Dear friends,
I decided a little poetry might be right for this week:
Phenomenal Woman By Maya Angelou Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s sizeBut when I start to tell them,They think I’m telling lies.I say,It’s in the reach of my arms,The span of my hips,The stride of my step,The curl of my lips.I’m a womanPhenomenally.Phenomenal woman,That’s me.I walk into a roomJust as cool as you please,And to a man,The fellows stand orFall down on their knees.Then they swarm around me,A hive of honey bees.I say,It’s the fire in my eyes,And the flash of my teeth,The swing in my waist,And the joy in my feet.I’m a womanPhenomenally.Phenomenal woman,That’s me.Men themselves have wonderedWhat they see in me.They try so muchBut they can’t touchMy inner mystery.When I try to show them,They say they still can’t see.I say,It’s in the arch of my back,The sun of my smile,The ride of my breasts,The grace of my style.I’m a womanPhenomenally.Phenomenal woman,That’s me.Now you understandJust why my head’s not bowed.I don’t shout or jump aboutOr have to talk real loud.When you see me passing,It ought to make you proud.I say,It’s in the click of my heels,The bend of my hair,the palm of my hand,The need for my care.’Cause I’m a womanPhenomenally.Phenomenal woman, That’s me.Equality and Vision
Self-respecting we stand,
Where once we did hunch over
With guilt, second-prize ribbons and a
Countertop lined with ingredients to cook.
We stand tall in the glow of securing the
Right to vote, as we step toward visions of
Our equality with the muscular forces –
Let’s see the vision soon without wearing glasses,
Even within home walls where cameras do not go.
There is still work to do, as we strive for
Equal pay and we are haunted by the
Memories of physical and emotional abuse,
From past years, last months and this morning.
There are bodies that choose to chain us down.
We speak up louder with each day that passes,
Striving to reach a volume that cracks windows of
Disregard. We do not pass on opportunities to
Honor and represent the women who
Have brought us to the path we travel today.
We thank these women, we step into their footprints, and
We stretch the size of their shoes a little more with
Each day that passes.
I hope that we honor them well.
©2013 Christy Birmingham
Pro Femina By Carolyn Kizer ONEFrom Sappho to myself, consider the fate of women.How unwomanly to discuss it! Like a noose or an albatross necktieThe clinical sobriquet hangs us: codpiece coveters.Never mind these epithets; I myself have collected some honeys.Juvenal set us apart in denouncing our vicesWhich had grown, in part, from having been set apart:Women abused their spouses, cuckolded them, even plottedTo poison them. Sensing, behind the violence of his manner—“Think I'm crazy or drunk?”—his emotional stake in us,As we forgive Strindberg and Nietzsche, we forgive all thoseWho cannot forget us. We are hyenas. Yes, we admit it.While men have politely debated free will, we have howled for it,Howl still, pacing the centuries, tragedy heroines.Some who sat quietly in the corner with their embroideryWere Defarges, stabbing the wool with the names of their ancientOppressors, who ruled by the divine right of the male—I’m impatient of interruptions! I’m aware there were millionsOf mutes for every Saint Joan or sainted Jane Austen,Who, vague-eyed and acquiescent, worshiped God as a man.I’m not concerned with those cabbageheads, not truly feminineBut neutered by labor. I mean real women, like you and like me.Freed in fact, not in custom, lifted from furrow and scullery,Not obliged, now, to be the pot for the annual chicken,Have we begun to arrive in time? With our well-knownRespect for life because it hurts so much to come out with it;Disdainful of “sovereignty,” “national honor;” and other abstractions;We can say, like the ancient Chinese to successive waves of invaders,“Relax, and let us absorb you. You can learn temperanceIn a more temperate climate.” Give us just a few decadesOf grace, to encourage the fine art of acquiescenceAnd we might save the race. Meanwhile, observe our creative chaos,Flux, efflorescence—whatever you care to call it!TWOI take as my theme “The Independent Woman,”Independent but maimed: observe the exigent necktiesChoking violet writers; the sad slacks of stipple-faced matrons;Indigo intellectuals, crop-haired and callus-toed,Cute spectacles, chewed cuticles, aced out by full-time beautiesIn the race for a male. Retreating to drabness, bad manners,And sleeping with manuscripts. Forgive our transgressionsOf old gallantries as we hitch in chairs, light our own cigarettes,Not expecting your care, having forfeited it by trying to get even.But we need dependency, cosseting, and well-treatment.So do men sometimes. Why don’t they admit it?We will be cows for a while, because babies howl for us,Be kittens or bitches, who want to eat grass now and thenFor the sake of our health. But the role of pastoral heroineIs not permanent, Jack. We want to get back to the meeting.Knitting booties and brows, tartars or termagants, ancientFertility symbols, chained to our cycle, releasedOnly in part by devices of hygiene and personal daintiness,Strapped into our girdles, held down, yet uplifted by man’sIngenious constructions, holding coiffures in a breeze,Hobbled and swathed in whimsy, tripping on feminineShoes with fool heels, losing our lipsticks, you, me,In ephemeral stockings, clutching our handbags and packages.Our masks, always in peril of smearing or cracking,In need of continuous check in the mirror or silverware,Keep us in thrall to ourselves, concerned with our surfaces.Look at man’s uniform drabness, his impersonal envelope!Over chicken wrists or meek shoulders, a formal, hard-fibered assurance.The drape of the male is designed to achieve self-forgetfulness.So, Sister, forget yourself a few times and see where it gets you:Up the creek, alone with your talent, sans everything else.You can wait for the menopause, and catch up on your reading.So primp, preen, prink, pluck, and prize your flesh,All posturings! All ravishment! All sensibility!Meanwhile, have you used your mind today?What pomegranate raised you from the dead,Springing, full-grown, from your own head, Athena?THREEI will speak about women of letters, for I’m in the racket.Our biggest successes to date? Old maids to a woman.And our saddest conspicuous failures? The married spinstersOn loan to the husbands they treated like surrogate fathers.Think of that crew of self-pitiers, not-very-distant,Who carried the torch for themselves and got first-degree burns.Or the sad sonneteers, toast-and-teasdales we loved at thirteen;Middle-aged virgins seducing the puerile anthologistsThrough lust-of-the-mind; barbiturate-drenched CamillesWith continuous periods, murmuring softly on sofasWhen poetry wasn’t a craft but a sickly effluvium,The air thick with incense, musk, and emotional blackmail.I suppose they reacted from an earlier womanly modestyWhen too many girls were scabs to their stricken sisterhood,Impugning our sex to stay in good with the men,Commencing their insecure bluster. How they must have swaggeredWhen women themselves endorsed their own inferiority!Vestals, vassals, and vessels, rolled into several,They took notes in rolling syllabics, in careful journals,Aiming to please a posterity that despises them.But we’ll always have traitors who swear that a woman surrendersHer Supreme Function, by equating Art with aggressionAnd failure with Femininity. Still, it’s just as unfairTo equate Art with Femininity, like a prettily packaged commodityWhen we are the custodians of the world’s best-kept secret:Merely the private lives of one-half of humanity.But even with masculine dominance, we mares and mistressesProduced some sleek saboteuses, making their cracksWhich the porridge-brained males of the day were too thick to perceive,Mistaking young hornets for perfectly harmless bumblebees.Being thought innocuous rouses some women to frenzy;They try to be ugly by aping the ways of menAnd succeed. Swearing, sucking cigars and scorching the bedspread,Slopping straight shots, eyes blotted, vanity-blownIn the expectation of glory: she writes like a man!This drives other women mad in a mist of chiffon.(One poetess draped her gauze over red flannels, a practical feminist.)But we’re emerging from all that, more or less,Except for some ladylike laggards and Quarterly priestessesWho flog men for fun, and kick women to maim competition.Now, if we struggle abnormally, we may almost seem normal;If we submerge our self-pity in disciplined industry;If we stand up and be hated, and swear not to sleep with editors;If we regard ourselves formally, respecting our true limitationsWithout making an unseemly show of trying to unfreeze our assets;Keeping our heads and our pride while remaining unmarried;And if wedded, kill guilt in its tracks when we stack up the dishesAnd defect to the typewriter. And if mothers, believe in the luck of our children,Whom we forbid to devour us, whom we shall not devour, And the luck of our husbands and lovers, who keep free women.A song of peace - Joan BaezThis is my song, O God of all the nations
A song of peace, for lands afar & mine
This is my home, the country where my heart is
Heare are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine
My country's skies are bluer than the ocean
And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations
A song of peace for their land and for mineHere's to making serious progress toward gender parity - together - in 2018,CynthiaP.S. I can't hit 'send' without including my favorite passage from my favorite book The Wind in the Willows which we read aloud with regularity, read the full chapter Dulce Domum for context:
In a very few minutes supper was ready, and Mole,
as he took the head of the table in a sort of a dream,
saw a lately barren board set thick with savoury comforts; saw his little friends' faces brighten and beam as they fell to without delay; and then let himself loose for he was famished indeed on the provender so magically provided,
thinking what a happy home-coming this had turned out, after all. As they ate, they talked of old times, and the field-mice gave him the local gossip up to date, and answered as well as they could the hundred questions he had to ask them. The Rat said little or nothing, only taking care that each guest had what he wanted, and plenty of it, and that Mole had no trouble or anxiety about anything. They clattered off at last, very grateful and showering wishes of the season, with their jacket pockets stuffed with remembrances for the small brothers and sisters at home. When the door had closed on the last of them and the chink of the lanterns had died away, Mole and Rat kicked the fire up, drew their chairs in, brewed themselves a last nightcap of mulled ale, and discussed the events of the long day.
