Purdah poem by sylvia plath

Many Literary Mothers, A Violin Case, And A Woman on the Subway

Dorothea Lasky

I first started writing poems when I was 7 because I couldn’t sleep and needed something to do and poems were the things I could write to, to an unnamed friend in the nighttime (sometimes her name was Molly, sometimes her name was Blue, sometimes she was people I knew).

But when I was 14 and 15, I gave up on poetry. I don’t think it was that I had lost the word. It was as if I simply closed the door to the voice that spoke to me. I had severe depression and had lost the ability to care if I talked to my unnamed friend in the night anymore. I think she stopped caring about me, too.

When I closed the door as a thing on poetry, it was Sylvia Plath who woke me up. I was in 10th grade, and my poetry teacher, Marjorie Stelmach (a great poet herself), had us do a close-reading assignment and I had to write on Plath’s poem, “Purdah.”

When I read her words, they were like a great invitation. Come back to us, Poetry said. I felt welcomed to the word again and told Mrs. Stelmach that I was a poet, struggling to find the road to words again. She and Plath opened the way. I never stopped writing poetry since. Sylvia Plath and Marjorie Stelmach are my Literary Mothers.

Since I was born I have had a relationship to the female generations past who made me, to the mothers that ebb on in layers in the dark belly of the afterlife. I was named after my grandmother, Dorothea, on my mother’s side. She died 3 years before I was born. In so many ways, I have always waited to be and not be her—having her name especially made her always one of my Literary Mothers.

In her life, one of her great accomplishments was that she was a virtuoso at the violin. She had much promise as a teenager and had even gotten a scholarship to Juillard, but was unable to go because she had to take care of her family in the Depression. We had two of her violins and as a child, I took the violin to mimic her.

I was never allowed to play her instruments, but sometimes my mother would take them out so that I could look at them. My mother is a wild artist, an art historian, a collector of objects—she taught me that you make a thing to give it away, but that you collect the things made by others as sacred talisman.

The inside of a violin case is usually a velvet, sometimes different colors but usually a dark burgundy wine velvet, lush, a wealthy color. One of her violins was in a case that was this traditional red. The other was in a case made up on the inside of a golden velvet. It was the more expensive one and added to its magic was that the velvet on the inside of its case was rare.

Perhaps I have spent this whole lifetime waiting to be the golden velvet. No, I never have been, but I wait. I wait to be. My grandmother and my mother and the violin are my Literary Mothers.

I first read Marina Tsvetaeva seriously nearly 15 years ago. It was Dara Wier, a great poet, one of the most important poetry teachers of my life, who led the way to being a poet with an openness and warmth, who showed her to me. It was with Laura Solomon, a real friend, a great poet, who I studied and taught poetry with years ago, when I was finding my voice (as we hate to say), that I read her.

When I read Marina Tsvetaeva, I realized I was full of a long lineage of passionate sisters who could withstand hell. Laura Solomon, Dara Wier, and Marina Tsvetaeva are my Literary Mothers. They sang to me:

We shall not escape Hell, my passionate

sisters, we shall drink black resins––

The other day I was going to give a poetry reading and I thought of a poem Laura Solomon put on a recording for me of Alice Notley reading a poem about giving a poetry reading. It lasted 15 seconds and went like this: All my life/ Since I was 10/ I’ve been waiting to be in this hell here with you/ All I’ve ever wanted/ And still do

And then, after the mention of hell, Laura put a song on, the recording by Amadou & Mariam called “Senegal Fast Food,” which to me will always be the feeling you have when you decide not to die. Alice Notley and Amadou & Mariam, you are my Literary Mothers.

And the day I read myself in the poetry reading, when I was getting ready to pick out my colors to wear to the reading, I chose hot pink and black (kind of boring) and then I thought about a color to wear for my bracelets (I wear lots of bracelets) and I chose yellow.

And then I thought of a story of my mother and grandmother wearing pink and yellow together, even though you weren’t supposed to (who said so, I don’t know), but that they sometimes defiantly would do so.

So, I thought of them and I wore pink and yellow, and then when I went on the subway this woman sat next to me who said that, “Sorry, if this sounds weird, but I am going to Central Park today to marry myself and I think I was meant to sit next to you because those are my soul colors.”

Marry herself? I don’t know, but that’s kind of rad. So give me another day and I will wear the soul colors of a woman who is that way. Woman on the subway, you are my Literary Mother.

Right before I started writing poems, I would pray to all of the great spirits in the afterworld. Their essence seemed the ultimate benevolence, blue and otherworldly. Hopkins’ spring or the blue that is all in a rush. If I were sad, I would cry in my bed, and then I would feel their kind watery presence washing over me and I would feel better. The great spirits of the afterworld are my Literary Mothers.

The spirit of the golden velvet is a perfect cloud of water, the generations of female poets who know we are the kin. The golden velvet: She is my greatest Literary Mother.

It is said that Anne Sexton kept living and writing as long as she could so as to make a path of violent voice for the ones yet to be who felt as she did. I think of her and I keep going, too.

Voice who calls to me, who says I should be brave and still be here. Voice of everything, you are my Literary Mother.

Recommended reading:

• Mary Jo Bang, Louise in Love • Dodie Bellamy, The TV Sutras • Lucie Brock-Broido, Stay, Illusion • Octavia Butler, Wild Seed • Kate Durbin, E! Entertainment • Fanny Howe, Come and See • Chris Kraus, Torpor • Audre Lorde, The Black Unicorn • Mina Loy, The Last Lunar Baedeker • Bernadette Mayer, The Bernadette Mayer Reader • Eileen Myles, Inferno (a poet’s novel) • Maggie Nelson, Bluets • Ariana Reines, Mercury • Anne Sexton, Live or Die • Gertrude Stein, The Making of Americans

Dorothea Lasky is the author of ROME (Liveright/W.W. Norton, 2014), as well as Thunderbird, Black Life, and AWE, all out from Wave Books. She is also the co-editor of Open the Door: How to Excite Young People About Poetry (McSweeney’s, 2013). Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Poetry at Columbia University’s School of the Arts and can be found online at www.dorothealasky.com.

from: http://literarymothers-blog.tumblr.com/post/89158017711/dorothea-lasky-on- many-literary-mothers-a-violin