Comforts of the Abyss: The Art of Persona Writing by Philip Schultz

Author:Philip Schultz [Schultz, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Writing, Composition, Language Arts & Disciplines, General, Literary Criticism, Epub3, Personal Memoirs, Biography & Autobiography, American
ISBN: 9780393531855
Google: dP1KEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Norton
Published: 2022-06-07T21:38:12+00:00

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

There was another magician I was impressed with and actually met and even became friends with during my time in Cambridge, one whose very different magic act was in many ways just as mesmerizing and original as Elizabeth Bishop’s. Denise Levertov was in Cambridge at the same time as Bishop, and though I often wondered if they ever met and knew each other—how could they not have, two women poets of international renown living so close together? But I never once saw them together or heard anyone mention both in the same sentence. Though I knew Denise and Adrienne Rich were good friends, when I once mentioned Bishop to Levertov, with whom I became friends quite early and easily during my time there, I remember only that if I even mentioned Elizabeth’s name Denise quickly changed the subject and I understood not to mention her again. Denise knew, I thought, of my admiration for Bishop and, if she held any negative views, would’ve known better than to have said anything against her to me. They were very different kinds of poets, after all, in many ways nearly polar opposites. Elizabeth’s more restrained and indirect approach to autobiographical subject matter served what she no doubt saw as her aesthetic mission, while Denise’s more liberal, political, and, in a sense, egalitarian approach seemed willing to sacrifice everything to what she saw as the common good, or moral edification, of her audience. It’s not hard to imagine how Bishop would react to a poem as blunt and dramatically personal as Denise’s “Mad Song,” from Relearning the Alphabet, published in 1970:

My madness is dear to me.

I who was almost always the sanest among my friends,

one to whom others came for comfort,

now at my breasts (that look timid and ignorant,

that don’t look as if milk had flowed from them,

years gone by)

cherish a viper.

Hail, little serpent of useless longing

that may destroy me,

that bites me with such idle

needle teeth.

I who am loved by those who love me

for honesty,

to whom life was an honest breath

taken in good faith,

I’ve forgotten how to tell joy from bitterness.

Dear to me, dear to me,

blue poison, green pain in my mind’s veins.

How am I to be cured against my will?

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