KARLA M. HUSTON

Burying the Red Shoes: Conversations

    with Four Poets

Last summer, I found myself sitting before the computer, the only one at Ragdale with Internet access.  Ragdale is an artist and writers' retreat in Lake Forest, Illinois, and I'd received a month-long residency, ostensibly to write the introductory chapters for my Master of Arts thesis.  My subject: the nature of risk-taking and women's writing. 

I sent an email note to Denise Duhamel, who had become a friend after a workshop I attended at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival a couple of summers before.  "Will you talk to me about women's writing and risk?" I asked.  She readily agreed.  So I sent twelve questions (formed early in my writing process) dealing with what I thought to be the nature of risk in writing: how to say the unsayable  "Saying the unsayable" was a mantra repeated by every writing teacher with whom I'd ever studied.  What did it mean exactly?  I wanted clarification.  And I thought perhaps women writers took different kinds of risks. 

Duhamel generously answered my questions.  So did Naomi Shihab Nye, a friend of a friend and a woman whose writing I often used in the creative writing classes I teach.  A few weeks after speaking online with Nye, I made an email request to Shara McCallum, a poet who'd done a short writer-in-residence at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh the year before.  I thought, with her Afro-Jamaican, Venezuelan background, she might have something different to add.  Finally, I remembered Stellasue Lee, the poetry editor of RATTLE, had once told me fewer women writers submitted poems to the journal.  I wondered if that were still true and if she would be willing to answer some questions about risk taking.  She graciously agreed. 

Now I had twelve questions and a series of responses from four women writers whose work I admired and respected.  When I formatted each poet's answers, the disparate email interviews became one.  The finished product read like these women had been sitting at my kitchen table and talking to me about writing while I poured coffee and passed the cream and sugar. 

Huston:  What are some of the greatest risks faced by writers writing today?

Nye:    You know, I can't really speak for other writers.  But I guess

            writers have always shared a risk of not being understood, of

            being misunderstood, of having words taken out of context or

            exploited for someone else's purposes.  But these are risks

            worth taking.  I think the risk of not speaking, of living in a

            box of containment, would feel much greater. 

Duhamel:  I think the confessional poets risk "confessing" too much. 

            By that, I don't mean REVEALING too much but rather

            revealing without using interesting language, sophistication in

            tone or form or irony.  Shock for shock value can be as boring

            as an uneventful poem.

McCallum:  Probably being more focused on their career than on

            their writing.  I don't know that this hasn't always been a

            source of distraction for writers, but I think the tendency of

            writers (especially poets) to be centralized in academia

            increases the "careerist" impulses.  At least I've been

            witnessing this a lot with fellow writers and even my students,

            whose first thoughts are too often about where they'll publish

            and what prizes they'll win rather than if the work is any good. 

            I think it's easy to succumb to the pressures to publish and to

            get caught up in believing the hype around the "famous" poet,

            but in the end that can't be what matters most.  I try very hard

            to remind myself of what really counts -- which for me is to

            write as well as I can -- and to surround myself with like-

            minded individuals.

Lee:     Saying the unsayable.  And, once said, isn't there something

            that has to be done?
Huston:  Are the risks greater for women writers?

Nye:     I don't think so.  Never did.  Others might think so.

Duhamel:  For women writers, these risks are exponential.  We're

            used to read[ing] war stories about heroic men, but think of

            the backlash of women who choose to write about incest,

            infidelity, and so on.  They are usually met with literary scorn

            since people in general and men specifically feel so

            uncomfortable around those topics.  [It's the] same with

            people of color.  In Ploughshares,  [Cornelius Eady] writes in

            his introduction how often black poets are asked not to write

            "political" poems in traditional workshops--well, their very

            lives are political.

McCallum:  Well, not the risks that I've just outlined above [focus on

            career, pressure to publish].  There may be other risks that

            women face more often.  If I had to say which ones seem

            specific to women, it would come down to the choice of

            subject matter.  Even while things have changed, there's still a

            tendency to privilege a male position and male experience as

            "universal."  I think the same is true with minority versus

            majority subjects or points of view.

Lee:    Yes, because of the roles of women, which with all the

            changes, still haven't changed that much.  When given a vote,

            men vote with their feet—women, as a rule, are left with what

            the men walk away from.  Also, in a recent issue of RATTLE,

            when asked by Alan Fox, my publisher:  Do you think there's

            any essential difference between male poets and female poets? 

            Lucille Clifton says:

                         Male poets have wives.  That's significant, because

                         they have somebody who will watch the kids, who do

                         the work, the grunt work, who will give them time,

                         allow them time.  I've had males get mad at me about

                         that but the fact is, generally, I have seen female poets

                         do it all and then still write poems.  There was an old

                         Peanuts cartoon once where Lucy was talking to

                         Snoopy about this. I think he said, "What do wives

                         do?"  She told him, and he said, "I gotta get me one of

                         those."  Other than that, subject matter, but superficial

                         things.  But I think they tend to have time.

Huston:  Is risk-taking always telling secrets?

Nye:     Not at all.  Risk-taking means extending beyond the self in

            some way, making oneself available or visible or accessible to

            others -- then living with the consequences.  Which are

            usually good, by the way!

Duhamel:  Risk-taking is much more than telling secrets.  It's having

            an opinion, a stand on an issue, especially an unpopular stand.

McCallum:  No.  Taking a risk in a poem requires you to be

            vulnerable and have something at stake.  I think this is what

            makes all writing -- not just poems -- any good: that is, I think

            we are most invested in a piece when we believe the writer is

            also invested and has something at stake personally in the

            piece.  This is not synonymous with confession of deep, dark

            secrets, however.  In fact, I think there are many writers who

            reveal secrets in ways that feel anything but personally risky,

            in ways that seem calculated and exploitative of the event.  To

            the contrary, there are writers like Adrienne Rich who try to

            write about events outside of their own lives in ways that feel

            very risky to me.  I don't think Rich is always successful, but I

            admire the risks she takes very much.  I don't mean to imply

            that telling a personal secret might not be a risk-taking

            gesture, just that I don't believe it always is.

Lee:     No, it's saying it like it is, and "like it really is" is one big fat

            secret.

Huston:  Is risk-taking always sexual?

Nye:     Not at all!  I was personally never very interested in writing

            about anything  sexual, but I didn't mind reading about that

            subject at all if others wrote about it!  Who knows, I may start

            tomorrow!"

Duhamel:  No--I think risk-taking can have to do with the political

            and the social.  In Cornelius Eady's book Brutal Imagination,

            he writes from the point of view of the man Susan Smith said

            kidnapped and drowned her kids.  Of course, that man

            DOESN'T exist and that makes the poems that much more

            brilliant.  Ai also writes in the voice of Jeffrey Dahmer and so

            on.

McCallum:  No.  It can be a risk to say something sexual, but again I

            don't think it's always the case that saying something sexual is

            risky, and I especially don't think that the only way to take a

            risk is to write about sexuality.

Lee:     Heavens no.

Huston:  What other kinds of risks might women writers take?

Nye:     Being controlled by others seems like a much greater risk to

            me.  Not speaking up would be a devastating risk.  Of

            shrinkage. 

Duhamel:  Women risk being judged by the subject matter of their

            poetry rather than its artistry.

McCallum:  I think writing itself is a risk when done as if you are

            sitting on the edge of your seat.  If you say something that you

            are unsure about, that's when you take risks.

Lee:    To study craft, what a concept, right?  Yes, not just to take a

            pretty pen and some quality paper, but to study, read, think,

            take apart, put it together again.

Note: Lee told me that as poetry editor of RATTLE , she would publish more women writers, but fewer women writers submitted.  When I asked Lee recently if this were still true, she said that the overwhelming number of submissions to Rattle came from male writers.  When I asked her why, she said:

            Women think poetry is supposed to be hearts and flowers.

            They don't seem to read as much; they just like to write, and

            we have been the peace makers for so long that hearts and

            flowers seem to be the most accessible part of ourselves.  I

            was the keynote speaker and ran a workshop for Perie Longo

            [poetry therapist and marriage, family and child therapist] in

            Santa Barbara this summer.  I took participants through an

            exercise that resulted in a twenty-minute writing period to see

            what they came up with.  It was not a random exercise, but I

            told them exactly what to do to get started.  Out of about thirty

            in the class of which most were women, some fifteen have not

            submitted their work [to RATTLE], even though I have called

            them personally; Perie has called them personally, TWICE.  I

            was at a workshop a couple of Sundays ago for the National

            Association of Healing Poetry, and one of the women from

            Perie's workshop was there, and I asked why she hadn't

            submitted.  She told me she didn't think her work was good

            enough--that SHE was just "fooling around" with her writing. 

            I'm afraid I lost it.  I told her that she had no right to pass

            judgment on her work; she wasn't the editor, I WAS!

Note:  When I asked Lee what she meant by women writing "hearts and flowers," she replied:

            I mean not writing the truth, but rather soft-soaping it, taking

            the cutting edge out of it.  I knew an Episcopal priest who

            gave this sermon over and over again:  "It's wrong to commit

            adultery, but sometimes we find ourselves in difficult

            situations."  In other words, it's wrong, but then maybe it's

            OK.  This is called a double message.  It can't be one way and

            another as well.  There are a lot of grays in the world.  Why

            isn't the work of women as powerful as that of men?  Men

            seem to have far different values about what is their black and

            white.

Huston:  Are you aware when you take a risk with subject, structure, and language—as in "I'll probably get into trouble for saying this"?

Nye:     No.  You feel as if you're having more fun than usual.

Duhamel:  No, unfortunately not.  Well, maybe fortunately not.  I

            never censor myself until the poem's done, and I see what I

            have.

McCallum:  Sometimes.  Right now I'm working on a poem sequence

            that has to do with political events in Jamaica during the

            1970s.  This is a subject that will, in some ways, question the

            complicity of the US government (via the CIA), the Jamaican

            government (via the two political parties who were in power

            during that decade), and even the Jamaican people in a series

            of violent and inhumane events.  I don't know that I'll "get into

            trouble" in any real fashion (most poets aren't prosecuted for

            their beliefs other than by other poets who may write nasty

            reviews; I'm thinking of the response to Carolyn Forché's

            work here; and I can live with that kind of "trouble").  But the

            subject feels risky to me in a more deeply personal way.  I

            don't know if I can get it right precisely because it was so

            complicated a situation, and it's a time period about which

            there are conflicting reports -- and I was only a child while it

            was all going on.  Most people would also rather forget these

            events than address them, it seems to me.  So, I'm aware that

            there's risk here of people not understanding why I would stir

            up the past, but I believe in this project and ultimately am

            choosing not to let the potential for censure stop me.

Lee:     No, I made up my mind years and years ago about this.  I

            wrote about my husband and after, when he said to me why

            not flowers and trees, I said to him, "And, you are always free

            to change my experience!"  I tell my students all the time,

            ALL THE TIME, to write it like it is.  I mean, what are the

            chances that one's mother or one's father or one's husband

            will ever see what we've written if it is published -- unless our

            ego says, "Oh, lookie here, see, I'm published."   We need

            approval so much we can't say the unsayable because then,

            then, then, where would we get the approval we need from? 

            And, nobody, NOBODY has given us the permission to say

            the unsayable.

Huston:  Who are or have been your risk-taking role models?

Nye:     So many poets!  Most poets!  Henry David Thoreau, Jack

            Kerouac, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits.

Duhamel:  Sharon Olds, Ai, Kathleen Spivak.

McCallum:  Adrienne Rich, Louise Glück, Eavan Boland, Lucille

            Clifton.

Lee:     One thing I learned putting on the RATTLE reading series

            with the likes of C.K. Williams, Charles Simic, Stephen

            Dobyns, Sharon Olds, Lucille Clifton, Gerald Stern, on and on

            with the names already and every one of them just wanted to

            know if they were OK.  Did they do a good job and did the

            audience like them?  We are all looking for approval.

Huston:  What women writers are taking great risks today?

Nye:     All of them.

Duhamel:  I think many women writers are taking risks -- some with

            books, some whose work I come across in magazines.  I just

            read an amazing first book by Betsy Brown called A Year of

            Morphines: Poems, about losing her mother and sister to

            breast cancer and her father to pancreatic cancer.  I mean, I

            can imagine a publisher saying who wants to read THAT? 

            Well, I did.  And others too -- it won the National Poetry

            Series and was published by LSU.  It has dazzling,

            confrontational, raging, subject matter AND the poems are

            artful and amazing.

McCallum:  Same as above.

Lee:     We all are, some of us, better than others.

Huston:  In an online interview Sharon Olds is credited as being "fearless … a writer who sees heroism in the everyday."  Yet she has been criticized for being too "out there."  What do you think?

Nye:     I don't know what too "out there" means.

Duhamel:  I think people who criticize Sharon Olds are more often

            than not freaked out by her subject matter but don't say so. 

            Instead the reviews talk about a sloppy line break here and an

            imperfect title there.  I'm not saying that everyone need like

            Sharon Olds' work, but I hardly ever read a smart review

            against it. 

McCallum:  I'm often surprised by the hoopla surrounding Olds since

            it doesn't seem to me that her poems are "out there" or that

            risky even in a contemporary context.  Given the harsh and

            often vitriolic response by many in the poetry--particularly

            male--establishment to her work, though I think she must be

            hitting a nerve.  Poetry in particular still seems controlled by

            rather conservative notions when it comes to what is

            "acceptable" subject matter for a poet. (i.e., you can write

            about trees but not vaginas; or if you want to write about the

            latter, you can only do it only indirectly and preferably only if

            you are male). 

Lee:     I loved meeting Sharon Olds.  My God, to think that anyone

            would criticize any of us ... who has the right to make those

            kinds of judgments?  Certainly not me.

Huston:  How do you contend with poems about family members or people who might be close to you?

Nye:    Good question.  I don't always show them the poems.  I don't

            always publish them.  But I write them.

Duhamel:  I don't show them my poems!  Honestly.  And they don't

            want to see them.  We have a don't-ask-don't-tell kind of

            policy in my family.  I've shown my parents my work in the

            past, and they were so freaked out/hurt/angry that we just

            called a truce.  I saw Erica Jong on a television interview with

            her daughter (who is now also a novelist) and the daughter

            said she was creeped out by her mother's imagination (the sex

            stuff) and Erica was always very hurt by that.  But now that

            her daughter is writing, Erica is also freaked out to read her

            daughter's stuff.  So maybe there is this taboo in place -- we

            don't really want to enter the heads of our parents or children

            in that way.  I wish it were different in my family, but they

            don't read Sharon Olds or Ai or any other contemporary poets

            either -- so it's hard for them to put me in context.  And why

            should they have to?  I don't write to communicate with my

            family.

McCallum:  I don't worry about this as much with poetry as I do with

            the nonfiction I write.  For one thing, even while my poems

            are partly autobiography (sometimes even totally so), I don't

            see them as mimetic with my life and experience.  Also,

            poems are far more slippery in terms of meaning, so it's easier

            for people (especially those who the poem may be based on)

            to read themselves in a way that they find satisfactory.  My

            mother's response to my first book -- if this gives you any

            indication -- was of how "nice" it was and hers was the

            response I most feared.  Even if I've written a poem that

            indicts someone for something he or she has done -- as I do at

            times with the poems based on my relationship with my

            mother -- I'd hope in the end that the picture of the person I

            offer up is complex enough that I don't reduce him or her to a

            villain.  Ultimately, the measures of a good poem –

            morally/ethically and aesthetically -- are not in opposition to

            me.  If a poem succeeds, its main intent is not to injure or be

            at someone else's expense.  As Annie Dillard says, and I fully

            agree, "Literature is an art, not a martial art."

Lee:     I remember when I just started writing.  There was a class

            reading at the literary center in Venice, California, and I read

            a poem that even I had not a clue what this poem was really

            about, the statement it made, and after, my then husband,

            came up to me and said, "What's wrong with you?  Why can't

            you be like other women and write about flowers and trees?" 

            I write it, publish it, and bury my need for approval in the

            garden along with my red shoes that I loved so much I

            couldn't stand to throw them away.

Huston:  If you pull back as a writer and don't write about the things that disturb you or even bring you joy — for fear of hurting someone — isn't that really self-censorship?  Is self-censoring sometimes necessary?

Nye:    Yes. I think it's very necessary.  But again, one need not

            publish everything one writes.  "Self-censorship" sounds

            negative, but "being a filter" for what we choose to write and

            the ways we write it sounds more promising.  We can all be

            filters for whatever we say or want to say and how we say it. 

            But again, one need not publish everything one writes.  It's

            necessary to write to discover what we do and don't want to

            write, and we grow more empowered to decide those things

            AS we write, not before.

Duhamel:  No.  I think you MUST write the poem.  You really must. 

            Whether you choose to publish it is another matter.  I think it's

            perfectly fine to put certain poems in a drawer or file or safety

            deposit box.

McCallum:  You can write anything you want, and I do.  The

            question really becomes, should you censor yourself in what

            you publish.  I think you should.  It's a bit vain to think that

            everything you've written needs to see the light of day

            anyway.  When it comes down to publishing a piece or not,

            then I ask myself what I would lose and gain by doing so?  If

            it would really hurt someone I cared about, I haven't published

            it.  To my mind, anyway, I have not done that.

Lee:     It's worse than just self-censorship.  It's chopping yourself off

            at the knees.  Say there is a whole very long line of people out

            in the world to beat me up.  I'm not going to push them all out

            of the way to get to the front of the line to beat myself up.  It's

            time to get off that fence, ladies, time to say it like it is.

Huston:  Are you ever afraid that you've crossed the line, gone too far?

Nye:     Nope. I don't see a line.

Duhamel:  No.  I want to go further.  Honestly, I really do.

McCallum:  I think I just answered this above, but I'll say that the line

            I've established for myself is one I don't feel I've crossed. 

            Everyone has a different "line," though.  I can only give you

            my sense of it and hope that I'm not letting myself off the

            hook.  I ask myself these kinds of questions a lot, which is

            maybe my only assurance that I'm trying to be not only a good

            writer but a good person.

Lee:     I don't give it any thought whatsoever.

Final Note:  Michelle Berth, one of my high school students, was so taken by Duhamel's poetry that I encouraged her to make contact and tell her so.  She asked her: "Are you ever worried that any of your poems will 'cross the line' in subject matter, or is there no barrier whatsoever when you write?" 

Duhamel:     Yes, this is something that I think about a lot!  There are

            only about three poems I've written so far that I just feel I

            cannot responsibly publish because they would hurt too many

            people.  But for the most part, I try to get my work out there,

            as uncomfortable as it may be.  I heard Sharon Olds speak

            once about taboo in writing.  She said when you write a poem

            that you know will potentially harm someone and you put in

            your drawer, it's a little suicide.  When you send it out into the

            world, it's a little murder.  Neither one feels great, but that is

            the downside to being a writer.

KARLA M. HUSTON is the author of A Halo of Watchful Eyes (Wolf Angel Press, 1997) and Pencil Test (Cassandra Press, 2001).  She recently earned her MA in English from the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.  She has published poems and reviews in many literary journals.