The Poetry, Essays and Personal Journals of Larry L. Dill
When Natalie Maines, the lead singer for the Dixie Chicks, set off a firestorm of criticism (and death threats) for saying in a London concert hall in 2003 that she and her Texas band were ashamed that the President of the United States was from Texas, she was speaking truth to power. I went out the next day and bought a copy of their latest album. It's the least I could do. The documentary film of their travails, "Shut Up and Sing," is now available on DVD. In the photo above they celebrate their vindicating Grammy Sweep in February.
When another Texan, Molly Ivins, who died recently of breast cancer, spent a cold night camped out on a side walk on Congress Avenue in Austin a few years ago to protest a city ordinance against homeless people sleeping in public, I was there to witness Molly’s act of speaking truth to power.
I rediscovered Grace Paley the other night at a poetry reading in New York. Sometimes I’ve wondered why I would name my life’s work The New Hope Journal, with all its negative religious connotations and the cynicism that seems so reasonable these days. And then I contemplate all the acts of hope and courage I have witnessed in my life and I remember that girl on a bicycle in Paris sweeping swiftly through the city unaffected it seems by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and I say to myself, you know, as long as there are women there will always be hope.
--Larry L. Dill
New York
March 1, 2007
"It is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman"
--Grace Paley
The day after the Super Bowl
It is 12 degrees in New York.
The sun is shining brilliantly
And reflecting off the windows
Of the apartment building across
The street into the Yorkville Branch
Of the New York Public Library
On East 79th Street.
I’m sitting here with the public.
Some of the public appear to be homeless
And in here to get out of the cold.
Others look merely old or just generally unkempt.
Still others are fashionably dressed.
There are young people sitting at computers.
Businessmen reading the Wall Street Journal.
But everyone in here is reading something.
Even the homeless are reading.
I’m reading a book of poems by Grace Paley
And I have just finished the poem “Responsibility.”
And I’m thinking to myself, have I been woman
Enough today to suit Grace Paley?
And I’m wondering when the last time was that
I learned the truth from the powerless.
And I’m wondering if I have ever known anyone
Who was not powerless.
There are little dramas of power and powerlessness
All around me.
I had to come out to the library today because
My son-in-law is off work and is watching the
Post-super-bowl commentary drone on all day long.
(His team won.)
Is that power? Or powerlessness?
There is a woman sitting in an easy chair next to one
Of the sunny windows here in the library who has a book
In her lap but has her crocheted hat pulled down over her eyes
And keeps slumping over asleep. The grey-haired old black guard ,
Barely able to keep himself awake,
Has to keep going over to her and waking her up
Because, evidently, you are not allowed to sleep
In the New York Public Library.
He’s not having much luck.
And though he keeps threatening to make her leave,
He never does.
Is that power or powerlessness?
The president’s war on the Iraqi people seems clearly
A case of power over powerlessness. But I’m not sure
That the president doesn’t already know the truth.
“It is the responsibility of the poet,” says Grace Paley—whether
Male or female—“to keep an eye on the world and cry
Out like Cassandra, but be listened to this time.”
The public is here in the New York Public Library today
Reading all manner of books and periodicals.
And the poets of the world—some of them—
Are trying as they always do to be women and to
Shoulder the responsibly for the well being of the world
That ordinary mothers shoulder everyday for their children.
And I’d be proud to count myself among them
Even though I feel about as powerless as the
Old man sitting next to me tearing angrily through the pages of
Natural History magazine as if he were desperately
Trying to find the truth in the Manhattan telephone
Directory.
I read recently that in the period leading up to Andrew Jackson’s
Indian Removal, a lot of people believed that the Indians
Were unrepentant savages because in those pre-feminist times no one had thought to look at
What Indian women had actually accomplished: stable farming villages,
Arts and crafts, etc.
I much prefer Grace Paley’s poetry to some others I read
Here today. She makes me feel like I have work to do.
Important work. Women’s work.
Grace Paley's Poem "Responsibility"
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copyright 2007 by Larry L. Dill
