Thanks MLA! A Reading Report: Beth Ann Fennelly, Erika Meitner, and Nicole Cooley
Yes, sometimes I interrupt my busy schedule of doctor’s appointments to go to other people’s poetry readings! 🙂
This weekend, the MLA conference is here in Seattle, and because of this, there were a plethora of wonderful readings all over the place. The one that took top billing in my head was this wonderful threesome of readers at local poetry bookstore Open Books, including Beth Ann Fennelly, who has been one of poetry heroes for a long time, and the very sweet and funny Erika Meitner, who read from her latest book, Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls (which I reviewed not too long ago for Barn Owl Review.) The third reader, Nicole Cooley, whose work I wasn’t as familiar with, was lovely and funny as well, with a final poem about the metaphorical life of dollhouses that was haunting and disturbing. (I picked up a copy of her Milkmaids, which is just my kind of book!)
Just hearing the bios of these three poets was daunting – they are all so accomplished. I think, “How could I do a third of what they do?” But in person they were all so down to earth and friendly. It was one of those readings I wish could have gone on longer. Their use of language, their reading styles, just made the whole experience deeee-lightful!
I’ve been inspired to post this article I wrote, “The Bad Wives Club,” by several things:
—This story about a journalist who ran her own piece after it was accepted, then killed.
–The recent discussion about Zucker’s newest book, Museum of Accidents, by Stephen Burt and others on a variety of blogs, focusing on her poetry about motherhood.
I wrote this article last year about Rachel Zucker’s The Bad Wife Handbook and Beth Ann Fennelly’s Unmentionables. I really loved both books and thought that they had something important to say. The article was accepted by a well-paying org, then killed.
Here is a teaser. Click on the link at the end for the full article.
“If we were to plot out the trajectory of American women’s poetry on wife-hood, from Anne Bradstreet to Sylvia Plath to Louise Gluck to Rachel Zucker, what would that look like? Even the word “wife” seems freighted with connotations of motherhood, domestic chores and duty. What does it mean for a woman to be a wife in contemporary society? How can one be a “good” or “bad” wife? These are some of the questions posed to a contemporary reader in Rachel Zucker’s The Bad Wife Handbook and Beth Ann Fennelly’s Unmentionables.
Zucker and Fennelly question the guilt and the societal expectations in an unmerciful, sometimes piercing light. Can a contemporary woman keep her individuality, her art, her erotic self, alive in the face of the expectations of being a “good” wife, a “good” mother? What do those words even mean?
The two poets use different syntactical strategies while addressing similar subjects – Fennelly’s poems simmer and stir, bursting out of their narrative structures to include as much of her inner turmoil and messy, robust sexuality as possible, while Zucker’s tease and bemuse with their constant shimmying of pronouns, subjects and verb tenses.”
Rest of article here.
(If you like it, help support a poet – consider ordering my book or asking your local library to carry it. Thanks!)
