn their "three-strikes" criminal sentencing law, the Massachusetts legislature is trying to slip a similar bill under the public's radar. Three-strikes laws impose harsh mandatory minimum sentences for repeat offenders, regardless of the seriousness of the third crime. Thus, for instance, a person with two prior felonies can be sentenced to 25-to-life for a nonviolent offense such as drug possession or petty theft. My pen pal "Conway" is one victim of this system.

This unreasonable policy has contributed to such severe overcrowding in California prisons that the US Supreme Court recently ruled that conditions there violate the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Why would we want to bring this problem to Massachusetts?

A letter that ran Tuesday in our local paper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette, eloquently makes the case against this proposed law. It was authored by Leslie Walker, the executive director of Prisoners' Legal Services of Massachusetts, and Lois Ahrens, the director of The Real Cost of Prisons Project of Northampton.

Unless recent legislation that fast-tracked both the Massachusetts House and Senate is slowed down and reconsidered, Massachusetts prisons will rapidly move into the ranks of the most overcrowded and expensive in the nation.

The two "Three Strikes and You're Out" bills, which passed in the final moments of the November legislative session, will make a bad situation worse.

Look at two examples:

MCI-Concord, meant to hold 614 prisoners, is jammed with 1,345 men for a 219 percent occupancy rate.

MCI-Framingham was meant to hold 388 women and now houses 445 - a 115 percent occupancy rate.

Worst of all is MCI-Framingham's Awaiting Trial Unit, where 215 women who have been convicted of no crime are crammed into a space designed for 64 - more than 330 percent the intended occupancy.

The number of prisoners in Department of Correction custody is at an all-time high. Overcrowding averages 143 percent over capacity. The corrections department has reported that parole releases have dropped by 56 percent in 2011, mostly due to parole practices and policies promoted by the Patrick administration. Even without the new law, Massachusetts faces increased corrections costs of approximately $100 million dollars a year.

An analysis performed on sentencing data provided by the Massachusetts Sentencing Commission illustrates how costly implementation of a "Three Strikes" law would be to taxpayers: an annual burden of between $75 million to $125 million could be added because between 1,500 to 2,500 prisoners could be sentenced to life with parole.

This means that the commonwealth will have to build new prison space at a cost of $100,000 per cell since our prisons are far beyond capacity. We are already paying $1 billion a year simply to incarcerate men and women, with each costing taxpayers almost as much as a year's tuition at one of the Valley's private colleges - approximately $50,000.

We will also keep paying the annual costs to house the same prisoner over and over because the current system is too strained to take steps that might keep prisoners from committing another crime - only 2.4 percent of the corrections department budget is spent on programming.

Education - the more one has, the more effective it is - has been proven to be one of the most successful ways of keeping people from returning to prison, but like other programs proven to rehabilitate, it is hampered without funds.

The chance for a Massachusetts prisoner to leave crime through such programs is nearly zero.

The current "Three Strikes" bills are not cost effective because they are too broadly drawn. For example, the Senate version of the bill sweeps in nonviolent convictions and mandates the third strike maximum punishment even if the previous cases were not serious enough to require a sentence of more than a day in jail. The bills would not allow judges to consider how long ago the offenses occurred or any mitigating circumstances. This would continue to overfill our prisons.

No government official wants to be labeled as "soft on crime." But officials in other states have advocated for smart prison reform that have saved millions for taxpayers and increased public safety.

Malcolm Young, of Northwestern Law School's Bluhm Legal Clinic, writing in The Crime Report notes, "Several states are moving ahead with carefully researched plans and strategies grounded in "best practices," bent on reducing prison incarceration and corrections costs. Among them are Ohio, South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi."

These and other states, like New York, Michigan and New Jersey, have also reduced their prison populations with shorter sentences for nonviolent crimes, elimination of mandatory minimums for low-level drug offenses and creative alternatives to prison. The result is hundreds of millions of dollars in reduced corrections spending and lower recidivism rates.

If the current "Three Strikes" bills pass, we'll be wasting millions of dollars while doing nothing to cut crime in Massachusetts - and continue to crowd prisons. Forget education. Forget rehabilitation.

Without such tools, those we sentence to prison will get out with even fewer resources than they have now and that means compromising the public's safety. We urge legislators to take several steps back and consider the consequences of the hurriedly made and costly decisions which will be with us for decades.

To get involved, visit www.smartoncrimema.org. Write or call your state representatives (see House and Senate websites to find your legislator's contact information).

Hermann Hesse: "Stages"

Jendi Reiter — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:34:41 GMT

This graceful poem by Hermann Hesse offers permission to let our beliefs evolve as we acquire new experiences and capacities. It feels like a good introduction to the new year, and to a hoped-for series of blog posts about how my understanding of Christianity has changed during my shift from a guilt/forgiveness framework to a trauma/recovery framework for organizing my experiences.

Text courtesy of the Poemhunter website, which unfortunately does not give the translator's name.

Stages

As every flower fades and as all youth
Departs, so life at every stage,
So every virtue, so our grasp of truth,
Blooms in its day and may not last forever.
Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give.
In all beginnings dwells a magic force
For guarding us and helping us to live.
Serenely let us move to distant places
And let no sentiments of home detain us.

The Cosmic Spirit seeks not to restrain us
But lifts us stage by stage to wider spaces.
If we accept a home of our own making,
Familiar habit makes for indolence.
We must prepare for parting and leave-taking
Or else remain the slave of permanence.
Even the hour of our death may send
Us speeding on to fresh and newer spaces,
And life may summon us to newer races.
So be it, heart: bid farewell without end.

Cindy Hochman: "Self-Portrait in a Concave Knife"

Jendi Reiter — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:37:02 GMT

When the Big C meets the Big D, all you can do is laugh. At least, that's where poet Cindy Hochman's survival instinct takes her. Packed with more puns than a Snickers bar has peanuts, her chapbook The Carcinogenic Bride (Thin Air Media Press, 2011) brings energetic wit to bear on those modern monsters, breast cancer and divorce. She kindly shares a sample poem below. To order a copy ($5.00), email Cindy at poet2680@aol.com. Hat tip to Gently Read Literature for bringing this book to my attention.

Self-Portrait in a Concave Knife

Here comes the carcinogenic bride!
Here comes the survivor-in-chief!
Wanna see my balance sheet?
This will be my Checkers Speech!
There goes my stale mate
We once lived in an altared state
He cleaned my slate, I cleaned his plate
Here is love in fission
body in remission, missionary position
Here is my inner elf,
      my quirky self, my non-existent wealth,
      in sickness and in health
Here are my hickeys, my hearses, my hoopla,
   my histrionics
Here is my whole hierarchy of hernias
Say some Hail Marys and kenahoras
For tumors come and gone.
Here is the lion’s share, my blonde hair, my thin air,
   my health care.
Ass-kisser, go-getter, phone-dodger, night-
blogger, flip-flopper, vow-breaker
Here is my Chinese fan
Here is my oil can
Here is my Yes We Can!
Here is my bellyflop, my pet rock, my co-op, my
writer’s block
   my Last Supper
   my Mea Culpa!
Here are my brittle bones, my mortgage loans
My dulcet tones, my low moans
Here is my picket sign, my witty line, my glass of
wine (or two . . .)
Here is my income tax, my credit max, my panic attacks
Here is what I’ve held in escrow:
   my pens, my posse, my potbelly
     my strokes and daggers
Here is my handle
Here is my spout
     my gamin face, my apocalyptal pout
     cranky bitch with perfect pitch
Here is my tea rose, my stuffy nose, my broken
toes,
my spiritual quest, my daily stress, my scarred
breast
Here’s to my every OY,
My utter JOY
There’s my life through a poetic prism
(or maybe just my narcissism)

Reiter's Block Year in Review, Part 2: Best Fiction

Jendi Reiter — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 01:13:31 GMT

For me, there are two things that take a good story to the next level of greatness: fully human characterization, and a connection to wider moral-philosophical themes. And not just any themes. I want a narrative that is aware of tragedy without being defeated by it. A narrative that values equality and diversity, and hints at how we can move in that direction, without glossing over the contrary impulses in every human heart. Throw in an appreciation of art's power to undermine dehumanizing ideologies, connect it to God somehow, and you've got me hooked. The books below were not only my favorite novels of the year, but will also be favorites for years to come.

Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker (first published in 1980; expanded edition from Indiana University Press, 1998)
Imagine the Bhagavad-Gita as a Punch-and-Judy show. What do the legend of St. Eustace and particle physics have in common? In this unique novel, part mystical treatise and part fantasy-horror fiction, two millennia have passed since a nuclear war knocked Britain back to the Iron Age, and a semi-nomadic civilization has preserved only degraded fragments of our science through oral tradition in the form of puppet shows. Our narrator, 12-year-old Riddley, at first joins forces with a shifting (and shifty) cast of politicos and visionaries who hope to bring the human race back to its former glory by rediscovering the recipe for gunpowder. But soon he's on the track of bigger game: the nature of reality, and the causes of sin. Which is more fundamental, unity or duality? Why does Punch always want to kill the baby?

Vestal McIntyre, Lake Overturn (Harper, 2009)
This standout first novel paints a tender, comical portrait of an Idaho small town in the 1980s, where a motley collection of trailer-park residents yearn for connection (and sometimes, against all odds, find it) across the barriers of class, sexual orientation, illness, separatist piety, drug abuse, and plain old social ineptness. You'll want to linger on the luscious writing, but keep turning the pages to find out what happens to the characters who've won a place in your heart.

Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Random House, 2000)
This Pulitzer-winning epic novel about the golden age of comic book superheroes is also a love song to New York City Jewish culture in the years surrounding World War II. Two boys, a visionary artist who escaped Nazi-occupied Prague and his fast-talking, closeted cousin from Brooklyn, lead the fantasy fight against Hitler by creating the Escapist, a superhero who is a cross between Harry Houdini and the Golem of Jewish legend. However, their real-world dilemmas prove resistant to magical solutions, and can only be resolved through humility, maturity, and love.

Diane DiMassa, The Complete Hothead Paisan: Homicidal Lesbian Terrorist (Cleis Press, 1999)
Warning: castration fantasies, uppity women, cruelty to morons, and unapologetic feminist rage at rape culture. But our gal Hothead is about so much more. In her own traumatized, over-caffeinated way, she's on a quest for healing and love--even if sometimes the only person she can trust is her beloved yoga-practicing cat, Chicken. This graphic novel will win your heart if you stick with it.

A Christmas Thought

Jendi Reiter — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 16:28:47 GMT

Coming home from Midnight Mass last night, as I gazed up at the stars that shone brightly in the crisp cold atmosphere, I had the thought that there were two ways to interpret this sight. Intellectually, I knew that I was seeing immense orbs of fire burning light-years away, dwarfing our little planet, not to mention the quiet street where I stood. Emotionally, though, I felt that the canopy of stars was a cozy and hopeful sign for us down below, a celestial response to our joy.

What a miracle, I thought, that the earth's atmosphere is made in such a way that we can see these faraway lights. How kind of them to stoop to communicate with us!

So too with the Christ child. God is infinitely powerful and huge, the creator of those stars and galaxies whose scope we cannot imagine. Yet God also comes down to us, offering us a way in, a point of connection that is on the scale of the human heart and mind.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Audre Lorde on the Spiritual Power of Eros

Jendi Reiter — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 21:34:46 GMT

Audre Lorde (1934-1992) was a black feminist lesbian poet and activist whose work continues to inspire creative writers and political movements today. This essay of hers, "The Uses of the Erotic", was reprinted on the alternative spirituality site Metahistory.org.

It resonated with me because of my experience of eros in my own writing, and how it led me to greater confidence in a queer-affirming theology. I believe that any ideology that alienates a person from her erotic self must eventually cut her off from personal knowledge of the divine. (I'm not talking about a true vocation to celibacy, but rather the shame-based repression of one's erotic nature, whether acted upon or not. I would imagine that a healthy celibate person acknowledges and mindfully sublimates desire, without aversion or self-delusion.)

For me, the erotic is where I most completely will myself, commit myself despite risks, and wake up to the consciousness of myself, at the same point where I am also most completely dissolved into an interpersonal connection. To know God, to know the beloved, and to know myself--all these are essentially one.

From the essay:

...As women, we have come to distrust that power which rises from our deepest and nonrational knowledge. We have been warned against it all our lives by the male world, which values this depth of feeling enough to keep women around in order to exercise it in the service of men, but which fears this same depth too much to examine the possibilities of it within themselves. So women are maintained at a distant/inferior position to be psychically milked, much the same way ants maintain colonies of aphids to provide a life-giving substance for their masters.

But the erotic offers a well of replenishing and provocative force to the woman who does not fear its revelation, nor succumb to the belief that sensation is enough.

The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, and plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling.

The erotic is a measure between our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.

It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.

This internal requirement toward excellence which we learn from the erotic must not be misconstrued as demanding the impossible from ourselves nor from others. Such a demand incapacitates everyone in the process. For the erotic is not a question only of what we do; it is a question of how acutely and fully we can feel in the doing. Once we know the extent to which we are capable of feeling that sense of satisfaction and completion, we can then observe which of our various life endeavors bring us closest to that fullness.

The aim of each thing which we do is to make our lives and the lives of our children richer and more possible. Within the celebration of the erotic in all our endeavors, my work becomes a conscious decision - a longed-for bed which I enter gratefully and from which I rise up empowered.

Of course, women so empowered are dangerous. So we are taught to separate the erotic from most vital areas of our lives other than sex. And the lack of concern for the erotic root and satisfactions of our work is felt in our disaffection from so much of what we do. For instance, how often do we truly love our work even at its most difficult?

The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that need - the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power and life appeal and fulfillment. Such a system reduces work to a travesty of necessities, a duty by which we earn bread or oblivion for ourselves and those we love. But this is tantamount to blinding a painter and then telling her to improve her work, and to enjoy the act of painting. It is not only next to impossible, it is also profoundly cruel.

As women, we need to examine the ways in which our world can be truly different. I am speaking here of the necessity for reassessing the quality of all the aspects of our lives and of our work, and of how we move toward and through them.

The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects - born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.

There are frequent attempts to equate pornography and eroticism, two diametrically opposed uses of the sexual. Because of these attempts, it has become fashionable to separate the spiritual (psychic and emotional) from the political, to see them as contradictory or antithetical. "What do you mean, a poetic revolutionary, a meditating gunrunner?" In the same way, we have attempted to separate the spiritual and the political is also false, resulting from an incomplete attention to our erotic knowledge. For the bridge which connects them is formed by the erotic - the sensual - those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passions of love, in its deepest meanings.

Beyond the superficial, the considered phrase, "It feels right to me," acknowledges the strength of the erotic into a true knowledge, for what that means is the first and most powerful guiding light toward any understanding. And understanding is a handmaiden which can only wait upon, or clarify, that knowledge, deeply born. The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge.

The erotic functions for me in several ways, and the first is in providing the power which comes from sharing deeply any pursuit with another person. The sharing of joy, whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers which can be the basis for understanding much of what is not shared between them, and lessens the threat of their difference.

Another important way in which the erotic connection functions is the open and fearless underlining of my capacity for joy, in the way my body stretches to music and opens into response, harkening to its deepest rhythms so every level upon which I sense also opens to the erotically satisfying experience whether it is dancing, building a bookcase, writing a poem, or examining an idea.

That self-connection shared is a measure of the joy which I know myself to be capable of feeling, a reminder of my capacity for feeling. And that deep and irreplaceable knowledge of my capacity for joy comes to demand from all of my life that it be lived within the knowledge that such satisfaction is possible, and does not have to be called marriage, nor god, nor an afterlife.

This is one reason why the erotic is so feared, and so often relegated to the bedroom alone, when it is recognized at all. For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they feel in accordance with that joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives. And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.
...

Read the whole essay here.

Sunday Random Songs: Scrooge Edition

Jendi Reiter — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 20:44:25 GMT

All the forced good cheer and baby Jesus kitsch on the airwaves this time of year grates on my barren little heart. If you agree, you may enjoy these seasonal travesties that you're not likely to hear in Macy's anytime soon.

John Denver, "Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas)
This is not supposed to be funny. But I am a sinner.

South Park, "Christmas Time in Hell"
String up the lights and light up the tree, we're damned for all eternity!

Kinsey Sicks, "God Bless Ye Femmy Lesbians"
From their hit album, "Oy Vey in a Manger

Suggest your own favorites in the comments box!

Mended Souls, Better Than New

Jendi Reiter — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 00:40:23 GMT

A friend who is a sexual abuse survivor loaned me Renee Fredrickson's Recovered Memories to help me be a better ally and represent these issues more accurately in my creative writing. I'd like to share these words from the book's final chapter, as an inspiration to anyone recovering from trauma.

On display in the Freer Museum in Washington, D.C., are ancient Zen ceremonial bowls renowned for their delicate beauty and fine craftsmanship. Over generations of use these lovely porcelain bowls became cracked and chipped, and some had whole pieces missing. Rather than being discarded or devalued because of the damage, the porcelain was repaired with gold. The gold adds strength, beauty, and value to the bowls, and the sacred bowls are marvelously enhanced by the repair process.

So it is with survivors. You were damaged as you grew up, and the more abusively you were handled, the greater the damage. When you undertake to repair this damage, you replace bitterness and sadness with understanding and healing. You become stronger and more resilient when change comes. You grow kinder to yourself and more compassionate toward those you love. You, like the sacred bowls, are enhanced rather than diminished by the repair process. (pg.225)

(See images of repaired Zen bowls here and here.)

Gender-Policing Ron Paul

Jendi Reiter — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 18:35:50 GMT

My best friend from Harvard is gradually winning me over to support Ron Paul's presidential candidacy over Obama's. The feisty libertarian is holding his own in the GOP race despite derision from self-styled experts in both parties and some suspicious poll-doctoring by the major news networks. Anyone with so wide a range of ideological enemies is probably putting his finger on some uncomfortable truths about our country's asset bubble, military over-spending, creeping police state, and substitution of "culture wars" for genuine solutions. The site Ron Paul Myths gives a good overview of his actual positions and how they've been misrepresented.

This morning my friend called my attention to this generally favorable Washington Post article, which nonetheless treats the Texas congressman as something of a sideshow act. As Hillary Clinton found, gender-policing is one of the tools that commentators use to undermine a candidate, making it seem ridiculous, even unnatural, for this person to inhabit the office of Big-Daddy-in-Chief. Because we've unconsciously imbibed these stereotypes for so long, we don't even realize the commentary is biased.

From the headline, "Ron Paul's slight stature and high-pitched passions set him apart at debates", a suspicion of effeminacy is cast over everything that follows. (Not that I perceive anything wrong with effeminacy, but most readers would.) Though the piece fairly summarizes his positions, and notes that he has the most enthusiastic supporters of all the GOP candidates, we're told that "experts" have written him off, in part because he doesn't perform masculinity in the same way as Romney and Gingrich. The article mentions his "high-pitched voice", "smaller" and "weaker" build, and "excitable hands". Hello, Dolly!

The reporter, Sarah Kaufman, isn't actually saying that she thinks these traits make him un-presidential--merely acknowledging that the hypothetical average voter could feel that way. Nonetheless, by pointing out Paul's image problem without discussing sexism as a factor, the article subtly perpetuates these slurs.

Ron Paul, you just became the queer candidate.

Reiter's Block Year in Review, Part 1: Best Poetry

Jendi Reiter — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 23:05:13 GMT

Loyal readers, I apologize for the three-week blog hiatus. I was writing 30 poems and poem-like scribblings for the month of November to raise money for The Center for New Americans, a literacy program for immigrants in Western Massachusetts. You can still sponsor me through the end of 2011 here. (I'm still writing poems, just in case.)

This year-end roundup will be posted in several parts since there are so many good reads that I want to highlight. Today, I'll be recommending a few poetry books that caught my attention.

Lara Glenum and Arielle Greenberg, eds., Gurlesque: The new grrly, grotesque, burlesque poetics (Saturnalia Books, 2010).
Unicorns! Masturbation! Dead cows! As Glenum writes in her introduction to this anthology, "The Gurlesque describes an emerging field of female artists...who, taking a page from the burlesque, perform their femininity in a campy or overtly mocking way. Their work assaults the norms of acceptable female behavior by irreverently deploying gender stereotypes to subversive ends."

Juliet Cook, Thirteen Designer Vaginas (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2011).
Punning, darkly playful, experimental poems inspired by vaginal reconstructive surgery websites. "They can't quiver and whimper/if they're not real, he said, referring to some breasts./We all know they're implants, not live puppies". Chapbook cover even has pasted-on fake jewels. What more could you want for $5? Visit Cook's website for links to other titles, including a free download of Mondo Crampo.

Jason Schossler, Mud Cakes (Bona Fide Books, 2011).
Winner of the 2010 Melissa Lanitis Gregory Poetry Prize, this quietly powerful autobiographical collection chronicles a Midwestern Gen-X boyhood, where exciting dreams of Star Wars and movie monsters give way to the more drab and painful struggles of his parents' divorce, and the losing battle of his Catholic conscience against teenage lust. Schossler narrates the essential facts of a moment that stands in for an entire relationship, allowing the reader to make the connections that his childhood self couldn't see.

Nick Demske, Nick Demske (Fence Books, 2010).
Insane sonnets compiled from the data-stream of our decadent culture. Read my blog review here.

Monday Random Song: Jason Bravo, "Isn't Love Reason Enough?"

Jendi Reiter — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 21:30:08 GMT

My good friend Jason Bravo wrote this beautiful song about being true to yourself. Maybe I'm biased, but I think it could be the next "Born This Way". No YouTube video yet, but you can stream the MP3 from his website. Purchase Jason's album Between Head and Heart at CD Baby or on iTunes.

ISN’T LOVE REASON ENOUGH?
(Words and music by Jason Bravo)

Remember that summer when you and I walked on the sand?
We talked about life in a heart to heart that was unplanned.
We climbed on the rocks and we followed them along the shore.
You talked in a way that I never heard you talk before.

And I could hear your words unsaid.
I could feel your pain.

CHORUS:
You’ve been looking for a reason not to hide it all away.
But ISN’T LOVE REASON ENOUGH?
You’ve been looking for a reason to be who you are someday.
But ISN’T LOVE REASON ENOUGH?

There are so many things that I wish you could learn from my past.
So many decisions that I’d change if I could go back.
I’d shake off my fear and my armor and let down my guard.
I wish someone told me life didn’t have to be so hard.

But I can’t live your life for you.
I can’t dream your dream.

CHORUS:
You’ve been looking for a reason not to hide yourself away.
But ISN’T LOVE REASON ENOUGH?
You’ve been looking for a reason to be who you are someday.
But ISN’T LOVE REASON ENOUGH?

The love that dares not speak its name
Is love just the same.

CHORUS:
You’ve been looking for a reason not to hide your heart away.
But ISN’T LOVE REASON ENOUGH?
You’ve been looking for a reason to be who you are someday.
But ISN’T LOVE REASON ENOUGH?

Love, love should be reason enough.

Thoughts on Transgender Day of Remembrance

Jendi Reiter — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 21:28:18 GMT

Apologies for the blog hiatus. 30 Poems in November is kicking my butt. (Donate here to raise funds for literacy education.) More original content will be posted soon.

Meanwhile, I would like to share these eloquent words from Natalie at the Skepchick blog about the importance of today's Transgender Day of Remembrance. Activists estimate that over 100 transgendered people are murdered each year in hate crimes. This is in addition to the other violence, discrimination, and sensationalized misrepresentation in the media that transpeople endure on a regular basis. On a more positive note, though, Massachusetts finally passed a bill to add some protections to our civil rights law for gender identity and expression. The compromise legislation now bans discrimination in employment, education, healthcare, and housing, though they were not able to get enough votes to add public accommodations to the list.

Natalie's blog post explains why trans rights should matter to everyone (boldface emphasis mine):

...I suppose a question with these kinds of things is often why exactly one should care beyond simple respect for the deceased and ongoing commitment to working against bigotry in its many forms. How does this relate to those beyond the immediate consequences?

Part of it is the internalization of fear by the rest of us. Our lives begin to become defined and restrained by it. In much the same way that women may often internalize fear of sexual assault and lose luxuries such as the ability to walk around after dark without needing to be constantly attentive of their surroundings, keeping keys clenched in their fist, trans people end up losing similar luxuries of being able to feel safe in many circumstances. Our lives become limited by that fear in very real ways. It becomes a force of social control that keeps us quiet and invisible. We desperately strive for “passability” far beyond what is simply comfortable self-expression out of awareness of the very real dangers that come with being visibly gender variant. I don’t really like painting my nails all that much, but every little bit helps.

Part of it is that this affects people beyond those who fall within the transgender spectrum. It is essentially about policing the lines of gender. Using violence and the threat thereof as a means of imposing very real consequences for those who transgress the carefully delineated paths afforded to those born with certain particular anatomies. It marks in blood a line that you may not cross. This confines all of us. Male, female or neither, cis or trans, straight or queer, binary-identified or not, we all end up boxed into a coercively defined destiny based on nothing more than the configuration of one particular body part.

Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of victims of trans-related violence are women. This sends a strong message that it is unacceptable to value femaleness or femininity, or to consider these states preferable, empowering or fulfilling. MtF spectrum individuals embody a fundamental challenge to the assumption of male superiority. Who could possibly be happier as a woman than as a man? Who would want to trade the almighty phallus for the lowly vagina? Along with using violence and fear to enforce a gender binary, it uses the same to enforce patriarchy.

These messages are internalized into our culture. They mean something very, very real. There are untold many who remain in their prescribed gender roles only out of fear of retribution.

But this day isn’t about gender theory or politics or the struggle forward for the living. It is about recognizing, remembering and respecting those we’ve lost. But a big aspect of respecting them is to recognize what it is they died for. They sacrificed their lives for the idea that all of us, regardless of where we fall within the various spectrums of gender and sexuality, can express ourselves and exist exactly as we are, exactly as we feel ourselves to truly be. They died to build a world where we needn’t live in fear and compromise, where we needn’t apologize for our gender. Where our identity is our own. Where biology is not destiny.

So if you get a chance today, please take a moment to pause and think, or to grieve. Perhaps light a candle. Perhaps reflect a bit on the freedom that you may enjoy to express your gender in a manner that is honest and comfortable, or reflect on those who may not yet have that privilege. Perhaps reflect on how valuable and meaningful that is, what it is to feel at home in your body. Remember that it is something that some people have given their lives for.

Read the whole post here. (Hat tip to the Twitter feed of No Longer Quivering, a must-read site for women recovering from patriarchal religious abuse.)

Murder Ballad Monday: Martina McBride, "Independence Day"

Jendi Reiter — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 16:14:48 GMT

Continuing our series of songs about women who turn the tables on their abusers permanently, today's murder ballad is country star Martina McBride's "Independence Day". Right and wrong lose their ordinary meanings for a child whose mother's desperate act can only be understood by other survivors.

Winners of the Alabama State Poetry Society David Kato Prize for Poems about GLBT Human Rights

Jendi Reiter — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:03:43 GMT

The Alabama State Poetry Society offers a twice-yearly contest with a variety of themed prizes sponsored by different individuals and poetry organizations. For the Fall 2011 award series, I sponsored the David Kato Prize for poems about the human rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people. (Prizes: $50, $30, $20, plus HM's at judge's discretion.) The award honors a Ugandan gay activist who was murdered this year. With the permission of the authors and the ASPS, I am pleased to publish the winners below.

First Prize:

what more is there to say
by Barry Marks

oh mama mama
oh god mama
how can i not believe
believe you made me what i am
you and papa
god papa what do i say
what do i say when i say who i am
who am i to question you mama
when you say i should not
i should not fit myself into another self
it is not enough that a self is warm
is loving is wanting my self
the self you made the way i am
the way you are
you must be
as i must be
who is anyone to say
to say this does not fit there
or there or where i do not fit
do not fit whose formula
you formed me god mama
god papa should i speak of
god papa on god mama to make
baby god me or was god mama
on top how irreverent how shameful
to think of a god mama god papa
oh my god
mama oh my god
papa if that is so awful
shameful then why should anyone
throw his her mind into my pants
my heart my private self i am
god baby just like they are
just like you are
oh god
mama
oh god
papa
i love you both
i love god
god loves me
what more
is there
to say

****

Second Prize

A Good Holt
by John Foust

I am giving you these words to savor your heartaches.
Am I? I give words to you, salt and pepper, heartaches.

I talk about cold morning and the lift they bring.
The cold splashing of the springs assault icy heartaches.

Standing in the wind waiting for the bus all my life,
It is good to feel warm hands on the vault of heartaches.

Running, all the time running with fare to catch love.
The doors open stepping up, I jolt fares into heartaches.

On the sidewalk, in the coats and swishing, I am alone.
Walking down the street, wrenches bolt tight heartaches.

Row strong in the winter waters of the human stream,
Keep warm, keep a good holt on your hidden heartaches.

****

Third Prize:

daymares
by Janet Anderson

consider the bliss sitting
absolutely still, your
mind completely numbed.
no free-fall ideas trickling
off into childhood, or tomorrows,
only anonymity.

uneasy to be human, to feel
like an outcast with a brutal
imagination. To beat and beat
yourself against your slab of mind,
the convolution of colors raking
into a long, white, outstretched reach,
the flame groping for the spread
of fire, the floating, diving words
wanting out, freedom
from discrimination, freedom
to be, to clam your own bones
to nest in.

****

First Honorable Mention:

Closet Elegy
by Susan Luther

In the middle of the night I felt the urge.
Got up, and went down the hall. It was not
my house, but -- not exactly strange either. I knew
where to find the necessary door. Business finished,
I turned the doorknob back into the room
I had come from. which... wasn't. Was unfamiliar
hostile darkness -- half awake, a blank abyss, nothing
to know who or where I was by, like the time,
staring at Uniform Reality in the reception line
I forgot my own name. No shred of illumination,
adjusted vision. Only black on black
vertigo, the floor capsizing underneath.
Is this how you felt when Alzheimer's first
augured holes -- boarded entrances -- into your mind?
How you felt before, under the sentence of your daughter's
(to you) banish-imperative not-in-my-house bad news? Is this
how she felt you felt have felt feel, others feel, trapped
in telescoping rooms of denial panic incomprehension
difference Open the door Open the door OPEN THE DOOR

****

Second Honorable Mention

the right to be very human
by Catherine Moran

And I say,

being human holds all the glamour
of a rainy picnic on Mars.
We have to fashion our own umbrellas
to hold the elements at bay,
and juggle to keep
the food warm and ready.
All the while we project a certain image
demanded by the social circle.
Those who don't look like they belong,
are left drifting into puddles
and being soaked by stray drops.

And I say,

everyone has a right to be warm and dry
at the picnic.
Loving and caring for another person
is the most basic human gift
we can bestow on each other.
Sexual orientation
matters little when it comes to kindness.
And when one person
touches
the deep humanity of another with a spirit
of love and concern,
we are being the best creatures we can be.

And I say,

what people wear or
with whom they prefer to spend their time
become such a minor issue.
In a world where humanity can
dish out meanness like a leftover casserole,
any semblance of compassion
is as welcome as fresh thyme.
Being human has its drawbacks.
If we can open the umbrella a little wider,
the picnic can progress
with everyone dry
and plenty to eat.

****

Third Honorable Mention

Prometheus Bound
by Caren Renee Davidson

You met the cold hammer
Cast from Vulcan's own fury.
You chose to have the fires
Show the sameness
of your face.
You are still Prometheus
the Teacher.

Historic Homecoming for GLBT Alumni at Wheaton, an Evangelical College

Jendi Reiter — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 20:08:35 GMT

Wheaton College in Illinois has been called the Harvard of the evangelicals. Longtime readers of this blog may recall my reports from their theology conferences on the Trinity and spiritual formation. Though at one time I felt nourished by immersion in a community of serious Christian intellectuals, my shifting political sensibilities eventually made me too uncomfortable to return to an environment where non-heteronormative lives were (at best) erased.

That's why I was particularly happy to receive the latest Soulforce e-newsletter, which featured a report on OneWheaton, "a community of LGBTQ's and allies at Wheaton". This month, some 600 members took the bold step of attending Wheaton's homecoming weekend as openly queer alumni and allies. Here's an excerpt from the newsletter:

"This is a real coming out, being here, being ourselves," said Frances Motiwalla, a 2000 Political Science graduate. "That's what this weekend is all about. This was a reassertion of our whole self as part of the community."

Motiwalla joined dozens for whom this past weekend was their first time returning to their alma mater. Most gay Wheaton alumni never return to campus, associating their college years with shame, loneliness, and marginalization. But in a show of pride and courage, over 50 rainbow clad alumni spanning the classes of '54 through 2013 ate together in the school's cafeteria, attended the sold-out Homecoming football game, and showed their families around campus.

They kicked off the weekend with a free concert by Jennifer Knapp, a Christian musician who recently came out as lesbian, and a panel led by LGBTQ Wheaton graduates. OneWheaton explains that most LGBTQ Wheaton alumni never return to campus because of too many negative associations and hurtful memories. This homecoming weekend, however, saw over 50 rainbow clad alumni going back to 1954 and even current students eating together in the cafeteria, attending the football game and showing friends and family around campus.

The groups explains that the weekend, besides a few stares and off-hand comments, was a success in engaging students in conversation and providing some reconciliation for alumni. Said the group's Co-Director Ruth Wardchenk, "When I drove onto the campus Friday I was there for the first time in 15 years and I burst out in tears. I was home and I was no longer afraid."

While the school is not officially budging on the issue yet, their impact was certainly felt on campus. Wrote one student, "Thank you for coming to campus this weekend... I don't quite know what I think yet, but you've got me asking questions and thinking. So, thank you so much for coming back to Wheaton."

Click here to support Soulforce's Equality Ride, which brings the message of inclusion to Christian colleges across America. Click here to sign OneWheaton's statement of support, share your story, or find resources to end your isolation.

Murder Ballad Monday: Dixie Chicks, "Goodbye Earl"

Jendi Reiter — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 19:50:02 GMT

Ever wonder why so many pop songs and folk ballads feature men killing their intimate partners? "Banks of the Ohio", "Delia's Gone", "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" (well okay, that one IS by The Killers, what do you expect)...they're so catchy, I hear myself singing along, and then I cringe. Score one for feminism against fun? Nope, not according to the Dixie Chicks. Getting back at an abuser has never been such a blast. Even dead Earl can't keep from dancing.

Holidays, History, and Idols

Jendi Reiter — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:41:32 GMT

This weekend I heard a creative and challenging sermon linking our celebration of Columbus Day to the Biblical story of the Israelites worshipping the golden calf. Our preacher acknowledged the human impulse to create a tangible symbol of connection to the God we love. With Moses up on the mountain and God seemingly silent, a people adrift in a strange land needed an anchor for their devotion. This embodied imagination is the source of great religious art, but paradoxically, it can also create hindrances to knowing God. We mistake our concepts for the real God, who actually exceeds our comprehension. God became angry with the Israelites because He was trying to move them forward from concrete and magical thinking, toward openness to His infinite mystery.

The stories that we tell about ourselves as a people, said our preacher, can become an idol as well. Like the golden calf, the celebration of Columbus's "discovery of America" helped unify and reassure a nation of displaced immigrants seeking a new common identity. But like the calf, this story is limited and distorts reality, erasing the genocide of Native Americans and implicitly judging their nomadic occupation of the land as less than its highest and best use.

I'm not content to leave this analysis with an easy moral, as both admirers and detractors of Columbus are wont to do. Had the Europeans not arrived at (discovered, colonized, civilized, exploited) the continent we call North America, later generations might not have had a refuge to survive other genocidal situations. These include my own Jewish ancestors, who fled from pogroms and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. Some historians include the Irish Potato Famine as an example of genocide, citing British prejudices as a cause of the government's inadequate response. Many Irish emigrated to America because of that disaster.

Secular, commercialized holidays simply can't capture the tragic complexity of cross-cultural encounters in a world of scarce resources. The Bible does it better. It includes stories where the Israelites are persecuted, stories where they are rewarded for their faith, stories where they become the oppressors of the poor and the alien, and stories where they just screw up. If we read any one of these stories without the others, it becomes an idol too. Just look at the Middle East today. I believe the Jews needed a homeland after the Holocaust, and I also believe they are oppressing the Palestinians today. We like stories with heroes and villains, but maybe we should ask what it would mean for God to triumph, rather than our side.