Female Poets

Woe Are You?

Don Mee Choi
Korean
b. 1962

 

It was hardly war, the hardliest of wars. Hardly, hardly. It occurred to me that this
particular war was hardly war because of kids, more kids, those poor kids. The kids
were hungry until we GIs fed them. We dusted them with DDT. Hardly done. Rehabilitation of Korea, that is. It needs chemical fertilizer from the States, power to build things like a country. In the end it was the hardliest of wars made up of bubble gum, which GIs had to show those kids how to chew. In no circumstance whatever can man be comfortable without art. They don’t want everlasting charity, and we are not giving it to them. We are just lending them a hand until they can stand on their own two feet. A novel idea. This is why it occurred to me that this particular war was hardly war, the hardliest of wars.

My father was hardly himself during the war, then I was born during the era that
hardly existed, and, therefore, I hardly existed without DDT. Beauty is pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing. I prefer a paper closet with real paper dresses in
it. To be born hardly, hardly after the hardliest of wars, is a matter of debate. Still
going forward. We are, that is. Napalm again. This is THE BIG PICTURE. War and its masses. War and its men. War and its machines. Together we form THE BIG PICTURE. From Korea to Germany, from Alaska to Puerto Rico. All over the world, the US Army is on the alert to defend our country, you the people, against aggression. This is THE BIG PICTURE, an official television report to the nation from the army. This is Korea! Is one thing better than another? These South Koreans are all right. Woe is you, woe is war, hardly war, woe is me, woe are you? My father is still alive, and this is how I came to prefer a paper closet with real paper dresses in it.

Well, it’s morning in Korea. The most violently mountainous place on Earth. Everyone has been dusted, existence hardly done, whereas beauty has been regarded as the quality of a thing. At Uncle Dann’s Huddle doughnuts and coffee are free and in case there are any, for there are many, the unescorted ladies are not permitted. The decision has been made in Tokyo for the hardliest of wars, an old soldier made it. The situation in Korea is so critical that we the Navy must give the Eighth Army practical support. Do you remember how you began this day? How did you spend this morning? Woe are you? Well, pinecones fall every day. So why do we fail? Miles and miles of homeless refugees set adrift by the Red scourge.

The Art of Printing

Constantia Grierson
Irish
c. 1705 – 1732

 

Hail Mystick Art! which Men, like Angels, taught,
To speak to Eyes, and paint unbody’d Thought!
Though Deaf, and Dumb; blest Skill, reliev’d by Thee,
We make one Sense perform the Task of Three.
We see, we hear, we touch the Head and Heart,
And take, or give, what each but yields in part.
With the hard Laws of Distance we dispence,
And, without Sound, apart, commune in Sense;
View, though confin’d; nay, rule this Earthly Ball,
And travel o’er the wide expanded all.
Dead Letters, thus with Living Notions fraught,
Prove to the Soul the Telescopes of Thought;
To Mortal Life a deathless Witness give;
And bid all Deeds and Titles last, and live
In scanty Life, eternity we taste;
View the First Ages, and inform the Last.
Arts, Hist’ry, Laws, we purchase with a Look,
And keep, like Fate, all Nature in a book.

Stella and Flavia

We present this work in honor of The Twelfth.

Laetitia Pilkington
Irish
1712 – 1750

 

Stella and Flavia every hour
Do various hearts surprise;
In Stella’s soul lies all her power,
And Flavia’s in her eyes.

More boundless Flavia’s conquests are.
And Stella’s more confin’d;
All can discern a face that’s fair,
But few a lovely mind.

Stella, like Britain’s monarchs, reigns
O’er cultivated lands;
Like eastern tyrants Flavia deigns
To rule o’er barren sands.

Then boast not, Flavia, thy fair face,
Thy beauty’s only store;
Thy charms will every day decrease,
Each day gives Stella more.

Madrigal V

We present this work in honor of the 420th anniversary of the poet’s death.

Isabella Andreini
Italian
1562 – 1604

 

My charming murderer,
So quick to wound, but slow in healing me,
After a sighing vain,
A yearning, an insane delirium,
More handsome than ever turned his glance on me,
Then, like lightning, fled.
Thus my eyes he bedazzled—broke my heart.

Translation by James Wyatt Cook

We Draw All Kinds of People

Paula Peyseré
Argentine
b. 1981

 

April 22nd. Incompetent

It’s seven o’clock:
throw two trash bags from the balcony.
Turn on the oven for the Middle Eastern food
and the book of Go down to the end of the night:

to the friend that dies at the hands of a madwoman,
nobody feels like closing his eyelids.
*
April 29th. Drinking spoiled wine

The fridge has always brought on
the passions that overflow the schedule.
The list disagrees with her stomach
that presupposes one problem per can:
the milk for the night, the cheese for the pillow,
the soy for the martyrdom of
the nation is inaugurated in us, the servants
*
May 1st. Wants to jump

There is a need to be clear
a voice that is as mature as it
is floating because the ball is rubber,
it resists when it’s pushed under water.
*
May 24th

Tomorrow is a holiday: the way the species suffers with
a snack, offers evidence.
There is no
pure milk and there is no bread:
The loneliness of the spirit
has hypotonic ideas.
*
May 25th

The epigonal holiday curses us
like a worn stanza
little revelations in the shape of a fold,
poorly sewn, compelling the shirt:
that time when the power went out and they didn’t propose
to use candles and crayons to paint,
the melancholy of making collages with magazines,
scissors and coating samples,
a family with aspirations of changing
the kitchen table set
*
June 24th. To polish, to scratch

He wipes with a cloth,
he makes symmetrical the wet parts that he wipes with the cloth
but leaves crumbs
every time he grabs a cookie.

Already at nine, he felt life
wasn’t going to make him less nervous.

Not knowing how to enjoy things is a slow blow, and he’s blind
the guest who does not even contribute
a pound of noodles per week
*
July 7th. We don’t live in the country

Each bus that goes by with its injury
wants to repeat with its engine:
“it’s not gonna happen,
no truck is going to kidnap us,”
that won’t take place without the body of the future.

The goat cannot be revived.
She died while we were biting the grass.

Translation by Carlos Soto Román

I Walk Now

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 135th birthday.

Clementina Arderiu
Spanish
1889 – 1976

 

I walk now questioning my steps:
maybe the earth can tell me my fate,
and only in a stormy wind
the double embrace of all parts of the lasso
it will be like a reunion for me.
And I will search no more for the fading
route of dreams, towards the setting sun.
Like the earth I have given my flower;
but I can still feel hurt
for the rod that wakes me up with its sound.

The Palm Tree

We present this work in honor of Algerian Independence Day.

Zeinab Laouedj
Algerian
b. 1954

 

My country
I am a Lion
And I will make you tremble
til your forests
Me, the Crazed
Mad for the love of his land
Where no other madman
Resembles me
My
Stature
Stands tall
Your
Grave
Cannot
Contain it…
The earth turns
Even lying down
I
Rise
Like
A
Palmtree
In
The soil
Of the earth.

Translation by Nadia Ghanem

Banneker

We present this work in honor of Independence Day.

Rita Dove
American
b. 1952

 

What did he do except lie
under a pear tree, wrapped in
a great cloak, and meditate
on the heavenly bodies?
Venerable, the good people of Baltimore
whispered, shocked and more than
a little afraid. After all it was said
he took to strong drink.
Why else would he stay out
under the stars all night
and why hadn’t he married?

But who would want him! Neither
Ethiopian nor English, neither
lucky nor crazy, a capacious bird
humming as he penned in his mind
another enflamed letter
to President Jefferson—he imagined
the reply, polite and rhetorical.
Those who had been to Philadelphia
reported the statue
of Benjamin Franklin
before the library

his very size and likeness.
A wife? No, thank you.
At dawn he milked
the cows, then went inside
and put on a pot to stew
while he slept. The clock
he whittled as a boy
still ran. Neighbors
woke him up
with warm bread and quilts.
At nightfall he took out

his rifle—a white-maned
figure stalking the darkened
breast of the Union—and
shot at the stars, and by chance
one went out. Had he killed?
I assure thee, my dear Sir!
Lowering his eyes to fields
sweet with the rot of spring, he could see
a government’s domed city
rising from the morass and spreading
in a spiral of lights…