Friday May 27, 2016

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After an Absence

After an absence that was no one’s fault
we are shy with each other,
and our words seem younger than we are,
as if we must return to the time we met
and work ourselves back to the present,
the way you never read a story
from the place you stopped
but always start each book all over again.
Perhaps we should have stayed
tied like mountain climbers
by the safe cord of the phone,
its dial our own small prayer wheel,
our voices less ghostly across the miles,
less awkward than they are now.
I had forgotten the grey in your curls,
that splash of winter over your face,
remembering the younger man
you used to be.

And I feel myself turn old and ordinary,
having to think again of food for supper,
the animals to be tended, the whole riptide
of daily life hidden but perilous
pulling both of us under so fast.
I have dreamed of our bed
as if it were a shore where we would be washed up,
not this striped mattress
we must cover with sheets. I had forgotten
all the old business between us,
like mail unanswered so long that silence
becomes eloquent, a message of its own.
I had even forgotten how married love
is a territory more mysterious
the more it is explored, like one of those terrains
you read about, a garden in the desert
where you stoop to drink, never knowing
if your mouth will fill with water or sand.

“After an Absence” by Linda Pastan from The Imperfect Paradise. © W.W. Norton & Company, 1989. Reprinted with permission.  (buy now)

It’s the birthday of novelist and short story writer John Cheever (books by this author), born in Quincy, Massachusetts (1912). He was known as the “Ovid of Ossining” for his stories of suburban life — he lived in Ossining, a suburb in Westchester County. He was a funny man — as his son said, “He’d break a leg to get a laugh.” In 1978, he published a collection, The Stories of John Cheever, and it won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the National Book Award. But he died just four years later, in 1982. Almost 10 years later, his journals were published — accounts that contained revelations of his affairs with men, his depression, and alcoholism.

In The Journals of John Cheever (1991), he wrote: “When I wake this morning and feel the old dog pushing against this bed I feel some deep and simple love for the animal, and that reminds me of the love one feels for other women and men. The word ‘dear’ is what I use. ‘How dear you are.’”

And: “There is some wonderful seriousness to the business of living, and one is not exempted by being a poet. You have to take some precautions with your health. You have to manage your money intelligently and respect your emotional obligations. There is another world — I see this — there is chaos, and we are suspended above it by a thread. But the thread holds.”

It’s the birthday of ecologist and nature writer Rachel Carson (books by this author), born in Pennsylvania (1907). Her best-selling book about the dangers of pesticides, Silent Spring (1962), became one of the most influential books in the modern environmental movement. She wrote: “There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. [...] Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. [...] On the mornings that had once throbbed with the dawn chorus of scores of bird voices there was now no sound; only silence lay over the fields and woods and marsh.”

Today is the birthday of Julia Ward Howe (books by this author), born on this date in 1819. Most people know her as the woman who wrote “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” She was also a writer, a suffragist, and an abolitionist.

Julia Ward was born in New York City. She took charge of her own education, and made good use of the books her brother sent home from Europe. She married Samuel Gridley Howe — a doctor and a teacher for the blind — in 1843. He was 18 years older than she was, and they didn’t always agree on the proper role for a woman. Howe was very traditional and expected his wife to confine her life to the domestic sphere, but Julia was intelligent, educated, and inquisitive. She was fluent in seven languages and longed for a life outside the home. She settled for reading books on philosophy and being a writer. In 1846, she started a novel called The Hermaphrodite. She said, “It is not, understand me, a moral and fashionable work, destined to be published in three volumes, but the history of a strange being, written as truly as I know how to write it.” She never published the book, or even finished it, but it was in a collection that her granddaughter donated to Harvard. A graduate student discovered it in 1977 and it was finally published in 2004.

Howe published two books of poetry: Passion Flowers (1854) and Words for the Hour (1857). Her poems were very frank, and many people — including her husband — felt she exposed too many personal details. Their marriage was strained but they maintained a good working relationship on the inflammatory abolitionist paper The Commonwealth. She also wrote a play, a travel book, and a biography of Margaret Fuller.

In 1861, she accompanied her husband on a trip to Washington, D.C., to deliver medical supplies. She would often sing popular songs of the day with the Union troops. One of those songs was called “John Brown’s Body,” which was a marching song. One early morning, she was struck by the idea of writing new, Christian lyrics to the tune of “John Brown’s Body.” She called her new song “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and it was originally published as a poem in Atlantic Monthly. She was paid four dollars. The song became popular among Union soldiers and, later, among abolitionists. It’s reported that Abraham Lincoln cried the first time he heard it.

After the Civil War ended, Howe became involved with the suffragist movement and other causes to advance women’s rights. She organized the New England Woman Suffrage Association in 1868. In spite of their common cause, Howe and woman suffrage activists Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony often butted heads over matters of strategy and ideology.

In 1908, she became the first woman to be inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She continued publishing; she founded the literary journal Northern Lights, and also Women’s Journal, which she ran for many years. She also helped establish the Mother’s Day holiday, which she envisioned as a solemn day on which mothers from around the globe would meet to discuss world peace.

Julia Ward Howe is the subject of a new biography by literary critic Elaine Showalter. The book is called The Civil Wars of Julia Ward Howe, and it just came out this spring (2016).

It’s the birthday of poet Linda Pastan (books by this author), born in the Bronx (1932). Pastan was an only child and immersed herself in books to keep herself company. She began writing early on, at 11 or 12. When she went off to Radcliffe College, she and some friends went to hear poet Dylan Thomas read at the Brattle Theatre. Pastan was amazed at how he used language. She said, “I would never again think of poetry the same way.”

At Radcliffe, she was a promising student, and won Mademoiselle’s Dylan Thomas Poetry Award. Second prize went to Sylvia Plath, who later made her own mark on the poetry world.

It was the 1950s, though, and Pastan married young and made sure to have a homemade dessert waiting for her husband every night. She had three children and stopped writing for 10 years, until her husband encouraged her to start again. He was tired of everyone telling him what a great poet she would have been if she hadn’t married him. She carved out time every morning to write while her children were at school. Her poems were short, concise observations of domestic life and motherhood. Her first collection, A Perfect Circle of Sun, was published in 1971.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®