“Dear Elation, there is something else you didn’t know.” A lovely way to start a poem, as Sarah Gambito does in Matadora.
Dear Reader, there is something else you didn’t know.
A month, now, since I began to write upon these virtual pages, posting something like lyric essays, something like critical musings, something like ??? but not quite ??? blog posts each week. Too long for web, reading, I know, and I thank you for your patience.
And many thanks for responding, privately (email), semi-publicly (facebook), and publicly (here, in the comments section). It’s been exciting (and, I admit, a little frightening) to begin and engage in these conversations.
So far, I’ve avoided discussion about this form: the blog post. Many who have come before me have done so quite elegantly and provocatively. I have especially enjoyed this discussion of the public and private nature of blogs. I didn’t feel I had much to add to what’s already been said.
But I’m back in school, now, and taking a craft class on persona poems. I’ve been thinking about the masks we wear when we write. In a way, as someone said on the first day of class, every poem is a persona poem.
No more masks! exclaimed Muriel Rukeyser, and the feminists poets took up the cry.
No more hiding, is what Rukeyser meant, I think ??? no more hiding the raw and messy truth behind the classic poetic frame, the selfless woman’s face. Yes, of course we must discard the masks imposed upon us, and women like Rukesyer and Alice Walker and Sylvia Rivera have led by example. How to face the world without shame of who we are.
Yet, sometimes masks protect us ??? or rather, sometimes we need to protect our vulnerable, our incipient selves. We need to pretend to be braver than we are ??? and sometimes we become that brave.
(Give me Grover over Deborah Kerr, any day…)
Or sometimes, we’re not quite sure who we are ??? or which aspect of our self (for don’t we have many?) we want to manifest. We try on a few masks until we find the one that feels right. The one that fits most closely with the self we are in that moment or context. The right slant of cheek bone.
Perhaps what I’m trying to say here is that I’m not quite sure of who Tamiko the blogger might be yet. I am listening to my voice as I try out the notes in this electronic medium of masking/unmasking
I have the honor and joy of knowing Sarah Gambito, the poet at the beginning of this post. She, along with Joseph O. Legaspi, co-founded Kundiman, an organization that supports and creates a community for emerging Asian American poets.
One evening, a room full of us (Asian American poets) sat on her living room floor, notebooks balanced on our knees. “Close your eyes,” she said. “You are in a room with a bed. Imagine there’s someone you care very deeply about sleeping in that bed. You pick up a pen. You write. ???Dear ___, there is something else you didn’t know.’”
I wrote into that “something” ??? learning as I wrote what I/the other did not know. In that circle of poets like ??? and not like ??? me, I had a moment of masklessness. Such vulnerability is frightening. Such trust is elating.
And so we go.