Message: 4 Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 19:34:20 -0500 From: "Uma Parameswaran" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [SASIALIT] The Comma and my poem To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Thank you to those who sent me mail on this. I might as well cite the whole poem, though it is not really necessary for the comma discussion. Needs three bits of annotation: the title is from the vigils held by women's organizations whenever a woman dies a violent death. The poem is about the absence of tenure-track women in my department in the early nineties. When I joined the department in the late sixties (in the sixties one could get a job even before a Ph.D.) there were four women and six to eight men; no woman was hired after that, though there were quite a few new positions that went to men. There were many women with Ph.D.'s and a track record of social activism who taught on stipend (where one was paid a ninth of the basic salary of an assistant professor for doing one fourth of the work.) Finally, some of the women referred to in the last stanza were among the fourteen women killed by an antifeminist zealot at the Polytenchnic School in Montreal on Dec. 6, 1989. He entered an engineering classroom, cursed women for entering men's professions, ordered the men to go to one side of the room, and then opened fire on the women. For me, the most horrific aspect of the massacre was that the men obeyed the killer. VIGILANCE This is where we are now. We Who once raised hell on campuses and stormed citadels of poer and brought dons and deans to their knees; Who once raised lovers to passionate pitch till clouds reverberating across continents thundered down in torrential rain; Who once raised our nurslings tending and crooning them to golden wings; Who once sang from sea to sea, sweeping rivers into a chorus of joy and passed each other never touching; Now have come together to hold hands, silenced by missiles from powers that be, in silent thought for those by lovers slain or randomly killed by antifeminist rage, mutely mourning children streetwise but unspared. We Who soared into skies of desire in our men's arms, Who kissed asleep and hugged awake our children with a prayer, now start the day holding each other, in thought or over telephone wires to say, Take heart, hang in there. O my sisters, my loves, As we circle the flame That once was Wilma, Susan, Anne-Marie, Michele, Sonia, Genevieve, Do we know, how not know, It is our own vigil we hold In quiet despair. ***** The comma is in the tenth last line. It could be after - thought - but I placed it where it is in recognition of lesbian colleagues. Uma Parameswaran -- We are protean. We can become anything. www.shivamvij.com (Blog) | mail at shivamvij.com (Email) ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> <font face=arial size=-1><a href="http://us.ard.yahoo.com/SIG=12h3pgu9b/M=362335.6886444.7839734.2575449/D=groups/S=1705020082:TM/Y=YAHOO/EXP=1123351198/A=2894362/R=0/SIG=138c78jl6/*http://www.networkforgood.org/topics/arts_culture/?source=YAHOO&cmpgn=GRP&RTP=http://groups.yahoo.com/";>What would our lives be like without music, dance, and theater?Donate or volunteer in the arts today at Network for Good</a>.</font> --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -- You are encouraged to post poetry, respond critically to the poems circulated and participate in discussions. To post, email your message to [email protected] OR post online at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/post/ Tell friends to subscribe to ZESTPoets by sending a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED], OR, if they have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/join/ ---theZESTcommunity-------------- [1] ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCurrent/ [2] ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTEconomics/ [3] ZESTGlobal: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/ [4] ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/ [5] ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/ [6] ZESTCaste: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ [7] ZESTAlternative: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTAlternative/ [8] TalkZEST: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TalkZEST/ --- Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
