Small Successes II: Success with Sonnets!

My life so far in April has been characterized by hope, uncertainty, disappointment, and hope all over again--so basically stress--the cause of which is an unexpected and un-looked-for job possibility at a school I applied to in August for a completely different position.  None of this has anything to do with my current adjunct class, which has been rolling along.  So I'd like to describe another success.

This activity was designed to give students a sense of the expressive potential of sonnets, the shifts in the poems, and different possible interpretations of individual poems.  First, I found pairs of actors' interpretations of individual sonnets.

Sonnet #	Read by
12	David Tennant
	John Gielgud
18	Tom Hiddleston
	David Tennant
	Michael York
29	Matthew Macfayden
	Patrick Stewart
73	Andrew Motion
	John Bell
116	Patrick Stewart
	Juliet Stevenson
	John Gielgud
130	Alan Rickman
	Daniel Radcliffe**
	Stephen Fry
	Tom Hiddleston
	American Sign Language Version
144	Niamh McGrady

Students were asked to follow these steps:

1. Read the sonnet. Record your reactions below—the subject(s)/topic(s) of the poem (such as the beloved and immortality, or thepower of literature/poetry), the speaker’s attitude toward the subject, the thesis/argument that the poem is making about the subject,the tone and/or mood of the poem.2. Listen/view one reading of the poem from the list. What mood does the actor portray? Does the actor’s mood change? Record wherethe actor changes the mood (line 5? Between the second and third quatrain? Etc.) Does this reading agree with your own? Does itchange your impression?3. Listen/view a second reading of the poem from the list. What mood does the actor portray? Does the actor’s mood change? Recordwhere the actor changes the mood (line 5? Between the second and third quatrain? Etc.) How does the second performance compareto the first?

I also created a worksheet with a chart to help students to be able to record these observations--because poetry analyses, in particular, need some structure!

The responses were good overall--better when the student wrote a bit more about the poem initially, when there was a significant contrast between the two versions, or when one version impacted the student's initial interpretation gained from reading the poem.  Sometimes, I suspect that the readings actualy influenced an interpretation where none had existed before--also a good thing.  And frankly, I really enjoyed finding the sonnets.  It was gratifying that the videos were able to substitute for discussion of interpretations, giving a sense of what the sonnets were about, as well as their ambiguities (the versions of #130 were particularly good for this).  I believe the students enjoyed the readings as well.

After they completed the worksheet activity, I had them post a comparison/contrast of two versions of the same sonnet to a discussion forum to share with the class--the online equivalent of a brief presentation and an assignment follow-up that I require often, since they are learning from each other to a large degree.  I haven't looked at these yet, but the forum theoretically gives students the opportunity to bring their ideas together into paragraphs rather than leaving them in the chart.

Remembering What I Like. . .

I love poetry. I love talking about poetry and teaching poetry. I only enjoy rhetorical analysis insofar as it resembles close readings of the language of poetry and discussion of how the poem "works." I like that poetry comes in small packages (usually, that is), and can be read quickly, even on the spot, and yet packs in so much meaning that you can spend hours pondering words and ideas, and always have something to come back to. I love the rhythm of poetry, the way sounds work together. I have not spent so much time working with poetry that I no longer enjoy it--and I don't think that will happen. I fact, I'm not entirely sure I could write a long, conference-style paper on poetry. It's not something I've had the opportunity to try, actually. So the irony is, I'm not technically "qualified" to teach poetry. But I do love it, all the same. . .

Quiet Resignation vs. Heroic Defiance

Perhaps all Christians in general, but certainly Catholics in particular, hear a lot about acceptance of God's will. I am reminded of one woman's story of her conversation with a Protestant minister as she labored under the influence of RU-486 to deliver her child that had died in the womb (found courtesy of Entropy's blog). The story highlights how she, backed by Catholic theology, was much more willing than the Protestant minister to attribute specific redemptive cause to the situation in which she found herself. The story speaks of courage, intelligence, and faith, and shows a certain feistiness as well. She accepts God's will without necessarily liking it, as her analogy shows: God's making me into a sword and I just happen to be at the 'beat the hell out of it stage'. That's okay, because at the end, He will cool me off and polish me up and I will be sparkly and shiny and I will be a sword. But that's not necessarily common in the "accepting God's will" stories we here. My impression is that mostly it's a pretty passive process, and that the truly serene don't question overmuch. At least, that's what we're supposed to think.

Then, there's the issue of "joining one's suffering to the cross"--that is, allowing ourselves to participate in Jesus's sacrifice, remembering his sacrifice and accepting our own more willingly, sometimes even cheerfully. Admittedly, I am in the earlier stages of understanding this. Taken together, these concepts allow us, perhaps, to avoid the rejection of God that so may experience in difficult times, teaching us, instead, that God's love is still with us in difficult times. Through acceptance of redemptive suffering and through remembering Christ's sacrifice in (or by way of) our own pain, we are perhaps drawn down the path towards sainthood. But is everyone called to this kind of acceptance? And if so, why is it so contrary to human nature? Is the human will one of those things, like certain aspects of human sexuality, that must be controlled and contained, even overcome, on the path to holiness?

I admit that these ideas a problematic to me because the"calm acceptance" model rather induces me to expect the worst--as my pregnancy anxieties have no doubt revealed. I am inclined to worry anyway, but somehow along my Catholic journey, I have adopted an idea that runs something like, "If suffering is redemptive, and if so many around me are suffering, and if I'm supposed to join my sufferings to the cross, and welcome them as an occasion for growth in faith, then why the heck should I be spared? Shouldn't it be my turn?" (not in the sense that I want bad things to happen, but because I dread the possibility). My life hasn't been easy, but it hasn't been catastrophically bad, either. When I was pregnant for my son, a good friend who had also been pregnant at the same time in worse circumstances (but miscarried, presumably), died about 2 weeks before I delivered of tragically preventable circumstances. But losing a friend, while terrible, is not the same as what her family experienced. Why them? I hesitate to ask, "Why not me?" but that does seem the natural line of questioning. Were they more "worthy" of the suffering, or more able to deal with it? Or is it simply that I have not had mine yet, and if so, when should I expect it?

Well, clearly, it is counterproductive to go through life expecting it--even fearing it. I really like the line in the novena that I have been praying since Sunday night (thanks to Sarah of Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering!) that says, I am so attached to the things of this world that instead of longing for Heaven I am filled with dread at the thought of death, and clearly it is perfect for me that this is a novena to Our Lady of Hope. So appropriate in so many ways!! But what about that "longing for Heaven"? How much rejection of the world is too much? Can't I rest assured in the knowledge that what I do here for my family and others is valuable, and that God will surely allow me to continue to accomplish those tasks? Or is that arrogant on my part? Is it simply a matter of resignation? "Trust in God" clearly takes many shapes, and sometimes can resemble futility (if we trust that God will send us tragic events and circumstances, no matter what, for His own good reasons) or vanity (if we believe that God will not send us tragic circumstances, because we're too darned important).

So as some part of my brain was pondering this this morning, thinking about my recent anxieties, I thought of one of my favorite poems and one of the most moving poems in the English language. Hmmm. . . Not very Catholic, I thought, but why not? Not everyone is called to be a martyr. At the same time, we believe that God's power and omnipotence can anticipate our defiance, non-acceptance, whatever--and turn it to his purpose. But I wonder, there is much discussion of "Catholic friendly" literature on blogs & such. . . What do we do with this? The poem is about grief, but the tone is attractively and tragically heroic. Is it wrong, somehow, to admire a poem of such angry defiance?:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Incidently, if you have Flash, you can hear the author read the poem here. At least, I think so. Apparently, I don't have flash. But hearing Dylan Thomas read it is incomparable.

You Can Lead a Student to Literature, but. . .

You might gather two things from the title of this post--that I've been much engaged of late with teaching, and that the experience has been less-than-pleasant. The first assumption would be correct; the second, well, you'll see. . .

I am wrapping up the second major work on the syllabus, after the introductory foray into poetry that always begins my lit classes. I love teaching poetry, but it has to be done early in the semester to allow time for the poetry paper-and-presentation combo that I generally assign. They can't work on those without some basic understanding of form, meter, and some basic steps of interpretation. Having wrapped up "Goblin Market" last week, we have been covering William Morris's utopia News from Nowhere because I just couldn't talk about feminism in a serious, unbiased way with Herland. I had a difficult time convincing students that the "it takes a village" method of parenting promoted in Gilman's book had any benefits. "No really!" I said, "Doesn't it make sense that the most competent women should be raising the children?" "Well yes," I said, "It would depend on your criteria for judging competency." And "Yes," I said, "that would be a rather difficult line to draw." And, "Oh by the way," I said, "Gilman was a big proponent of Eugenics." "Why, yes, the concepts are very complimentary, aren't they?" Besides, I'm a poster child for motherhood right about now. Talking about it theoretically gets to feeling a little, um, disingenuous. So I decided to tackle socialism instead. Well, not really.

Because, you see, Morris was a socialist politically, but his utopia basically does away with any form of economics. There is no "economy," just a willingness to share--a communalism (I don't want to say "commune" or "communism") that resembles a large-scale monastic existence (only the economics of it--for want of a better word) more than any other model. Marxists, socialists--they don't really want to see an end to economics. Money stays, private property goes. It may not have started that way--just ask Marx and Lenin. . .

What's interesting about this utopia are Morris's aesthetic ideas, including ideas about the aesthetic value of work. Well, this can be hard to impress upon a group of students whose self-stated purpose in life is to compete and to work to acquire "things." If this sounds harsh, I wish you could see the class discussion boards. I had someone grudgingly acknowledge that there are people who work because they enjoy their jobs, but most can't see why anyone in Morris's utopia would be inclined to work. They suggest instead that the mindset would, in reality, be more like those who "mooch" (my word--their sentiment) off of Welfare. Ooof. Well, considering the financial backgrounds of a lot of these students, I'm not all that surprised.

What is surprising to me is the way they harp on reality. I guess Morris's utopia is realistic enough and yet idealistic enough that the main question in their heads seems to be, "Could this really work?" With the implied answer being, "No, because people are. . ." (nasty, cruel, lazy, competitive--enter negative adjective of choice.) And many of these students are self-described Christians. I must say that it pains me to see students so young who are so cynical. I consider myself a pretty cynical person, but I realize more and more that I have a kind of idealism that runs pretty deep. At any rate, I do believe that there should be more to choosing a profession than the money one will make and the things that one will acquire by working in that particular job! And I do believe that there is a dignity in just knowing that one has a job and that there is a kind of despair that goes along with not believing that a job will ever come along--and that the despair leads people (not all, but some) to rely on social services. Why bother, when the world seems against us? Where I differ from many others who profess similar philosophies is in the solution--namely, that I don't claim to have one. I believe that the individual is the key--not the mass, and so to help the general, we must look for the one person who needs encouragement, then another, then another. My job here is just to get them to look beyond their social situations and their conceptions of reality and say, "Well, yes. . . I guess it would be better if people could do what work appealed to them and still be just as comfortable as the next person." Perhaps the next question might be, "Well, why isn't it like that, anyway?" At any rate, I actually mentioned the term "dignity of work" on the discussion boards, and pointed out that many people work who have no hope of ever gaining a Lexus, or even owning their own home--which so many people take for granted. And I asked why that might be, when many of the people in question do not enjoy what they do.

I guess this brings me to what a wonderful thing discussion boards can be if used correctly. Not that I'm a master by any means. I have modified how I moderate and assign the discussion boards from the beginning of the semester, and I have tried this in semesters past. Basically, I have to have them write questions about certain topics on certain days, and on alternate days, they answer others' questions. Then, depending on where their questions lead, I either use them as discussion-starters in class, or start my own discussion board and have them answer my thematic questions. The result is that they actually say more about the literature--when properly prompted, and when they don't get stuck on "how people really are" or "how the society works"! At any rate, the discussion can evolve much more naturally, and I like having the students set the agenda, since I'm not really trying to promote one (contrary to their expectations--when they saw the term "socialism," they expected the worst from me, I'm sure!!). I'm not a socialist, but at this point, you might have a hard time convincing them of that!

While this is a frustrating experience in some ways, it is also inspiring in a way. Here, I actually do have an opportunity to get them to imagine the world in a different way--which is, indeed, the point of a utopia, and the value of fantasy. C. S. Lewis once wrote that one who reads fantasy “does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted." Tolkien takes this a quite a bit further in his (much more scholarly) "On Fairy Stories," which promises to provide for a lot of good discussion in the coming week(s), by theorizing the nature of the enchantment (in a Christian context, which might inform some of the discussion board topics, but will probably not enter into class discussion).

As we wind down William Morris, who it seems we have barely started, and prepare to meet Tolkien, which meeting I look forward to eagerly, we have ongoing contemplation of poetry on an individual level as they prepare to write their poetry explications (with a fantasy twist). Today I met with a student who was so petrified of poetry that she was literally only reading words on paper, and wasn't really sure how they strung together to make meaning. This sounds harsh, but it is accurate. I have never seen such anxiety with regard to literature before. She was literally shaking as she answered my "What is this poem about? What's going on in this poem?" with a timid, "Well, it could be about . . . death?" I believe that answer seemed as likely as one of the other "Themes of Literature" she undoubtedly learned about in high school. But the beauty of assigning an explication paper is that it really allows the student a true opportunity to discover the meaning of the poem for him or herself--in this case, guided by me, but it was a good teaching opportunity. I believe I did "lead her to literature," and she does indeed understand this poem--and perhaps, by extension, all poems--better.

In short, I really love this syllabus. I hope that wherever I go next, I am able to continue my thematic course on fantasy. Maybe one day I will even be able to edit an anthology of British fantasy literature that can be used for such a course--you know, the Norton Anthology of British Fantasy or some such thing. . .

It's the idealist in me, perhaps (you know, the one I keep hidden like Boober fraggle and Sidebottom), but I think there might be some value in this reading and teaching literature thing after all. At any rate, this semester is giving me that feeling.

Maternal Spirituality, contd.

Okay, so I started to write a really long comment in response to the recent posts from Melanie and Mrs. Darwin, but the more I wrote, the more I began to feel that a new post was in order. The suggestions provided by Melanie and others are great--very solid suggestions, some of which, like praying with the little ones, are things I do. It is nice to hear from Entropy that she, too, feels guilty for getting distracted! And nice to hear about the "selectiveness" of blogs, which I did realize on some level, but there is such a feeling of unmodified reality on some blogs (the ones that I read are like this, but I know more "artificial" blogs exist), that it's easy to get lured in and assume that the serene spirituality of Catholic mommy bloggers is the norm rather than the impression gained from highlights!! C's mention of praying for ourselves instead of others was amusing, especially since there have been real occasions when having someone tell me that they would "pray for me" was rather grating--mostly because of how it was said and my own experiences in Protestant churches when I was younger. My newer religious friends (on and off of blogs) have helped me to see the difference between the judgmental prayer offers and those that proceed from a sincere heart (not that I can tell the difference always, but I do know that having a teacher at a Catholic school say that she will pray for you & your family after a dispute about how she has wrongly insinuated that your child was rude is not appropriate!). I have to admit that Entropy's comment about the VBS teacher raised an eyebrow because I wonder sometimes in what spirit people share their prayer intentions. . . But that comes from a cynical place, and we don't want to go there! I definitely appreciate Melanie's analysis of the Our Father, which draws attention to the neediness of that prayer. While I had certainly thought about the words and heard a wonderful homily once on the meaning behind the imagery in a daily campus mass, I had not really thought about it as asking for things for ourselves. If only these were the main things we asked for! I try to focus on the "Thy will be done" part to the exclusion of the actual things I desire, and it's not always easy. Especially since I doubt my impressions of what I think I "need." This makes me think again of "Et tu, Jen?" who, I believe, has posted on the "need" vs. "want" question, but more in the first fervor of conversion spirit rather than from the place where I now find myself.

But I reintroduced this topic in a new post because I want to come back to the issue that Mrs. Darwin picks up on: just not knowing where to fit everything in a day! It sounds easy--or at least, it sounds like it should be easy--or at least, it sounds like it should be the focus of our daily activities, but really, it's extremely difficult, and difficult to make the time. Like Mrs. D, I do sometimes pray a quick prayer when something strikes me during the day--especially anxiety! I like the praying for the time to pray suggestion, but another issue for me is something I only briefly touch on in the original post--the location. Specifically, I mentioned Mass at the end of my post. Prayer before Mass always seems the most natural and least self-conscious to me. Like I said--it's really the solitude I seem to be missing lately, and without the space and time to think, I just can't feel spiritually satisfied. That's where the question about maternal spirituality comes in--is it necessarily cluttered by things and events and shared with others? What I seem to be hearing in other mothers' experiences is yes. Before my daughter was born, I relished the daily Mass on campus. But all of the times I tried to attend daily Mass when she was younger were abysmal failures. The interesting thing, too, about going to the daily Mass by myself before she was born is that everyone else was safely squared away--my husband was teaching or working (depending on the job), my son was at school. Those were the places where they belonged and I didn't feel the need to be spending time with them--or, more accurately, the want, since I'm with them more because I want to be than because of a sense of obligation!! So I was able to spend this prayerful 25 min. or so twice a week.

Interestingly, what I'm describing is not unlike not being able to find the time to write poetry. The last time I wrote poetry was when I was taking a class, and then I generally wrote the poems the day they were to be workshopped in class. Poetry writing, at least for me, proceeds from the solitude in a given day--the ability to consciously look at the day, it's events, its images, put them together using experiences from the past or present in language that departs from ordinary daily experience and makes us see those experiences differently. I guess something similar is the rationale for this blog, really--to take daily experiences and try to see them differently, to add a little bit of analysis to the events of a given day or week. It somehow requires less solitude to write analytic prose than to write poetry or to pray (and I seem to be seeing those two as somehow analogous). Writing poetry usually made me want to get beyond myself and see things more objectively, which isn't quite the same as what I've been saying about prayer (at least the "objective" part), though getting beyond myself is also a goal for prayer. On the other hand, most of my most successful poems were the deeply self-conscious ones. I think I have exhausted this comparison, however! I can put aside poetry writing indefinitely, even though there is a poem that I began writing shortly after my conversion that I want to finish someday. . . I had a professor who once made the observation that women rarely continue writing poetry after they become mothers because they feel fulfillment and no longer need to write poetry (!). She was a wonderful woman, and this likely says more about her own attitude toward motherhood (she became a mother very late in life) than about female poets!! I think that the reason behind the phenomenon she mentions is simply not being able to find the time for contemplation! (or perhaps not having a suitable space) Which brings me back, in a rather circuitous way, to my subject.

How much of spirituality is determined by the meeting of personal preference (that is, busy-ness vs. quiet contemplation) and opportunity (time and location), and how much is discipline? I could likely ask the same question about dissertation-writing, I guess. (Notice I'm not asking that. . .)

A Fantasy Class Update: Poetry and "Goblin Market"

Since it is occupying my mind a bit lately, I will post occasional updates on the workings of my Intro to Lit class, which is going extraordinarily well. At this point, I rather feel like I ever want to teach anything else, and that I always want to use this syllabus. It's the first time I have ever repeated the same syllabus in intro to lit, mainly because it is the first of my syllabi that I have felt was worthy of repetition. However, I am doing some things differently, simply because of the way the semester has been working, partly because every class dynamic is different. In this case, the dynamic is ideal. It's a small class, which can work either way. A small class of enthusiastic students can be better than a full class of students who are bored stiff and never say anything. But I've had small classes who were neither inspiring or inspired. It's never wise to underestimate classroom dynamic in teaching--the students' interactions with one another, their engagement with the material, the way they interact with and regard the teacher. It's why strategies that work with one class can fall completely flat with another. In this case, we have a good rapport, they are open minded about the course and the assigned texts, and seem to be making a real effort to understand the material being presented. I am thrilled!


My course, as I have said, has a fantasy theme. I begin with an introduction to poetry--what it is and how to read it effectively, the strategies poets use to engage the audience, including meter. I am a big fan of formal verse, and in my poetry-writing days, I favored formal verse above free verse. I still believe that learning to write formal poetry--sonnets and the like, iambic pentameter, iambic trimeter, effective uses of anapestic rhythms, the villanelle and the sestina--is the best strategy for learning the craft of poetry. It trains the ear and teaches the poet a certain amount of restraint. What makes amateur poetry so bad is frequently its sprawling quality--the words and emotions alike are unrestrained, and the audience in invited to wallow with the poet in something raw and unrefined. Good verse--even good free verse--avoids these pitfalls. Of course, I didn't treat my class to this soapbox, but I have been trying to build in them an idea of what makes poetry poetry--and not that it's boring and difficult to understand.

Having introduced poetry (without forgetting the theme of fantasy), with the aid of Shelley's "Ozymandias" and Yeats's "No Second Troy" and with the intention of turning each of them loose on a poem to present to the class and on which to write a paper (explication, more or less), we delved into a little-studied but still canonical poem, "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti. Now, as a rule I tend to avoid Rossetti poetry (especially her brother's), but this is a quirky little poem. Or, as one student told me, a not-so-little poem. How many Victorian poems do you know that were reprinted with original illustrations in a 1970s edition of Playboy? Yeah, didn't think you could name any others! Especially poems whose moral focuses on avoidance of sexual temptation. But consider these lines:

She cried "Laura," up the garden,
"Did you miss me ?
Come and kiss me.
Never mind my bruises,
Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.
Eat me, drink me, love me;
Laura, make much of me:
For your sake I have braved the glen
And had to do with goblin merchant men."

Those are fun lines to read to a class full of undergraduates. It was rather difficult to suppress a smile, though. Th poem is didactic, and Victorian, and an allegory, and written by an incredibly pious poet, and a class full of undergraduates was fascinated, riveted, couldn't put it down. Truly, though I think the verse could be better, the story is compelling, and for that matter, this particular class taught me a certain appreciation for the rhythmic movement of the verse. I suspect it would be better read with a British "ear" rather than with American emphasis and intonation.

Class ended early today, which was fine, as we covered the poem and covered it well. Most of the students expressed surprise at being able to understand the poem and at being interested in the poem. Score one for literature! Classes like this make me realize why I like teaching (don't quote me on that--I frequently state the opposite!). But when I teach, I get a sort of adrenaline rush. Especially when I am well-prepared for class (which happens less than I'd like to admit), and when the student response is positive. A class like this makes it worthwhile to teach every day. It imparts energy rather than sapping it.

Tomorrow they select poems from my "fantasy list" for their presentations/papers. We will also start Gilman's Herland, also a curious piece of work in many ways. Herland is much less often read than "The Yellow Wallpaper," which I can't blame students for hating since they read it ad nauseum and since it is taught in a typically feminist way. Gilman may have some things in common with feminism, but in many ways, she is a poor poster child for the movement. I cite "The Giant Wisteria" as evidence. Hopefully the discussion of Herland will be as productive as "Goblin Market"!

A Rare Pro-life Post: Two Poems, a Lamentation, and a Conclusion

the mother

by Gwendolyn Brooks

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers who never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.

This is one of two poems that I read as an undergraduate that broach the subject of abortion--both of which I find haunting. The second is written by a male poet, Richard Katrovas, a former teacher of mine, who nevertheless attempts in some way to account for the feelings of the woman who has been betrayed by her former lover (or who feels betrayed; it is not quite clear to me whether he has betrayed her or if she feels betrayed because she is estranged from him and yet pregnant--betrayed by her own body, if you will). In this case, the reader's sympathy falls squarely with the male character in this contemporary "dithyramb"; perhaps this is because he (in spite of the refrain, "Yippi-yi-yay, another roll in the hay!") is portrayed less stereotypically than the woman, who fears loss of control and the relegation of her body to the status of mere "meat."

from "Eat What You Kill" by Richard Katrovas

Male Chorus Leader:

Vaguely repentant, even ashamed, I lunged
from one false enthrallment to another,
my affection like a blight of locusts,
though more voracious, quiet, and complete.
Yet when she starved herself to kill the child,
then reported the deed as liberation,
I did not know who or what was free of what
or whom, and cried alone in voiceless dread.

A page or two later, the Male Chorus intones, in an echo of Dionysus's "rescue" by Zeus from the pride of his mother, who wanted to see the true divine face of Zeus:

And the brutal father tore half-formed flesh
from the new charred corpse of its foolish mother,
then stashed the thing inside.

(As, of course, the Male Chorus Leader could not choose to do.) This poem is poignant, but perhaps doomed to obscurity because of its unpopular representation of male opinion in the matter. (I would be naive if I suggested that I did not know that there are many cases in which male opinion in the matter facilitates--even forces--rather than prevents abortion. . . I have known of women whose partners or husbands tried to coerce them into committing the act, and I have also read my Adrienne Rich.) The poet in question would have been fully aware of the danger of representing male opinion as more valuable than female opinion in the matter, and yet he has done so. He further would have known of the danger of representing a female perspective on the subject, yet this he has done as well. . .

Female Chorus Leader:

I am innocent, yet wholly culpable,
and offer no apology or excuse
for self-denial that siphoned another life.
It was my legal right to purge myself.
The termination was not violent,
was not achieved by artificial means.
The thing began as passionate affection;
an assumption of good faith marshaled it
from that crowded zone of nothingness and bliss.
But tenderness recalled became a hell,
and I, alone yet not alone, contained
the literal essence of a bloody lie.

. . . . .

I feel sympathy for mothers who have actually experienced abortion, though I harbor no such emotions (or kind regard) for those individuals in any kind of authority--even the authority of a role model--who promote the process as necessary. I don't believe that anyone (myself included) who has not been in the situation and made and carried out the decision to abort a child can truly understand the mindset of the mother who has taken this action toward her child, any more than one can understand the thoughts of an individual who has just committed suicide. Either action represents a psychological revolt against the innate will to survive. I like the line in Gwendolyn Brooks' poem, "even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate." I can only imagine with difficulty the feelings of desperation that must accompany such an act--though I do not doubt that other feelings may be present also, and that other feelings must for some be present for the individual to cope with such an act. What saddens me, however, is the way that the act is seen as a legitimate "way out" of a difficult situation, and the way that even intelligent, rational women overlook the fact that while this action--the act of carrying and bearing a child, or the act of aborting that same child--impacts their bodies, it impacts the body of someone else as well. But I stand by my thought, above, that to commit the act is the very essence of despair--it is the failure to see hope. And in Catholic thought at least, despair--the failure to see hope--is a denial of God.

I also stand by my belief that where there is life, there is hope. Hence, I must promote life.