[Jennifer Reeser]

I no longer even remember when or how I first encountered Gail's work. This likely has less to do with my mental faculties than it has to do with the fact that Gail has become one of those rare feeler/thinker poets of whom I think, "She was always there." She is a lover of truth, and to experience her poems is to say -- "Yes! Of course, but why didn't I think of telling it this way?" Gail has the ability to craft a phrase which "rings in the mind like a silver coin."

Partial to her, I'm sure, because I am a fellow Louisiana stateswoman, I live a scant 45-or-so minutes from her home in Breaux Bridge (the very name of her home is poetry), and in my opinion, she "does us proud."

As assistant editor to the journal Iambs & Trochees, I looked forward twice a year to receiving possibly another White poem in my printer's "blues" -- the preliminary copy of a publication which must be examined and corrected, prior to its final fate at the press.

Here are two poems we had the privilege of publishing, from Journal IV Issue 2 of Fall/Winter 2005. I trust Gail won't mind and somehow, I don't believe there would be any objection from Bill Carlson, my former editor, may he rest in peace.

To My Lover, After Our Discussion Of Poetry

When you came in last night and said, "What's that
you're writing?" and I answered, "Poetry",
you told me that I couldn't feed the cat,
much less indulge in truffles and Chablis,
on what I'd earn by that. So now I know:
you need a higher income in your bed,
a lawyer or a lady CEO.
The worst you think of me has now been said.
While you're at work tomorrow I'll clean house,
pack luggage, do the laundry and my hair.
When you come home you'll find that I've moved out,
taking my unproductive life elsewhere.
We're through, my love. But since you knew no better,
I've left this poem and not a Dear John letter.

Crouching Female Figure: Pompeii

At first they were not much afraid,
but through the hours the ashes fell,
layer on layer overlaid --
the soft gray snow that falls in hell.

When panic came, her mistress said,
Lucilla, take the child and run.
But when she stumbled, both were dead.
Ashes had eaten up the sun.

Now, in an iron carapace
of ashes, here she crouches still,
trying to shield the baby's face
while tourists photograph their fill.

Could God explain in layman's terms
what vices necrotized Pompeii,
when urban gods and rustic herms
were ashes in a single day?

No law, no logic eases pain
or stops the tidal wave of death.
Sinai and Etna both can rain
ashes that suffocate our breath.

[Suzanne Doyle]

There is a wisdom in these poems, and a compassion in the detail, that elevates them well above Dorothy Parker.

I'd like to second Leslie's recommendation to read Julie Kane's article on Gail. It's also wise work:
www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.php?vol=2006&iss=1&cat=criticism&page=kane

Here's my modest proposal: Gail White for US Poet Laureate.

[Leslie Monsour]

During our correspondence, Gail, you mentioned the poem, "Women" by Louise Bogan:

WOMEN



Women have no wilderness in them, 

They are provident instead, 

Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts 

To eat dusty bread. 



They do not see cattle cropping red winter grass,

They do not hear 

Snow water going down under culverts 

Shallow and clear. 



They wait, when they should turn to journeys, 

They stiffen, when they should bend. 

They use against themselves that benevolence 

To which no man is friend. 



They cannot think of so many crops to a field 

Or of clean wood cleft by an axe. 

Their love is an eager meaninglessness 

Too tense or too lax. 



They hear in any whisper that speaks to them 

A shout and a cry. 

As like as not, when they take life over their door-sill 

They should let it go by. 


--
1923. from Body of This Death.

Gail, what do you make of the poem? Does it offend intentionally, as perhaps, an exposé of stereotypes? Or is Bogan sick and tired of the women she's been encountering, and longing for the company of men? I'm not sure I understand what the last two lines mean. I'd love to know your thoughts on this.

[Gail White]

I mentioned this poem because I find it beautifully constructed, a joy to read, and thoroughly aggravating.

Personally, I can still count cows in a field, and I will match inner wilderness with any man in the room (and not on drugs).

I've always understood the last two lines to mean, "When women finally fall in love and trust some guy, they're usually making a mistake." She just feels obliged to put it more subtly than that.

Any opinions from anyone else?

[Janet Kenny]

Sorry, I should have asked my other question later.

As regards the Bogan I do hope stanzas one and two are ironical but by S3 it is becoming serious and the last two lines are very serious. It's obviously written out of personal pain. I know nothing about her life. I think it's about the conditioning of women and the lives they live as a result of that conditioning. That was especially true at the time the poem was written and in my own semi-rural New Zealand childhood it was still true.
Janet




[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited November 20, 2008).]

[Suzanne Doyle]

I agree with Gail's paraphrase of Bogan's "Women," which has always been one of my favorites. In fact, if any of you haven't read Bogan's _Blue Estuaries_ you are in for a treat when you do. I go back to that book all the time.

[Jennifer Reeser]

Originally posted by Gail White:


Any opinions from anyone else?

I find this to be a pretty poem, but cannot share in the speaker's assessment of womanhood. Moreover, it seems to me that in more than one spot, the poem is subtextually inconsistent with itself (e.g., the opening observation that women lack wildness and passion, yet ending on a note which would appear to encourage rejection of life).

[Barbara Loots]

I met up with this poem in my college days, and responded to it immediately and viscerally. At the time, I was living among women (it was a large women's college whose name you wouldn't have recognized then) who declined to attend a free campus performance by Artur Rubinstein because it was their hair-washing night. Women who spent their weekends scurrying off home to obey their boyfriends. Women who wondered what on earth Betty Friedan (also a guest on campus) was going on about.

So...I suppose I understood the first line of this poem to be Those women. Obviously not MOI.

I took to Louise Bogan immediately.

[Tim Murphy]

Blue Estuaries is a great little book, and Americans haven't produced very many. I agree with Gail's reading. I think Bogan is a supreme example of a writer who produced powerful, outwardly directed poems out of depression, and ultimately the alcohol that killed her.

[Catherine Tufariello]

Gail, I've admired your poems for years and it's a real pleasure to be on this panel with you. I sympathize with what you say about the effect of not being prolific on a poet's chances of recognition. I think T.S. Eliot once said something about how, if you wanted to be a famous poet, you either had to write a great deal or write very little. But he put himself in the latter category, so I don't give much credence to it!

I'm another fan of Bogan's The Blue Estuaries who never understood the last lines of "Women"--thanks for your gloss. In rereading The Price of Everything, I noticed that one of your own poems is provocative in a bit like the way Bogan's is. The speaker wittily disparages famous women poets, settling on a male poet for a Muse:

Searching for Muses

When I needed you, you weren’t there,
Anne Bradstreet (maybe just back from prayers
and packing the children off to bed
before you forgot what the pastor said).
What can a post-modern poet do
with a pious domestic wife like you?

When I needed you, you weren’t there,
Emily, having just flown upstairs
to hide from company out of sight
or change your dress to a whiter white.
What can a post-modern poet do
with a sad neurotic cliché like you?

When I needed you, you weren’t there,
Edna, combing your bright red hair
just before going out on a date
with your newest courtier--gay or straight.
What can a post-modern poet do
with a wayward scatterbrained nymph like you?

But Coleridge sits on the edge of the bed--
I admit he’s stoned, and his eyes are red,
but he still looks ready to talk all night
and tune each rhyme till it rings just right.
Dorothy Wordsworth liked him, too.
I need company. Col will do.

You and Katherine McAlpine have interesting things to say in the introduction to The Muse Strikes Back (where this poem doesn't appear) about what happens when the genders of poet and Muse are reversed. I was wondering if you wanted to talk a little about what inspired this poem, or what it means for a woman poet to search for, rather than be, a Muse.