February 21st, 2011 / 12:06 pm
Snippets
Snippets
Roxane Gay—
Sandra Simonds wrote a really fine essay about motherhood, poverty and poetry you might find interesting.
I was just coming over here to link to that. I’ve been thinking about this in particular: “It could be that you are a young man in your twenties and you spend a lot of time at the bars, drinking and hanging out with your friends and having sex with random girls or boys—and then you go home and you feel such inspiration to write your poetry about the moon and your half-cooked romances and how the streets look as you make your way home from these bars.”
i’m sorry. Tendentious much? her point is valid, but that kind of essay isn’t persuading anyone who isn’t already a marge percy reader. you CAN exaggerate poverty, just as you can exaggerate anything. (I’m not saying she is exaggerating her own, I am using that as example of where the writing in this essay breaks down) and there are choices, and she made those, to have kids, to be a poet, to be a teacher, and those were hard choices and maybe some worked out, some didn’t. but the generalizing about men and their bars and all that, come on—that’s generalizing just as those grad students she was trying to unionize were generalizing her. I had kids and kept writing. it was hard and I had to write a great many things I might not have written and worked at jobs I probably wouldn’t have taken. and those were choices. i was lucky and made a living. but I also figured out that short stories weren’t going to pay my rent, and I couldn’t get any teaching jobs, so I wrote stuff to make money. it was okay. it was a choice.
I wish we could all make a comfortable living writing whatever we wanted all the time. but we knew, or should have known, getting into this that financially, it was going to be much harder than almost any other career.
I also had this on my list of things to post, glad you beat me to it.
I read Sandra’s essay and then forwarded it to my wife with apprehension — especially given the eerie coincidence that my wife currently resides in Sandra’s old office here at FSU — because it’s not a very uplifting essay. That said, I think it’s a necessary essay. We’re worried about having a kid while in grad school, but we’re also worried that if we wait until we get jobs then it might complicate her chances at gaining tenure. Not to mention the strain it will put on her ability to write. (Mine, too, of course, but not in the same ways or even remotely comparably.) These aren’t fun or glamorous things to think or talk about, but they’re real concerns: how to be poor parents who want also to be writers. Hope this sparks a larger conversation.
everyone dies, poor or not
You really are the biggest inhumane dickhead commenter we’ve seen around here in a long time, stephen.
You really are the biggest inhumane dickhead commenter we’ve seen around here in a long time, stephen.
feel like my comment is possibly obnoxious. honestly unsure. my impetus is simply i don’t like the notion that “some people shouldn’t write poetry” or “some poetry is less serious, or invalid because of privilege, or its subject matter is frivolous,” etc. same goes for novels and short stories and movies.
i’m interested in people and their emotions and their ways and word gestures and for me pondering existence and love is ineluctable unless i go into pure imagination, pure words, and that’s something but maybe not for me, i want to be mindful as i dream
sup adam, i liked meeting you and hearing you read
based on this one comment? haha… wtf is a Gargantua? i am stridently humanist. my comment, which i sort of backed away from below, was a gesture at validating the young and existentialism and love poetry. it may have been phrased in a way that it seems like i’m saying “fuck poor mothers,” which i would never want to say, which is why i followed up below.
i am like Captain Humanist, Mr. Emotions, Gargantua, what the fuck is up bb boi
In addition to being a dickhead, you also write like you’re seven years old or so? bb boi?
You exude false confidence. You seem to be excessively preoccupied with issues of personal adequacy. This wikipedia page might help you with your problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder
it would be easier to not comment. me commenting is absurd because i don’t believe my opinion is important or that anyone should think any way about it or as a result of it.
seems better always to not-say
hope you have a nice day Gargantua :)
approach 1: http://twitter.com/steveroggenbuck/status/38773899512643584
approach 2: i am free Gargantua, that is all, free, and i am alive in 2011 on the internet. r u free ;) your approach has made you vulnerable to ridicule. i am not vulnerable bc i dont care not-a-wit what u think dear and i am blissful and happie as i say that, i know its annoying but it wont b if u let go of all that mash btw yer earz am i on drugz nope whats happening Gargantua im scared is this real im still happie there isnt even sarcasm have we entered pure lunacy whats happening im SO SCARED gargantua where r we going yes i have my id like the others and id like some sex and a philoso-talk, but hey ive got a job 25 yrs young,. doin my best..lets hold hands Gargantua r u very young or old man or woman whats the haps why am i typing i will show if nothing else freedom
for real, though, Gargantua. i don’t have any disorders. your narrow-mindedness makes me feel smarter than you, and that’s why i just showed off above. was it wrong to do that? what in the hell is wrong? seriously? that’s what i mean by freedom. this is a fucking fiction site right? haha… idk me and my friends like to be dumb even though we’re not… feels cathartic and freeing and wonderful to me… idk if i’m capable of playing by the linguistic/social rules anymore, Gargantua. sorry buddy
Yep. Classic narcissistic personality disorder. You need to see a doctor. And also a grammar teacher.
i do sound mad arrogant above. damn… probably overcompensating a bit. oh well. see i can even admit when i’m wrong gargantua. i refuse to improve my grammar tho. it is my right as an internet denizen 2 type rand*om shjit whenever. kind of h8 myself, but still think u should free ur mind like for serious.
sorry world
might make the big leap 2nite
pour one out for Gargantua
h8 myself
thanks for engaging with the post. refreshing to see this kind of discourse when so much of what usually occurs on htmlg is people pettily arguing with one another about meaningless bullshit.
lol… you’re right man. was tacky of me to spaz the fuck out on such a post as this. i honestly do feel a little sheepish. i feel crazie today. i’m dumb i guess. have a nice day trey :)
I truly don’t think Sandra was implying that some poetry is frivolous because of privilege. I’d suggest, perhaps, re-reading the essay. She’s not invalidating anyone else’s experience. Instead, she is thinking through, and seeking an understanding of (or perhaps validating, but I don’t want to impose my reading on her writing) her own experiences and, also, framing her own experiences within the context of other kinds of poets. Yes, she does so with a certain pithiness, but that pithiness comes in service of a far more important message about class, gender, motherhood and poetics. As such, it is indeed likely that people will perceive your comment about everyone dying as a bit obnoxious. That’s besides the point.
In my experience, grad school is one of the best times to have a kid. So many people in my grad program had kids while I was there because of the relative flexibility. There are strains, of course, but for many it is an ideal time. I too agree it’s a necessary essay because it introduces a perspective that is often forgotten. I am interested to see where the conversation goes.
To make matters worse, from a certain perspective, Roxane, I wasn’t even engaging the essay, simply the ideas/positions brought to mind by Adam’s comment and pointed or suggestive (I assumed) quotation from the essay. Some of the multitudes I contain are unseemly in most contexts :) Hope you’re well, Roxane! Hope I didn’t offend tooo much. Feeling extremely zany today :)
This is important. Thanks for posting it. I don’t like every single one of the invocations of motherhood here (the poet mothers are “your mothers,” they “still love you”) but I agree with this point: “there’s no room for the pregnant body,” or for mothers generally, in graduate school. Or in the poverty-level employment of adjunct teaching.
This is only marginally apposite, but interesting: an essay that argues student loan debt should be treated as a work issue, not a subspecies of consumer debt. It’s a resistance to a similar use of the rhetoric of “choice,” and one that affects a lot of poet parents if they have MFAs or are adjuncting. George Caffentzis on student debt, at edu-factory: http://tinyurl.com/4zu8kks
It’s actually kind of ridiculous and condescending if you think of it as an ‘essay’, ‘really fine’ or otherwise. As a deeply felt missive, a rant against cant, it makes more sense, and hits more powerfully. It’s not argued, however, unless in argument by emotion, and it’s far too sweeping to actually reveal anything about ‘motherhood’, ‘poverty’, or ‘poetry’, let alone their affliction, beyond how she feels about them when combined in a highly specific way. It’s an important distinction to make in this case, because to my sympathetic ears it cannot survive its own (as earlier noted) tendentiousness, if you don’t.
“Tendentious much? her point is valid, but that kind of essay isn’t persuading anyone who isn’t already a marge percy reader.”
Valid point + don’t like her tone = negative comment
Not sure how I see how that works. Why are you so concerned with how persuasive she is to other people? You say “her point is valid”. That means you, karl taro, are more convinced than not. Yet you don’t sound convinced at all.
Own your disagreement rather than projecting it onto faceless unconvinced hordes.
I do think her point is valid, in that being poor and having kids and writing poetry is a hard life. And I do wish poets made a better living. But I don’t want to trivialize her struggle. If one of the purposes of this kind of essay is to raise awareness or catalyze change, then it fails partially because of flaws in execution, one or two of which I laid out. I totally own my disagreement with the method.
Thanks for posting this, Roxane. I really don’t know what to say about it. The truth is, there’s no room for mothers, the pregnant body, anywhere. Not in America. Not today. Not unless you lucked into money somehow. A lot of money.
The choices people have here are grossly exaggerated (whether the poverty is or not). The truth is, there are plenty of people who will tell you that it’s just wrong, irresponsible, unfair to your child, to the country, to become pregnant before you can afford to give a child all the luxuries available in a first world country. I even have bouts of that attitude (I have bouts of lots of attitudes), particularly having been afforded many of those luxuries myself, only to find that, were it not for my husband’s job, I would now be well below America’s poverty-line.
The financial considerations and career implications, make the “when” decision hard enough, but there are age and health considerations as well, further compacted by what’s happening politically and economically.
My Godfather once told me, “If you wait until you think you can afford to have kids, you’ll never have them.” So here I am. In my oversized maternity Seahawks tee. Trying not to worry…
my mom, alone, raised my sister and me on very little money (I know, sob story, right?). I remember when I first heard what the figure for the poverty line was I was like 11-12 and I laughed out loud because it seemed like so much money. but the cost of living where I grew up was pretty low, I guess. anyway, my point is that moms are amazing, and I don’t know you, of course, but if you care enough to worry you’ve got a good shot.
your daily dose of unwanted, unnecessary, overly-simplified “cheering up” from an internet stranger (well, effectively a stranger, though I do have some poems in abr)
my mom, alone, raised my sister and me on very little money (I know, sob story, right?). I remember when I first heard what the figure for the poverty line was I was like 11-12 and I laughed out loud because it seemed like so much money. but the cost of living where I grew up was pretty low, I guess. anyway, my point is that moms are amazing, and I don’t know you, of course, but if you care enough to worry you’ve got a good shot.
your daily dose of unwanted, unnecessary, overly-simplified “cheering up” from an internet stranger (well, effectively a stranger, though I do have some poems in abr)
Sometimes absurdly – and unselfconsciously – privileged barflies are ‘better’ artists than virtuous and downtrodden promise-keepers.
Guess what?
Life is cruel.
Fiscal, social, and neo conservatard thinking is vapid; ultracons of every stripe are or pretend to be easily gulled.
Guess what?
Stupid conservatard arguments can still legally be debunked publicly.
The myth that mass pauperization is the responsibility of the poor is as irrational as it is immoral.
Guess what?
The cruelty that people impose on each other socially is penetrable by reason.
Simonds’s rhetoric is the richer, rather than poorer, for its polemical tone.
Guess what?
It’s true that mortality is humanly universal (except for me), but its also (generally) true that poor people die sooner and suffer more from systematic and unself-incurred deprivation before they die.
The smaller injustice of political economy is as worthwhile a topic as the greater (?) disarticulation of becoming from being, no?
I gladly endure narcissistic personality enablement, for which I am not willing to share credit with the parents.
Oh, thanks Trey! I wasn’t looking for it (this time), but cheering up is always welcome. Especially from the alice blue family.
We’ll be okay, I’m sure. We have a bread-winner in this house, it’s just not me. That’s just bad luck with an economy shot to hell and a political climate that doesn’t afford for more teachers in my part of the country.
I guess that’s what I was thinking about, that you can live in a way that ought to prepare you for financial and career stability, but you still have to benefit a lot from luck, and these days, there isn’t a whole lot of luck to go around.
Tendentious a lot, Karl, but sometimes a specific thing or plane of perspective on the whole can be exaggerated to reasonable effect
Careless self-indulgence – especially by the young – doesn’t exactly cause the vicious perversity of ‘blaming’ the least powerful for the depredations of political economy.
But Simonds’s case – for a familial resemblance of ‘self-indulgence’; for opposing careless disregard wherever the destruction caused by that carelessness spreads away from the careless themselves – that’s not so crazy.
Tendentious a lot, Karl, but sometimes a specific thing or plane of perspective on the whole can be exaggerated to reasonable effect
Careless self-indulgence – especially by the young – doesn’t exactly cause the vicious perversity of ‘blaming’ the least powerful for the depredations of political economy.
But Simonds’s case – for a familial resemblance of ‘self-indulgence’; for opposing careless disregard wherever the destruction caused by that carelessness spreads away from the careless themselves – that’s not so crazy.
Her polemic, on the other hand, wasn’t necessarily benefited by her rhetoric.
I don’t understand what you have written
Hello. I’m twenty-three, a musician and a poet, poor and childless, and more than a little embarassed for this conversation (not to mention males my age). Sandra is a very intelligent and courageous writer and deserves a better discussion. Poor poet mothers are very important and deserve a brilliant writer. Get it together, fellas.
Being poor, it’s very difficult to think about anything else. It’s not an argumentative condition, it is not assumed, taken up, nobody, as Sandra notes, “wants to be poor”. Neither does anybody want to take a good look at them. Reading Sandra’s piece made me remember reading Paterson once on a bench in a mall in winter in Boston instead of sleeping. That is, I read it all, in what would have been one sitting if I hadn’t been prodded by a guard and so relocated to (no joke) a recliner massage chair you put change into, one in a row. Between books of Paterson, and without a home or bed, in a new city, which I was being told is analogous to “a man”, and vice versa, relocating there felt very significant. It was quite literally a seat of luxury. And I felt very dejected. And the privacy of it became crucially formative for me. America is often having you appear, outwardly, a certain way that undercuts any number of other things that may be about you. There’s a suddenness to its exclusion that is absurd because, one realizes, it isn’t sudden, can’t be. Pushing you, absurdly, from the bench to the luxury chair, I mean.
I once slept in a homeless shelter where, to be allowed in, you had to formally accept (check a box) Christ as your savior. The shelter was a linoleum floor gymnasium, and each man (gender separated, of course – each gender, it struck me, undeserving of the other) was assigned a blue mat. There was a man chosen to give the evening prayer, and, as seemed very significant to me at the time, he spoke only after lights out. We weren’t able to, or, it struck me, allowed to see him speak. A preacher spoke before the breakfast, saying “You might be here, but at least you are here.” Which made absolutely no sense to me. In front, two young guys argued audibly about Tupac. It was difficult.
Hello.
This person is the VOICE for poor mothers? I’d buy all of this if the blog post (it’s not even a rant) replaced poor mother with ________.
I don’t see this blog post as essay. An essay? No.
There is a few truths through the muddle, but the voice, the persona itself doesn’t know what it desires, what it is saying. It reads like a blog post to me. Good blog post. OK. It’s not an essay.
Hello. I’m twenty-three, a musician and poet, poor and childless, and more than a little embarassed for this conversation (not to mention men my age). Sandra is a very intelligent and courageous writer and deserves a better conversation. Poor poetry mothers are very important and deserve a brilliant writer, and this important essay. Get it together, fellas!
Being poor, it’s very difficult to think about anything else. It’s not an argumentative condition, it’s not assumed, taken up, nobody, as Sandra notes, “wants to be poor”. Neither do they want to spend time thinking about the poor. Reading Sandra’s piece made me remember being homeless reading Paterson on a bench in a mall in winter in Boston instead of sleeping. I read it all, that is, obsessively, in what would have been one sitting if I hadn’t been prodded by a guard and so relocated to (no joke) a recliner massage chair you put change into, one in a row. Between books of Paterson, and without a home or bed, in a new city, which I was being told is analogous to “a man”, and vice versa, relocating there felt very significant. It was quite literally a seat of luxury. And I felt very dejected. And the privacy of it became crucially formative for me. America is often having you appear, outwardly, a certain way that undercuts any number of other things that may be about you. There’s a suddenness to its exclusion that is absurd because, one realizes, it isn’t sudden, can’t be. Pushing you, absurdly, from the bench to the luxury chair, I mean.
I once slept in a homeless shelter where, to be allowed in, you had to formally accept (check a box) Christ as your savior. The shelter was a linoleum floor gymnasium, and each man (gender separated, of course – each gender, it struck me, undeserving of the other) was assigned a blue mat. There was a man chosen to give the evening prayer, and, as seemed very significant to me at the time, he spoke only after lights out. We weren’t able to, or, it struck me, allowed to see him speak. A preacher spoke before the breakfast, saying “You might be here, but at least you are here.” Which made absolutely no sense to me. In front, two young guys argued audibly about Tupac. It was difficult.
I didn’t hit “load more comments” originally, so I was just responding to the conversation that far down. Some more worthwhile things later.
Well, it only got moderately better, with multiple comments on whether or not it could be called an “essay…” So… I’m looking forward to it.
So read it–it won’t take long, it’s a blog post–and tell us why it’s an essay.
Just to qualify what I said some (some!, as what Sandra’s saying is very immediate, experiential, and beyond a discussion of the post’s essay-ness or argumentative cohesion etc, and I was trying to speak along the same lines), the very notion of “discussing” poverty is already too advanced to be addressing the abject condition of it. It’s something you live daily, beyond sophistication, and which in fact appears aimed pointedly at any intellectual development you might want to explore. Sandra’s post is recognizably that of someone who’s lived these situations, and fought against them. That’s all that matters about the post, to me, its recognizable frustration. I’m not sure what anyone else is wanting from this “discussion”, but, it was certainingly refreshing for me to read.
Not ‘could’. I can’t speak for anyone else, but not ‘could’. I don’t care what’s it called. My point had nothing to do with pedantry of that nature. If you read the comment and got only so little out of it, you didn’t read the comment. I think I’ll just leave this topic alone. Good luck to all mothers, poets or otherwise, poor especially.
What have you won by saying so?
No. I was mostly talking about a different commenter. I know, I know.
Well, we disagree. I’m not a proud barfly, but nor do I take easy offense for being a selfishly happy drinker.
It’s you, I was talking about you. It was Roxane who called it an essay, not Simonds. I just think that, if that’s all you took from it… sad. And if your only using that as a way to argue with it’s content… sad.
This post and replies baffle me. Does anyone want to discuss lazy rhetoric, generalizations, easy stereotypes (those darn young poets at the bar who go to France/get laid/go to France/get laid..whew this exhausting…whoops, back to France to lay French chicks!)
Housework? Red herring.
And…
I’m getting frustrated. Going to bed. I’ll end saying the concepts behind the sentiments here are true (and obvious). I agree with the writer. But I don’t get the endearment with the blog post.
To attack the FOAF professor who quit academia or the mythical poet at the bar is the same subjective logical fallacy as attacking the welfare mother with the Cadillac or the pregnant women poet, etc.
Christopher–what? what is this? Your wife is in my old office? That’s funny!
I’m not arguing its content.
Alright, cool.
I am baffled that commenters are obsessing about semantics. I called it an essay because that’s the first word that came to mind. I wasn’t making some kind of statement about genre. I could have just as easily referred to it as a blog post. I cannot believe that’s all you got out of it. I thought it was a wonderful piece of writing. I understand if it didn’t speak to you but I found it interesting and smartly written.
Ok, this seems lose/lose to me to even keep on going with this, so I’ll just reply here and then quit. When did I say that’s “all i got out of it”? You’re the second reply saying that to me. I got plenty out of it. I taught a 5/5 adjunct load, I landscaped in-between. I had a young family at the time. I pay $1200 plus per month as I write this for daycare. I know the ethical and real horrors of the adjunct system.
I think this essay’s CONTENT is true. I said this BEFORE your comment here to me.
I do not think this essay is a “was a wonderful piece of writing.”
Can I voice that? Maybe someone needs to focus on the CONTENT of what I’m saying. I didn’t find it rose to the level of essay, but I’m not talking genre. I thought it made attacks, generalizations, logical fallacies, all types of appearance/reality irritations it tries to prove as the everyday realities of its speaker. I thought the speaker in many ways repeated the claims of her own attacker.
So I was discussing the writing. I didn’t understand why others were not.
I’m not going to crawdad much further, sorry. I understand and empathize with the speaker. I admire her. I don’t the writing. I think I can have an opinion.
Sean, I said in the last line of my post that I understand if you have issues with the post. I was simply referring to this discussion about whether or not it was an essay..
Why Jesus? Let’s all calm down.
I’m in one of those weird internet spaces where I wish we could just talk. It seems talking would be so much more nuanced. And maybe this actual blog/essay would be the same, very reasonable to me if said to my face, over beers. Most agree it’s pretty fine anyway, as do the actual commenters on the post, so, hey…
Let’s all chill. I have no idea why I wade into these spaces. I really don’t. But maybe it makes me think. Maybe. Goodnight, and to all a goodnight. I think that’s Shakespeare (or Charles Schultz)
I don’t really care about the easy stab at the barfly thing. I suppose some here have reacted to some kind of anti-male tone or something. I was mostly (before all this stuff about what the post was supposed to, trying to do, what have you) just struck by it in a way which made me consider it formally. As the frustrated cry of a human, I found it very moving, which I think was mostly its point, to express frustration. But only as that did I find it moving. On an intellectual/sympathetic level, if there was in anyway a point beyond simple expression (ie, polemic), I found it patronizing and heavy handed. For all its directness, it doesn’t bother to address an audience openly, hiding behind cheap rhetoric. It goes for the easy shame and makes the easy moves, rather than bothering to communicate. I was struck by the fact that to read it as tract, or polemic, is destructive to it, cheapening the very real pain which remains intact within it, and I was mildly disheartened that it was being read and shared as such (even by people who, like Roxane, found it more ‘interesting’ than me, and therefore wouldn’t see these problems as I do).
Great post! A professor, poet, and single mother!
I actually didn’t offer any statements about what I thought about this piece beyond that I liked it. I did not consider it on an intellectual level. It spoke to me, plain and simple. If I wanted to think through and explicate the how and why, I would have written a lengthy post about it. Instead, I was simply saying, this thing was written and I want to share it with you. I wouldn’t assign motives to me beyond that because there aren’t any.
I was mostly describing what was happening, not necessarily interpreting your motives. That was the tone that was being taken in discussing it. I wasn’t reading anything negative into your having posted it here, and apologize if you feel unduly implicated in something, whatever that may be.
I hate to wade in any further and I rarely do—I wonder myself what about this post has made me so wordy. And I just said I was going to bed, but anyway.
Just wanted to say it is odd how many graduate students, contract faculty, and tenured professors have children or are pregnant in my English Department. People repeatedly say, “There must be something in the water.” This is not a funny or original or a worthwhile “joke”—but people say it, a lot. So, the instructors here trade babysitters. They swap schedules around with each other. They teach each others’ classes. They bring kids to readings—the kids run screaming up and down the halls. It’s sort of annoying and awesome. They swap kid’s clothes. They have toys in their offices. You will talk with you about business while I kid sleeps in a crib near the window sunlight. At home, they hold “adult” parties, with kids sort of clawing at everyone’s heels and martinis, but no one cares, because they all have kids.
I know this is only one little Midwest college. And other colleges I have been at have never been so kid crazy, but this one is. I’m just telling you where I work and what I see (and live). No one ignores or shrugs at or elevates or denigrates or really thinks much at all intensely about pregnant writers or writer dads with kid slobber on neckline–so many of them are around. So. As many have said, I hope all of this sparks a lively conversation.
This open atmosphere for parenting (for both men and women) was my experience at my graduate school but that doesn’t, for me, negate what was written here. Almost everyone in my PhD program got pregnant in grad school. MTU was really open to it. We could bring our kids to class whether we were attending or teaching. I have seen a woman breastfeed during class. First time, it blew my mind and then I was like, this is not anything worth noticing, a child is being fed. It was a great environment. But, I have never assumed that to be the rule and there are, from what I understand, many universities where pregnancy is not welcome. I will also say that there are many women who are interrogated about their choice to get pregnant while on the tenure clock. I recently read something Julianna Baggott wrote about this, how during a campus interview, she was asked how she would be able to do her job with multiple children. So, there are definitely some universities that are open to families and pregnancy but there are also universities where a woman, particularly in the tenure track, has to deal with a lot of bullshit surrounding pregnancy.
Okay, fine and fair. But I wonder why you choose to privilege the attitude of an assessor of rhetoric over that of an interlocutor concerned with the topic at hand. Is the most interesting thing to be said about this really “what about the men” and “we all make hard choices”?
Yes, it is an issue. In many work places. I am trying to re-see this piece. Lines like,
“There is simply no room for mothers.”
I am going to assume we read this as hyperbolic, almost metaphorical, in a context of a prompt for discussion?
Well, it has done that.
From a cursory study of the definitions as the internet offers them, I think “essay” is the most suitable term. “Missive” suggests formality and “rant,” incoherence. Neither of these qualities fairly describe the piece. Meanwhile, an essay is identified mainly by the fact it is an exploration as well as that it is rooted in a particular viewpoint. It becomes more appropriate as one looks at the sub-meanings: as a test or a trial regarding value (in which emotional concerns would seem inextricable); as an attempt, which it undeniably is.
“Housework? Red herring.”
From wikipedia:
“Red herring is an idiomatic expression referring to the rhetorical or literary tactic of diverting attention away from an item of significance.”
Perhaps I am wrong, but isn’t that exactly how the author describes housework in the piece, i.e. as a distraction from her writing a.k.a. her point? And if the subject is dropped into the piece in a maddening way, as opposed to being threaded gracefully, isn’t that appropriate?
What I guess I’m saying is, I find the piece a good example of cleverness contributing to honesty: deeply satisfying for being demonstrative.
That sounds awesome. I need more parent-friends. That sounds like my kind of party… minus the heels… and maybe swap martinis for scotch.
So why isn’t it like that everywhere? I don’t have much experience with graduate school, beyond being a student, but no one brought their kids to class ever. Granted, it was a Masters in Teaching program, and I believe the average student age was maybe 25, but I remember an adviser telling me flat out, “Don’t get pregnant your first two years of working.”
One of my favorite teachers there was going for a full professorship (he was an A.P.) and when I met him in his office, his three-year-old son was there with him, watching tv on a laptop. He got so red, and the apologies started flying out, his wife had an interview and their sitter bailed, etc. etc. and I couldn’t have cared less, but it was obvious that someone there did. He asked me to shut the door behind me. When I asked him if there was some rule about not having kids to the office, he said, “Lets just say, it’s frowned upon.”
That was my experience, in Portland, OR. At a small private University. My small public college in Olympia, where I went as an undergrad, totally different. I can’t get a read on the district I work in now. On one hand, there’s plenty of pregnant to go around. I’ll have a long term sub position while I’m 7 mo, filling in for someone who will be nine months pregnant. But that adviser’s warning always sticks in my mind. I always felt as though, anywhere I lived and worked, it’s safer assume kids aren’t welcome unless specifically invited. Then again, I’m only now getting to the age where this might come into play.
So what’s the common thread here? Is there a trend? You’d think that education would be a kind environment for families and working mothers. Where should we all have gotten jobs?
Yuck. Long-winded. And sorry if I pissed you off yesterday Sean.
I find a little odd when “poor poetry mothers” go to the AWP. I don’t know anyone who’s poor who travels around to conferences.
we cool.
Hi Sean
So, I should say that I got up on Sunday morning and wrote this blog post and had absolutely no idea that so many people would respond to it. Frankly, I didn’t think anyone (beyond say, 20-50) people would read it. I can see why you would respond critically to what you perceive as the “false” or “lazy” rhetorical strategies that you think I have used and therefore are unwilling to call it an “essay.” That said, I have read hundreds of personal essays (I actually taught a class called “The Art of the Personal Essay” at FSU for many years) and historically there have been hundreds of different kinds of personal essays that fall into the loose category of “essay.” Most recently, the form of the “lyric essay” has emerged. I do think it’s important to note that the essay is a flexible and ill-defined form–the word ‘essay’ itself coming from the French verb that means ‘to try.’ If define essay as a group of paragraphs that logically moves towards proving a specific thesis, then no, my post is not an essay. But I also think that if that is how you want to define an essay, you would be missing out. (I have to run to work but I can give you about a 10 examples of essays that are employ illogic and are also powerful statements about the human condition).
Anyway, thanks for engaging with my post.
Oh and FYI, I, myself, am, in fact, a “French chick”! (My mother is French)
Sincerely,
Sandra
for example, and not so recent: the first literary user of the word l’essai, Montaigne