The month ended with a bang for me, if poetry readings
can ever be described as having that effect. I was kindly asked to curate an
hour of poetry at the Woodstock Library as part of their Saturday
evening series. Although after forty-some odd years of writing I could easily
fill the hour with my own musings, I decided instead to divide the time up
between myself and three other poets I’ve grown to love and respect. And,
instead of a reading of our own work, I asked them to select a poet or poets
whose work had influenced theirs, and to share that poet’s work as well as a
few selections that reflected that influence.
The variety in the presentation was predictable, and
yet wonderfully rich and surprising in its scope. Marianna Boncek, whom
I’ve known since our days at SUNY New Paltz in the early ‘80s, read the
work of her mother, Barbara Boncek, and her daughter, Rachel Sanborn.
Both are poets of substance, and Barbara was one of the first “civilian” poets
I encountered after graduation. The old Stone Ridge Poetry Society,
which used to meet regularly at the Stone Ridge Library, was my Gateway Group
for poetry endeavors in the real world. Luckily, Marianna included some of her
own wonderful work, inspired by family as well as local history in many
instances.
Michael Platsky,
former host of the currently homeless Harmony poetry reading series, was
another poet I encountered after college. He was a regular at the
testosterone-riddled Tinker Street readings, and his piece about pissing on a
bus tire in NYC as a boy beside Allen Ginsberg has lingered in my mind for
years. Platsky, who is too humble about his own work, read instead the poems of
the late, great Dan Propper, a former Woodstocker and accomplished poet
of the past. I had a chance to hear Propper once or twice in my early poet
days, and have the good fortune to possess a copy of a CD of him reading many
of his greatest hits. Passing the torch is what Woodstock poets do best, and
Platsky honored Propper in excellent form.
My poetry companion Guy Reed, another one who
is too humble for his own good, is a transplant from Minnesota, and the
inspiration for My Minnesota Boyhood, my reimagining of his
childhood on the prairie. In addition to being active on the local poetry scene
for almost two decades, Reed has consistently sought inspiration and
information from academic poets whenever possible. He read the works of three
of his favorites: James Wright, the elder half of one of the few (if not
only) father/son Pulitzer team, the recently passed Jack Gilbert, and
the very much alive Marie Howe, whom he has studied with. Reed’s
commitment to poetry, and his careful study of others’ work, has benefitted his
own voice as well as my own.
I had no choice, really, but to read some of the
better-known poems from, if not my favorite poet these days, at least the poet
I am most identified with publicly. From around 1992 to 2002, I was the host of
the annual Sylvia Plath Bake-Off. It started as a catchy theme for a
monthly reading I was hosting at the AIR Studio in Kingston, and soon
morphed into a life of its own. Eventually, we attracted the attention of Pillsbury,
who apparently owns the copyright to the phrase “Bake-Off.” This inspired me to
add a baking contest to the already chaotic proceedings.
For those interested in more details, here’s a link to
an account I authored for Plath Profiles, an academic publication
devoted to, of course, all things Plath:
But, more important for me these days is how far, and
how close, I have come to Plath and her predicament. One of the many reasons
the Bake-Off, with all its smarm and casual swagger, would no longer be possible
for me is because I have lived through all the ages that Plath did, and then
some. I have been an artist, a woman, a wife, and folks, the struggle is real,
and continues to this day. I was never inclined to motherhood, and give her
credit for the effort she put into those dual careers that women seem to
believe they must carry in order to be judged at least equal to their male
counterparts. Motherhood would have broken me.
Motherhood may have been part of what broke Plath, but
she was challenged from the beginning. What is a marvel is how much she
accomplished in her short life. When I was the age she was at her death, I was
starting another new chapter, moving to Albany, taking a shot at grad school to
see if academia was where I belonged after all. It was not. Her work overall is
excellent, although most of it weighed down with the visible labor of her
efforts. Her final year, the poems she knew would “make” her reputation, burn
with the fire of Lady Lazarus. In many ways there was nowhere for her to go
from those heights.
I don’t take her life, her death as lightly as I once
did. Like the women in Romeo & Juliet, I have passed from being Juliet, to
her mother, and rapidly approach the role of Nurse, laughing at the gravity,
weeping at the innocence of passion. As I have aged, her life has revealed
itself to me in all its complexities, as has my own. May we both rise, may we
all rise.
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