Going Too Far (47 page)

CALLIOPE
(
slowly rousing herself to the task
) Yes. Yes, I hear. Celebrate the present and future as well as the past. (
She clears her throat and adopts a brisk tone
) But for celebration we must look to what is being produced. And for this we need create new standards for a new age, for these new artists, for these Daughters who would give birth to a new culture.
(THE MUSES
begin to return from their grief, resuming their old positions, drying their eyes, and once again giving their attention to the conversation. At this
THE POET
,
too, blows her nose, sighs deeply, and settles back to her work
) Authentic art is not born of chaos, but of an order all unto itself.
(CALLIOPE
,
seeing the effect her speech is having on her Sisters, smiles, pleased with herself, and exchanges a proud look with
URANIA
.) How
do
our Daughters develop new standards—their own—for artistic excellence? Because some criteria
are
necessary; art in a very real sense is not democratic.

URANIA
The Daughters are of course suspicious of standards because of the way the Sons have used them.

THALIA
To say the least.

EUTERPE
But ought that mean that the Daughters refuse any standards at all? I think not. It is merely that in their flight from the old oppressive restrictions they have preferred formlessness to any structure. One can sympathize with that, surely.

CALLIOPE
To a point, yes. But art
is
structure. The form is to the aesthetic as matter is to energy—without it there is no life.

EUTERPE
Agreed. I also chafe at ignorance, especially in the Daughters. Yet I rejoice at the number of women who are writing poems, more than I can ever remember. Even formless, aimless, artless poems. They have the longing, I rejoice at that.

THALIA
Then you do your own Daughters a disservice, Euterpe. Please. Don't misunderstand me. I too rejoice at this catharsis, expression, exorcism, release. But it is one thing to rejoice because so many women are at last putting their feelings on paper. It is quite another thing to consider this
writing
.

CALLIOPE
For once I find myself in agreement with Thalia. Women have the right to this expression, and it is wondrous that feminism has exploded a space in which that right may finally be exercised. Art, however, requires something more.

THALIA
Also there is just so much catharsis one can take without being put in mind of laxatives or reduced to quoting Nietzsche on the creativity of the artist: “One does not get over a passion by representing it; rather, it is over
when
one is able to represent it.”

CLIO
      (
dryly
) Nietzsche seems an unsavory example to raise in any political context, don't you think, Thalia?

THALIA
Touché
, Clio. But it's hard for me to pass up a good quote when I inspire one.

CALLIOPE
For myself, I confess that I am becoming impatient with Daughters who appear to feel that any set of words blatted out on a page with the right-hand margins unjustified is a poem. Do you think that I am becoming a crochety old grump?

EUTERPE
No, you are an admirable old grump, Calliope. You're right, of course. “Having a lot to express” is all very well, but if one is indifferent to color and line then one should refrain from making that expression on canvas, and if one is indifferent to language, to the richness of vowels and the wit of consonants, indifferent to rhythm and echo and music and rhyme and simile and metaphor, then one had best refrain from making that expression on the page. Or
do
so, by all means, but have the civility not to call it art.

ERATO
Brava
, Euterpe! “And where love's form is, love is; love
is
form.”

CLIO
      Chapman said that.

THALIA
A man, tsk-tsk.

ERATO
Indeed, Thalia. And why, pray, should
I
pass up a good quote when
I
inspire one?

THALIA
(
throwing up her hands in a gesture of surrender) Touché
again! (
She is laughing wickedly
) I see I'm actually infecting you all with wit.

MELPOMENE
(
with a nod toward
THE POET
,
who has just ceased typing and begun twisting her hands nervously
) She sometimes refuses to tell these harsh truths to her people. For fear. Of hurting them, of their hating her as the messenger of such news. As if the kindest lie were owed any but one's adversary. This fear is her gravest sin against her people. If she loves them she owes them some truth, and the most severe judgments of art are the best and most enduring form of that truth, for her.

TERPSICHORE
She will unlearn her fear in time, and move on her truth.

MELPOMENE
Truth needs no time, and art has none to give. Her people waste themselves on trivialities. She knows this; she must speak.
(THE POET
has become increasingly agitated during the above speeches; she has left her desk and begun pacing back and forth, wringing her hands
)

CALLIOPE
She must do more. She must inspire them to develop excellence.

URANIA
More. To redefine excellence so that it means not excelling over someone else but excelling and exceeding the
self
, so that the Daughters compete each with the best in
herself
, bettering herself and the Work thereby.

CLIO
      They will not understand for a long time. She will have reason to fear.

POLYMNIA
She must pass beyond the fear, into devotion.

ERATO
Into love.

MELPOMENE
She will need love and devotion indeed when at last she ceases to fear. For then she will have most cause.

(
A sudden calm seems to steal over
THE POET
,
as if the exhortatory statements of the Muses above her have woven a cloak of peace which now enfolds her. She seems to stand taller and move with confidence, as someone resigned to a fate. She walks quietly to her desk, seats herself, and, smiling faintly, returns to work
)

THALIA
(
deliberately breaking the tension
) Well, I shall steel her courage and entertainingly demonstrate to you, dear Sisters, how great is the need for those aforementioned standards. I happen to have with me (she
extends an empty hand into the air and a sheaf of papers appears in it
) a few wee exercises in parody which I could not resist after leafing through certain feminist publications which the Daughters, in their well-meaning but sometimes soporiferous manner had produced. Ahem—

CALLIOPE
Must we?

THALIA
Indeed you must! (
In mock pain
) I burned with a hard, gem-like flame when I wrote them. (
Impatiently
) Is it true, then, that Muses have lost their sense of humor?

ALL
(
with assorted moans
) Very well then, Thalia. Have done. All right, get it over with. Go ahead, then.

THALIA
(
delighted
) Well. You'll miss the spelling and visual jokes, but it can't be helped. This one is an exercise on the current “Heavy” Radical Woman poem which-must-touch-all-the-correct-bases. It has alternate titles
(THALIA
reads all the following in dramatic fashion
):

“How Now Frau Mao”

or

“The Bilge My Sisters Won't All Burble with Me”

Wimminlovers we

burn my tongue in yr lap

here in the streets of Hanoi oy o O labia

O Ho O Ho Chi Minh

who saw them bomb the dykes

O melting oreo cookie in the jeans

I hate my square old mother O but Ho

is my dear uncle angle ankle lick my ankle

she u u she O she u

inkling of chlorine chorine water

Drown she said and I bid, I bid

two posters at the wimmincenter auction

          (
of those great wimmin Evelyn Waugh

                    
and that Maria Rilke
)

in exchange for one NLF flag I sooed

into the crotch of my womon's wombone's pants

for you are who you creep with

and Susan Sexe she tells it like it his

O Ho u she i ho Ho to t
—

to touch ano
—

to touch anoth
—
another
—

to touch another wo
—

to touch another wommon's

wommon's wombon's womon's

little

red

book
.

(THE MUSES
valiantly are trying to sit in prim and judgmental postures and to refuse
THALIA
the sight of their genuine amusement. Small, revealing smiles prickle at the corner of their mouths
.
CLIO
,
however, is simply unable to resist correcting an historical inaccuracy
)

CLIO
      I just want to say that “dear old Uncle Ho” put all the lesbians he knew of in dear old jail.

THALIA
O Ho. As if we didn't know.

ERATO
Which reminds me. (
She has a twinkle in her eye
) If male artists always claimed to woo us and have us as their mistresses, whatever must they think goes on between the woman artist and her Muse?
(THE MUSES
all giggle, except for
POLYMNIA
and
MELPOMENE)

MELPOMENE
They never understand that every artist, female or male, is ultimately alone with the self. An onanist, if you insist.

POLYMNIA
Not quite, dearest Melpomene. Alone, rather, with what is eternal
in
the self. That is quite different, you know, and
that
is what they do not understand.

THALIA
Pish-tosh. What they don't understand would fill the Library at Alexandria and did. They probably refuse to visualize The Poet and
her
Muse (
the giggles again, lovely and wicked
) and so translate
us
into great hairy jockish hulks—
voilà
! The solution: male muses!

CALLIOPE
(
wrinkling her delicate nose
) I may die. (
Then, noticing:
) Oh look, Terpsichore's rolled herself into a ball!

(
They give themselves over to unashamed laughter, while
THALIA
seizes the opportunity for another dramatic delivery
)

THALIA
Girls, girls, do settle down, I'm not finished. There are a few more short examples which I must share with you so that you'll be Up On Current Trends. This next one is my version of the Real Woman Poet's work; if the first example I read could be found in the centerfold of something that might be called
Sappho Gurley Flynn Speaks
then this one would be lodged in the pages of a prestigious journal with a name like
The Duluth Poetry Forum of America
. Now you must remember, Sisters, that the Real Woman Poet is abstract on self-protective purpose. Look not for concrete images herein. And yet, show pity: our parodied author has imitated masculinist poetry and dutifully gone to literary cocktail parties for decades. She is at last Accepted. Now, hoist by her own Petrarch, she kicks lovingly at other women, will not publish in anthologies of women's poetry
(because she's “not a woman poet, but a poet”), yet runs the feminist fashion through her subject mill, you bet. I call this one:

“The Ontological Anatomy of Areopagitica Assessed”

or, simply
,

“Poem”

To make

            
& unmake

    
ourselves & each     other

      
makes for a making

    
of others & selves

          
unmade & unselfish

but selflessly making

              
a selfmade made self
.

& if I am angry

    
& if I am guilty

my needs & my anger

        
are guiltless & grouchy

      
and if I am thoughtless

    la plume de ma tante

              
your thoughts for the making

of my self, my guilt, needs, & anger are made
.

To believe    ) is to alter     Once more into

the bleach, split ends,

humming upon a peak in Darien
.

EUTERPE
(
doubled over and holding her stomach
) I can hardly breathe, but I can't tell whether it's from laughter or from pain.

THALIA
(
barreling on while she has them enthralled
) Both, dear, both. But take comfort. Here's one for you, Erato. It's my humble version of the New Raunchy Women's Lib Poet who thinks Mailer, Miller, and no doubt even Mahler are just
wonderful
guys and who has created the new sex-and-food genre:

“Brussel Sprouts and Balls”

Ooooo honey your balls are just like

brussel sprouts and you

know how I love them all adribbling Promise

margarine and just a

                              
smidgen

                                 
dollop