“Of course,” I said, “Some readers will probably wear white — or (fake) fur. You know, like Emily’s dog Carlo.”

We were talking about San Francisco’s first Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon to be held 12-1-12 at the SFPL – for the poet’s 182nd birthday!

If the president of the San Francisco Library Commission is planning to dress up for a chronological reading of Emily D’s opus, you can too.

Come for the all day read of ED’s poems on Saturday, December 1. Your sponsors – Litquake, the Emily Dickinson International Society, and the SFPL – will have copies of the complete poems on hand.

No experience necessary!

Join us in the Hispanic / Latino Rooms after 10 a.m. and all day on Saturday, 12-1-12.

Volunteers needed to spread the word & help on marathon day. Contact Aífe: marathon [at] aifemurray [dot] com.

Updates here, for now, and -soon- on FB, Twitter, and sponsors’ sites.

Good poetic karma!

It was at a fundraiser for Small Press Traffic in the 80s (see March 30, below).

“She hates me” Acker said of Rich when told they’d share the bill.

“She hates me” Rich said of Acker.

Face to face, meeting for the first time, prior to going on stage:

“I don’t bite–” said Rich.

I don’t bite,” said Acker.

“–Much, ” finished Rich.

And thanks to Ali Liebegott and Kevin for reminding us about the 1974 National Book Awards.

Prior to the ceremony, Audre Lord, Adrienne Rich, and Alice Walker prepared a joint statement. Should any one of them be chosen, they’d read it together. Rich won the award and they accepted it jointly.

After Kevin read us that joint statement, there was a collective sigh in the Hormel Center, murmurs about 1974, that golden era – even by people like Ali who had only turned three but knew a good thing even then.

I can’t answer all of that in this moment but I can describe some beginnings. Who I was then. Where I am now. Two different people, almost, linked by a project of long duration.

My task initially: to uncover the “unseen and invisible” people in Emily Dickinson’s life and our own.

The story of  Emily Dickinson’s maid, and really any and all of her servants, had been mostly overlooked in 100 years of Dickinson scholarship and nearly a dozen popular biographies. Many key records that would have helped uncover the servant story had been deemed unimportant and were, in the course of time, discarded.

The seed for Maid as Muse came about when I standing in my local library’s reading room. I had slipped into the library stacks for a quick visit. I was the mother of a young child, worked full time, and was enrolled as a student in a creative writing program. I was always on the go.

Everything in those days was done in slivers of time. So naturally, given Emily Dickinson’s large opus, I was curious about how she had time to write. I knew she was a prolific baker and cook. How did she get out of the kitchen to write?

I opened a popular biography and the first thing I saw was a photograph of Emily Dickinson’s immigrant maid. Because my Irish grandmother had been in domestic service, I instantly felt connected to this photograph of Irish immigrant maid Margaret Maher. I was hooked.

(It was only later, that I found out that Emily Dickinson didn’t entirely get out of the kitchen and that she actually wrote poems in between baking with her maid!)

At the begining, in the library that winter afternoon, I needed to know the servant story but I was not a trained researcher. And this was going to require creative and devoted sleuthing…

-To be continued-

A dozen years later I helped put on a fundraiser for Small Press Traffic at Fort Mason in San Francisco. Adrienne Rich shared the bill with Kathy Acker and Susan Faludi. Right before this stellar event, I had a few minutes with Adrienne Rich to stumble over how important her poetry has been to my life.

Two dozen years after that I asked Adrienne Rich if she would read my book, a labor of love and reclamation, and possibly endorse it. She wrote back, from Santa Cruz, that she didn’t usually endorse books but she was intrigued and said yes she would do it. She wrote a beautiful endorsement of Maid as Muse.

She also wrote me a letter describing in greater detail what my book meant to her.  I cried when I read it. I didn’t know until that moment that all along I had been writing the book to her. After years of re-reading her essays and poetry, I was, with Maid as Muse, at last holding up my part of the conversation and responding back.

It felt like a miracle, after the lonely hours and years, to receive such a response from Adrienne Rich. I thought that making the book was the soul satisfying part. But now I understood what it is to have readers and without knowing it at the time I was writing the book to her as my ideal reader.

In the past several days the text messages and e-mails have flown back and forth. Renata wrote: “It would be nice to do something. Perhaps we could have our poetry group get together and each read a Rich poem” and Suzanne texted “I am building an altar in my living room. Do you know she is the first poet whose work I memorized?”

I was in Santa Cruz for a family get-together two days after Adrienne Rich passed away. On Friday, March 30th, I made my way to her house to pay my respects to the place on the globe from which, for several decades, she sent out her “news in verse.” Because she was Jewish, I left some stones piled on the ground beside the mailbox which is nestled in a tall hedgerow fronting her small bungalow. Then I cried.

Unless that is you are a foreign maid according to a new ruling by Hong Kong’s Supreme Court.

The lower court had earlier ruled that discriminating against foreign maids was unconstitutional and that they should be entitled to the same rights as anyone else living and working in this administrative region of China.

This issue has been fraught and has divided Hong Kong where most maids, who live-in and earn about $450 per month, are from other countries in Southeast Asia.

The primary reason cited by Hong Kong’s Supreme Court, for discriminating against maids, is that Hong Kong is too densely populated and it’s social services and educational institutions are already straining.

The expectation is that once granted permanent residency, the maids’ families would emigrate to Hong Kong and overburden the system. This Potential problem apparently justifies withholding permanent residency from these maids.

For now,  Hong Kong’s discriminatory policy against maids remains in place.

One of these men and women, pictured left, is Monticello Blacksmith Isaac Granger.

“Slavery at Jefferson’s Monticello: Paradox of Liberty” is a new exhibition, created by the Museum of African American History and Culture and housed at the Museum of American History in Washington D.C. on the National Mall.

Rex Ellis, an associate director with the Museum, says “We are looking at Jefferson, but, more importantly to me, we are somehow acknowledging the 600 men, women and children who also were a part of Jefferson’s life.”

“Men, women and children who, in fact, made Jefferson’s life possible — which, in turn, gave them a part in shaping early American history.”

At Dickinson Homestead, I’ve identified the names of five dozen men and women who, through their labor inside and outside of the house, enabled the life of one of the world’s foremost poets.

They included Henry Hawkins,pictured to the left with his granddaughter Helen Pettijohn, who labored for the Dickinson family.

The men and women who made Emily Dickinson’s life possible were not owned. They were not slaves but hired hands as I’ve described in  Maid as Muse.*

They were African-American, Native American, white Yankee, and Irish and English immigrant maids, seamstresses, gardeners, stable hands, and general laborers.

As Mr. Ellis and his colleagues have created in the new exhibit, we learn more about these renowned figures when we learn about the other people who were an intimate part of their lives — and in doing so we learn something about ourselves.

* Maid as Muse is now on sale at 35% off. Details.

This 35% off deal is available directly from publisher University Press of New England.

It’s easy as 1-2-3 to save $12.25!

1. Go to the UPNE Maid as Muse page

2. Click “Add hardcover to cart”

3. Provide Discount Code WW 34 & Click “Apply coupon”

Your cost: $22.75 (plus shipping)

Not only does your purchase aid me in working off my advance but it will help speed Maid as Muse to paperback!

Become a Maid as Muse Facebook friend to keep in touch about this and upcoming gigs -

Including details on the Emily Dickinson Poetry Reading Marathon

coming to San Francisco!

]]> http://maidasmuse.com/feed/ 0 http://maidasmuse.com/ http://maidasmuse.com/#comments Sun, 15 Jan 2012 18:32:32 +0000 admin http://maidasmuse.com/?p=3469 As part of my investigation of Emily Dickinson’s “downstairs” world, I invited into that process the men and women who today clean the Emily Dickinson Museum, tend its gardens, and do necessary repairs.

I “interviewed” – long distance and via mail – landscape gardeners Judith Sherman Atwood and John R. Bator; house cleaners Richard Beauregard and Robin Dagenais; and carpenter Henry Paul Hebert.

I queried them about the nature of their work and how it resembled poetry or art.

They sent their responses which I used as the text for the hand-sewn artists books.

I sewed these books by hand as homage to Emily Dickinson’s own hand-made books of her poetry, the fascicles.

Unlike Emily’s hand made poem books, written out in pencil with a dozen or two of her own verses, Art of Service was run, in a limited edition, on Dale Going’s Vandercook press.

I then traveled 3,000 miles to Amherst to lead a public walking tour of the the Dickinson servants’ Amherst and meet in person Robin, Richard, Judy, John, and Henry.

Like Robin’s page, left, they each signed their pages of my copy of the book.

There were about 170 people in attendance at the first tour in 1997. We stopped traffic when we crossed North Pleasant Street, in downtown Amherst, enroute from St. Brigid’s to Emily Dickinson’s grave.

Richard, Robin, Judy, and John were key narrators along with a Dickinson servant descendant joined by over 40 members of her family – all descended from Emily’s chief pallbearer.

Next up: history goes live.

The schedule was arduous and the quest declared a success.

A great walker, Emily would have ambled up from downtown Seattle, across the freeway sending up gusts of tailwind that slightly mussed her hair, to Melrose Avenue. Here she entered the amber glow of Terra Plata.

I’m fairly certain she would have taken along her sister Vinnie and sister-in-law Susan so they could sample the blistered shisito peppers, roasted brussel sprouts (shallots, maple, rosemary), scallops, two faced bleu cheese, and the plumpest mussels that tasted hours from the sea. Kombucha? No, the three would have washed it all down with the best from a nearby micro brewery, say, within a 50 mile radius.

After strolling the waterfront, with umbrellas in tow, and grabbing brother Austin and colleague Elbridge Bowdoin, I have on good authority that they’d have dungeness crab cakes (over almond romesco, greens, and pickled raisins) at Etta’s. With a table by the window, they could watch the rain in the flicker of streetlamp. Single malt scotch for the men. Seattle is that kind of town.

A good night sleep and the desire for a bracing cup of tea with something hearty would send our small party, Emily in the lead, to The Crumpet Shop. Careful. The butter tends to drip down the arms. Lemon curd anyone?

Emily might just order a savory crumpet like Green Eggs and Ham named for a book of children’s poetry that will be written many years after her own poems have become posthumously famous. Imagine Emily skipping the brick streets of the Pike Place Market singing out lines from Dr. Seuss. A happy belly can do that  which is what results from an interlude at The Crumpet Shop.

After roaming the market and stocking up on pears and apples, the best of Washington’s orchards, Emily might need to refuel. What better place to do that but at Matts in the Market. Gilled octupus on a bed of olives and chickpeas. She’s not a shy eater. It’s a good place for her to compare their malmsey wine, made from Washington grapes, with the one she concocts in Amherst. How lovely it tastes with the bread pudding and salted caramel ice cream. By this point Emily is glad that the seamstress left some give in her seams.

Why not take a trip to Paris via Le Pichet, that cafe offering the deal real onion soup and the freshest salade verte with mustard and hazelnut vinaigrette. And ooh la la style. Did that waiter really have a belt of twine tied in a bow and a compass peaking through the buttoned opening of his shirt? Yes, this is the place Emily would take Abby Wood who would pick at a plate of olives marinées (with pastis, orange and garlic) while Emily would indulge her love of amandes à l’espagnole (almonds sautéed in olive oil with coarse sea salt). Bowls of milky coffee, peering at each other through the steam.

Helen Hunt Jackson, that dear old friend from Amherst, now of Colorado. A perfect place for a reunion, Seattle, perhaps by the site of the future space needle. Then, because Helen too is of good appetite, they’d wander south to Capitol Hill and into the back room of Cafe Presse to each tuck into a soul-filling and belly-filling platter of ragout of green lentils with kale, winter squash and brown butter-garlic cream. Helen ordered hers with the crispy duck confit leg. Emily, thinking fondly of her own chickens in Amherst under the care of her maid Margaret Maher, had her ragout topped with a farm egg. The yolk as yellow as the Colorado sun Helen declared. Not Seattle’s laughed Emily.

How about that special elixir Seattle thinks it invented?

Would she drink espresso strong enough to “feel physically as if the top of her head were taken off?”

What do they put in that stuff she’s drinking?

How about those buttery dripping crumpets at the Crumpet Shop? Locavore tendencies? Terra Plata?

Emphatically yes.

My plan is to tour Seattle eateries and drinkeries where a poet would find inspiration of one kind or another.

My excuse is a talk I’m giving. So if you find yourself in Seattle on Friday, January 6, come hear me talk about the invisible but not the inaudible.

My illustrated presentation – “Warm in her Hand these accents lie” – is about the impact of her servants’ speech on Emily Dickinson’s poetry.

I’ll be in Room 303 of the Washington State Convention Center at noon describing how this poet was an auditory sponge who freely admitted to having a “vice for voices.”

As an artist she pulled language from every available palette including the speech of family, neighbors, friends, and servants.

We know she listened deeply because she seized the inner workings of other varieties of English heard in the intimacy of her own gardens and kitchen where she spent much of her time.

Emily Dickinson appears to have been strongly influenced by the Hiberno-English of Irish immigrant maids and laborers and the African American Vernacular English spoken by gardeners and stablemen who were descended from slaves.

Like all great artists, Emily Dickinson synthesized and improvised with the varieties of English which were her fortune. From her deep reading and listening, this home-centered writer forged a decidedly American poetic idiom.

Even when a maid freed her to run upstairs to write, though, she still gravitated back to the kitchen.

The good conversation, no doubt, and that’s where the food is.

Emily would definitely maximize a trip to Seattle by getting caffeine intoxicated and tucking into some great food. I plan to with or without her.

WWEE? And what will we eat? Le Pichet anyone? Matt’s in the Market?