a curious Yankee in Europe's court

The poet-writer

In thinking about a recent publication of a book of poems by Sheila Alexander (1918-1984), I can’t stop wondering what this remarkable poet and writer would wish to have said about her. It strikes me as a question Alexander herself might have pondered, given some confusion and neglect in critiques about her previous published writing.

Very much on the plus side were some encouraging words from the first US writer to win a Nobel Prize in Literature, Sinclair Lewis. The young Alexander took night courses at the University of Minnesota and was fortunate to have Lewis as one of her instructors. In a private letter to Alexander, Lewis praised her first published novel, “Walk With a Separate Pride”:

…Separate Pride isn’t merely a promise that urges you to go on – though it is that too. It is in itself a fine achievement, original and full of power.” (April 28, 1947)

 

But then there was this damning-with-faint-praise piece from the New Yorker:

Probably only women will want to bother with this novel, another of those stream-of-consciousness stories about a pregnancy. Mrs. Alexander, who is possessed of a lively imagination… and a poetic cast of mind, almost certainly does not speak for the typical expectant mother. It is possible though that she has pioneered a rich field that almost any lady author in search of a subject can make her own.” (April 19, 1947)

 

Similar ambivalence came in a whirlwind of conflicting commentary in a review in the New York Times:

Probably no mere man could ever properly appreciate “Walk With a Separate Pride”… How could a man be expected to understand all that there is to understand in a book that is entirely about having a baby? Yet, since Mrs. Alexander’s book is not an obstetrical text but a novel of unusual emotional intensity, it is to a certain extent news in the world of books and cannot be ignored. So, doing my best to suppress any natural masculine diffidence, I will now try to describe a completely feminine book… (April 2, 1947)

 

The NY Times reviewer went on to describe the book as an astonishing performance and an amazing tour de force. Then with a condescension breathtaking in its disdain, the critic summed up by declaring that though women readers may find pleasure in the emotion described in the book, “… it is not remotely likely that any man would choose to read ‘Walk With a Separate Pride’ of his own free will.”

To be fair, the two reviewers were expressing societal views toward women that were overwhelmingly the cultural norm at the time. Pointless here to bash them for airing sexist perspectives. And it’s doubtful that the brutal condescension came as much of a surprise to Alexander. A consistent theme in her writing, presented clear-eyed and without bitterness, is a powerful sense of the world as it is.

Noting the head-spinning confusion in these reviews, however, serves well to illuminate the magnitude of the task the very courageous Alexander took on in writing her first published book entirely about having a baby, to quote the flabbergasted reviewer. How truly extraordinary that Alexander wrote and won publication of this book in a time of such overriding and contemptuous dismissal of childbirth as a minor matter that could possibly interest women, but never men!

Blinded by the unapologetic sexism of their time, the reviewers in two of the most important publications in the country missed completely the true literary feat of Alexander’s novel — creation of a groundbreaking narrative, poetically personal, that explores the inexorable proximity of birth and death. Recognition of this theme did come in an introduction to an excerpt of ‘Separate Pride’ from North Country Reader: Classic Stories By Minnesota Writers, Editor Jean Ervin, (1979/2000):

It was the pervasive atmosphere of death during the Second World War that moved her to write of a young woman about to give birth to her first child.

 

Though brief, this sentence calls up a vivid image of the worldwide catastrophic events of the times Alexander had just lived through. It locates for us the powerful genesis of the imaginative leap that became ‘Separate Pride.’

Alexander’s depth and ambition of perspective can be seen in the excerpt below from the third chapter of the book. The very pregnant protagonist Nessa is sitting in a waiting room full of other pregnant women, all waiting to see the doctor. It’s titled “Intimately, As Women With Strangers”:

Nessa looked along the row of faces opposite her. She remembered the Chinese poem that began, ‘Since there is joy in suffering for a woman,’ and her ear made soundings for the ripe and authentic word in the harsh flow of their speech. When you only listen, she thought, you don’t impose yourself. When you stare they hate you like an animal would hate you; eyes excite them to a deep rage. But you must get as close to them as they will let you come, even when you have a sensation of suffocation, of oppression; not because they are people only, but ill, people with mortal problems and mortality, with their deaths in them, and living things leaping under their clothes, and not simple as you had once supposed but unendurably complex, each with a labyrinth brain, each heavy with childhoods, mothers, fears, and deaths. They are so excessive, and you try to understand them because that’s all you can do, and they try to understand you, and it is the trying that matters…

 

Alexander was born in Davenport, Iowa in 1918. While taking night classes in writing at the University of Minnesota, her instructors included both Sinclair Lewis and Robert Penn Warren. She was married and had three children at the time she published her first novel. And even though the praise was restrained, to win reviews of her novel in such prestigious publications as the New Yorker and The New York Times was in itself a remarkable achievement.

Alexander’s second novel, “King’s X” won the Eugene F. Saxton Award, and her poetry was published in Poetry magazine.

Colin Alexander, son of Sheila Alexander, in Rome (Oct 2012)

The son’s tribute

In deciding how to pay homage to the life and work of his mother, Colin Alexander chose to use the writer’s own words. The tribute is a series of nine poems written by Alexander following a first time trip to Egypt in 1974. Previously unpublished, the poetry was transcribed directly from voice recordings and manuscript compositions made by Alexander between 1974-1977 (see introduction).

Each of the poems describes a historic site Alexander saw during the trip to Egypt. Though the places are routine stops on a tourist’s itinerary, Alexander, with her characteristic depth of perspective, offers far more than a mere travelogue view. History, humanity, cosmos, philosophy and metaphor weave together as the poet regards the mix of ancient and modern world before her.

From the opening poem, Son et Lumière, describing a night visit to the pyramids:

Lights kiss the shapes.
The pyramids are on stage
But once you look up,
The sky is full
Of wicked smiles.
Stars think they know everything.
Only the moon
Admits her faults,
Waxing, waning —
A dust ball, a sweet wooer,
Leaning
Out of her blackness
Like a woman at a window.

“The Egyptian Cycle” is available in paperback and ebook through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com and Powell’s Books.com.

The video above is a promotional spot for the protests tomorrow by Italian women against Silvio Berlusconi in various cities of the country (“Lo spot con Isabella Ragonese“ la Repubblica, Feb 7, 2011). Ragonese is an Italian actress.

From Ansa.it (Italian women to stage anti-Berlusconi rallies, Feb 11, 2011)

Women will take to the streets of Italy’s cities on Sunday calling on Premier Silvio Berlusconi to resign after prosecutors this week requested he be sent to trial for allegedly using an underage prostitute.

The world as we know it still has need of strong leaders, be they perfect or most definitely not. For my part — though I’m often  gloomily skeptical about the state of the world (Eeyore move over) — I take some comfort in seeing those few women leaders we have now calling the shots for good or ill here and there.

One of those few is here in Europe, the increasingly powerful German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Not everyone is happy with her and some are furious, judging by reports in the English language press I’m reading. Well, I’m not cheering wildly for so many of her moves either. My political preferences are a bit left of Chancellor Merkel’s.

But the gender factor in leadership in this case is at least some compensatory pleasure.

Those pros and cons

There’s always some opinion somewhere, though, predicting Merkel’s imminent departure at the hands of grumpy German voters. An in-depth feature at Yahoo! News this week tracks the mixed reviews she receives at home and elsewhere (“Special Report: The two lives of Angela Merkel” by Andreas Rinke and Stephen Brown, Nov 16, 2010).

But an article in yesterday’s Spiegel Online International reports that, at least, when it comes to her position as leader of her party, Merkel is now more secure than ever (“The Beginning of the Merkel Era” Nov 16, 2010).

We smile coyly through our tears.

Online now at the Financial Times (and not behind their paywall – yet) is a feature listing the top 50 women in world business, see here.

In a related piece, the FT features a five-minute video interview with a woman truly at the top on the world political and economic stage, French finance minister Christine Lagarde (“Lagarde speaks out on female quotas” Nov 16, 2010).

Answering questions from FT editor Lionel Barber, Lagarde acknowledges a recent change of mind about what’s needed for women to move beyond being an endangered species in politics around the world and in company board rooms.

Excerpt:

Barber: And in practical terms, do you favor quotas to strengthen women’s representation on boards?

Lagarde : Well, when I was a lot younger, I was dead against quotas. I thought at the time that, you know, we should be accepted on our own merits and everybody’s terms. But as I’m getting older, I see that it’s moving on too slowly. And I support quota. I support quota in companies. I support quota in the political circles as well. There are not enough women at the top…

Lagarde was in London as a keynote speaker at the FT‘s Women at the top Conference this week. Click on video link above to hear full FT interview. Go here to read more about Lagarde’s speech at the conference.

A video in the Sunday magazine of the New York Times is a visual poem in praise of the “power game” now in women’s tennis. It’s breathtaking to see.

Watch here (“The Beauty of the Power Game” directed by Dewey Nicks, Aug 25, 2010).

In a blog post Sunday in the New York Times, philosopher Susan Blackmore explains why human beings copying each other in all kinds of ways is a very good thing (“The Third Replicator” Aug 22, 2010). In fact, she argues, it is essential to our development and progress.

In the post, Blackmore discusses memes (rhymes with cream). She also coins a new term “temes” (technological memes). Both terms are all about the act of imitating.

Excerpt:

“Whatever the reason, our ancestors began to copy sounds, skills and habits from one to another. They passed on lighting fires, making stone tools, wearing clothes, decorating their bodies and all sorts of skills to do with living together as hunters and gatherers. The critical point here is, of course, that they copied…”

Read the full post here.

Whenever I read a P.D. James mystery novel, at some point I always find myself thinking about James herself. I begin to wonder especially how many of James’ personal perspectives are expressed in her most famous character Adam Dalgliesh.

It’s not always an admiring curiosity I’m feeling because I find the poet-policeman himself (don’t shoot me, Dalgliesh lovers) somewhat prim and grayish in personality, even as the plots themselves – and especially the other characters — are particularly engaging.

Today, James is celebrating her 90th birthday. For the occasion, she sat for a video interview with the Guardian. And what a special treat it is for James fans to hear the Baroness herself talk about her life and her work (“PD James: ‘Some people find conventions liberating'” interviewed by Sarah Crown, Aug 3, 2010). Thank you, Guardian!

In the brief interview, the overlap between the author personally and her star creation Dalgliesh are discussed, along with other interesting questions. I especially applauded James’ comments about how women are treated (abused) in present day crime fiction.

Most important, of course, is there another Dalgliesh book on the way? James answers that too — sort of.

If you want to change the world, as they say, and still don’t understand how important social media (Twitter, Facebook et al) is as a primary tool, then you might want to watch this short video featuring digital strategist, Cheryl Contee.

Contee was speaking at the Netroots Nation conference (ending today) in Las Vegas. She highlights some important statistics about who’s using social networking media, and offers a few powerful dos and do nots for social activists and organizations.

For example, Contee explains why now “there is no digital divide.”

Though the conference is USA focused, the info about Twitter and Facebook is applicable across the globe.

Can’t resist posting another Rosey Chan video (previous here).

In about a month from now, on August 21, Australia’s first ever woman Prime Minister Julia Gillard will find out if the voters of the country also want her in the government’s top spot.

According to a Guardian Weekly story last week, Gillard’s Labor Party has pulled ahead  in the national polls (“Julia Gillard calls snap Australian election” by Peter Beaumont, July 18, 2010):

The country’s first female prime minister, Welsh-born Gillard was appointed by the ruling Labor party as the government faced what seemed like certain electoral defeat, and a party coup saw Kevin Rudd ousted. Since then, however, Gillard has been credited with rebuilding support for her party, to an extent that Labor is narrowly ahead in the opinion polls.

Below is a video of Gillard last Saturday announcing her decision to call for the August election:

Piano performer Rosey Chan — “A day in the life…” (J S Bach).

As of today, Australia has its first ever woman prime minister, Julia Gillard. Given the dismal statistics (here and here) on women in political leadership worldwide, it’s news that calls for popping the cork on a bottle of spumante, or maybe even two.

And from what I can tell, when the unexpected opportunity arose, Gillard simply had the courage and smarts to step forward and ask for the top job. See Guardian article today (“Julia Gillard becomes Australia’s first female prime minister” June 24, 2010).

Excerpt from the Guardian:

The 48-year-old who came under attack in 1998 when she entered parliament for being single and childless, said it was also an important milestone for Australian women.

“I think if there’s one girl who looks at the TV screen over the next few days and says ‘Gee, I might like to do that in the future’, well that’s a good thing,” Gillard told reporters.

And from Wikipedia:

In a 2007 interview, Gillard stated: “I used to think I wanted to be a school teacher. There was an English teacher at Mitcham Primary [in Adelaide], who was a real stickler for standards and grammar and punctuation but who was also very kindly. I thought teachers were good; I thought it would be a rewarding job, seeing the eyes of young people light up with new information.

I got talked out of that ambition for good or for ill by a school friend’s mother, who said, ‘No, you’re really good at arguing and debating, you should try law.’ If I hadn’t been pre-selected for the seat of Labor and run successfully in the 1998 election, I’d probably still be somewhere in and around the law; public sector law perhaps. Maybe giving tutorials, trying to pound law into other people’s heads.

And from AlJazeeraEnglish:

This morning as I was taking my daily walk through the center of the small town where we live, I saw an older woman, carrying a bag of groceries, pause as she reached the the top of some steps she had just climbed. She was limping a little and obviously taking a moment to catch her breath after the climb.

Two other women, coming from opposite directions, called the woman by name and hurried toward her. In a good-natured but insistent manner, the two friends began a small argument about which one would get to carry her groceries home for her.

The matter was still unresolved as I passed by, but I suspect all ended well.

In this short video of a Guardian interview with young Pakistani poet and journalist Fatima Bhutto, she speaks in a compelling way about how things have gone so wrong in her country (“Hay festival video: ‘Power is violence in Pakistan'” June 3, 2010).

Embodied in her words, it seems to me, is a frightening warning for the citizenry of all countries, including my own.

Excerpt:

We have for the last 63 years of our country’s history allowed those in power to be above the law. We have laws and bills and acts safeguarding those in power, protecting them from questions, protecting them from recrimination, protecting them from the consequences of their often corrupt and criminal legacies.

And the people are protected by nothing, but held hostage by silence.

When I began listening just now to the video of the commencement address that Nobel Prize Laureate Muhammad Yunus gave yesterday to some very lucky students at Duke University, my intention was to excerpt only a few sentences to accompany the video posted here. But Yunus’ words and ideas are so extraordinary that, as you can see,  I couldn’t stop transcribing.

With occasional wry touches of humor,  Yunus describes his kind of capitalism in action. It is astounding. This is a capitalism that is nothing like the rather awful deformity that is dominating our world now.

(The talk was less than 20 minutes — my transcription begins about four minutes in)

…I am very happy to be receiving this honorary degree. Not too many people are giving honorary degrees to bankers anymore…

You have just heard about my work, creating Grameen Bank. When I went back to Bangladesh, teaching economics, I had no idea that I would someday get involved in banking. I had no idea about banking. I didn’t have any learning about banking. But circumstances forced me into it. And since I didn’t know anything about banking, that became a big help for me. I didn’t have to follow their rules. I just looked with my eyes and saw what was there and tried to respond to the problems that I saw, and created a banking system that now looks like exactly the opposite of the conventional banks.

If I knew the rules, probably I would not be able to break those rules. Since I didn’t know it, I didn’t have any problem creating new rules and breaking all of them. Conventional banks go to the rich, we make sure we go to the poor. The poorer you are, the more attractive you are for us. If you are the poorest, we kind of celebrate that we found you. And it’s our job to find resources for you so you can change your life.

And we created a bank where we emphasize the women. Conventional banks mostly go to men, we decided to go to women. It changed their lives, it changed their families, it changed the country. The most dramatic thing that happened in Bangladesh in the last 25 years — any visitor to Bangladesh will tell you this — it is the empowerment of women. The status of women has changed so much from how it was 25 years back. One after another you see the differences that it made to people’s lives and the whole society.

And we created a bank, unlike conventional banks which are owned by the rich. We made the Grameen Bank owned by the poor. And owned by the poor women. So all the borrowers of Grameen Bank own the bank. Unlike the traditional way of thinking that you have to have donations and assistance from the government to run something for poor people, we defied that. We created a bank which runs by its own money. We just take the profits, just like any other bank, and lend that money to the poor women. We lend out $100 million a month, and all this money comes from the profits of the bank. And the bank makes profit, the profit goes back to the borrowers as dividends because they own the bank.

We concentrated on the children of the borrowers of Grameen Bank. We wanted to make sure they do not remain illiterate like their parents, who are totally illiterate. We made sure all the children go to school. And we’re very happy that we succeeded in that. And then we saw streams of these children going up the levels of education and coming to higher education. We gave them education loans to continue with higher education. So we have thousands and thousands of students in medical schools, engineering schools, universities all around the country. Many of them have completed their Ph.Ds.

And sometimes when I meet these young people, try to understand their problems, one common frustration they come up with, they say “We have education, we are finishing that. But what about our jobs? There’s no jobs in the country.” So I started telling them, “Look you are very privileged young people. You are privileged because your mother owns a bank. Why should you be looking for jobs? You should be taking a pledge. And that pledge will be, I’m not a job seeker, I’m a job creator. And prepare yourself to be a job creator. So change your mentality from just being in the employment market, to finding a job, looking and knocking at everybody’s door. If you feel frustrated that you don’t know how to start a business or something like that, you just look at your mother. She’s an illiterate woman. Many years back she joined Grameen Bank. She was scared to death taking this money in her own hand… but she overcame those fears and she became a successful business person. What good is your education if you are not better than your mother? So why can’t you at least do something with what your mother does, ten times as big, fifty times as big or 100 times as big, if you don’t have any new idea? And gradually you will come up with new ideas.

So we look at these young people, the son and the daughter, and then look at their mother, side by side. And I always come up with the same thought, that I always feel — the mother could have been a doctor too, like her daughter. But she couldn’t even go to school. Is this her fault? Is this something lacking in her? No, nothing is lacking in her. Simply, society never gave her the opportunity to go there.

So I sum up by concluding — poverty is not created by the poor people. Poverty is created by the system that we all built, in which we have to live. And that’s what created poverty. Seeds of poverty are not in the person, seeds of poverty are in the system. Look at the banking, what it does. Refuses to extend its services to the majority of the world population.

Two and a half years back, we started Grameen program in New York City because we were challenged that it could not be done in this country. I always said it could be done anywhere on this planet. So taking that challenge, we started it in Queens, New York in 2008, in January. That’s the year the financial crisis hit the world. So we had an amazing situation — in Queens, the Grameen program with no collateral, no guarantee, was flourishing… On the other side of the street, big banks were collapsing. These big banks told me back in 1976, “Banks cannot lend money to the poor because they are not creditworthy.” So I started asking people in New York, “Can you tell me who is creditworthy now?”

Journalists asked me, “What do you want to achieve in New York City by lending this little money to poor people? I said, “I just have one idea. I hope I can succeed in doing that. If we succeed in New York City — I hope we do — then there’ll be no payday loans in New York City. All these payday loans will be done, finished, with 1000 percent interest, 1500 percent interest. I said, “we are looking for a day when there will be no pawn shops in New York City. There will be no check cashing companies in New York City.” It became successful, we have opened a branch in Manhattan and Brooklyn, another branch in Brooklyn. This year we started in Washington D.C., and San Francisco…

The problem of the system is also in this conceptualization of what we are as a human being. In business, human beings are conceptualized as moneymaking machines. Business means business to make money, nothing else. And on top of it, you have to maximize profit. Except human beings are not a one-dimensional being. Human beings are a multi-dimensional being. They are not just money-making machines. If you can interpret the true human being within the framework of economic theory, then the world would be very different.

So I’m suggesting that we create another kind of business. The existing business is built on the selfishness of human beings. Everything is for me, nothing for others. But there is selflessness in all human beings. Every human being has this quality. And we create a business on the basis of selflessness. Everything is for others, nothing for me…

You have options now as young people graduating. You’ll be coming up with the idea, “What do I do? Do I work for a profit-making company or do I work for a social business? Or do I create a social business or do I create a profit-making business?” It’s up to us to decide. It’s an option, it’s not something anybody’s forcing on you.

A social business is a business dedicated to solve the problem. Any problem you see can be solved with a creative mind. Individuals become very powerful.

I was in Glasgow, and one of the problems they were discussing with me — they have thousands of families in Glasgow City who are on third-generation unemployment. I said, “How come?” They said, “Because of our welfare system.” I said, “That’s a shame. If I was one of those who is in third-generation unemployment, I’d be suing the government for crippling me. I’m not a crippled person, I’m a fullbodied human being. I have the creative energy, I can take care of myself.”

So in the discussion we decided to start social businesses to get unemployed people who remain unemployed for generations, to get them into opportunities and get out of the system they are forced into. So you see around us, whatever problem we see, we can create a social business. That’s the creative energy you all have as an individual. Each individual, each human being has the power, enormous power to change the world. And you have it. Are you going to use that to change the world? That’s the question I raise with you.

Tanti auguri!

Love this. “Fools” from the cd Bible Belt – Diane Birch

A highly readable telling of the center-stage action in the Greece-Euro-EU-Germany squabbling of recent months was offered this week by Gavin Hewitt, BBC‘s Europe editor (“Greece and the story of George and Angela” May 3, 2010).

Even for those in faraway lands who pay less attention to Europe than they do to passing clouds, Hewitt’s informative narrative of the high-stakes duel between Germany’s Angela Merkel and Greece’s George Papandreou is easy to follow.

Excerpt:

So round after round they eyed each other. As the cost of borrowing increased for Greece George played his club card. They were all in the European family together. He waved the flag of European solidarity, guessing correctly that others , particularly EU officials, would come to his side. He was after a big loan that would persuade the financial markers to back off. Angela didn’t buy into this. Greece had to do more…

Saw the link to Hewitt’s piece on Bloggingportal.eu.