revmeg

[revmeg]

...even the snow beating against the panes-- I wanted that. And you, dear one, stopping outside my study door, then going on . . . that loving pause that longs but still respects my solitude---I wanted you most of all! ...And more, there was always more: I wanted to be wanted, to belong in school, country, gender, neighborhood--- one of the good girls everybody loves, the heroine of the story of my life with a happy ending. I wanted that--- who knows why anymore?---but yes, I did. Some things I wanted but I couldn't get I wanted not to want---my mother's love, that look of urgent cherishing I've glimpsed in the soft eyes of dogs and the dying. I wanted Papi's love unhinged from shame, his own and mine. I wanted not to feel that yearning for the child I never had. What else was it I wanted? I forget. Or could it be longing that I want To make me stretch beyond the lot I got?

from “What Was It That I Wanted?” in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 149-150

#Julia Alvarez #poetry #lit #The Woman I Kept To Myself #want #desire

[revmeg]

The only thing that Jesus ever asked, of a personal nature, was on the night before he died: he asked three apostles, James, John, and Peter, to stay up with him. My soul is sorrowing to the point of death. It was his humanness that needed them. What else to ask for since he had to die?.... The Sufi mystic Rumi urges us, Do not go back to sleep. And Lord Krishna rallies the sleepy Arjuna to arise and join the fray of an awakened life. Buddha has taught us to breathe in, breathe out, in order to stay mindful, stay awake watching our current incarnation roll... It seems the great religions all agree in what they ask of followers: Stay up!... ...My soul is sorrowing because I know that staying up won't save a blessed thing. But oh, sweet Jesus! given what must come, what else to ask or give our companions?

from “What We Ask For” in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 147-148

#The Woman I Kept To Myself #poetry #lit #Julia Alvarez

[revmeg]

It's agency, not fame, I want: my words at work, a slap awake, a soothing hand.

from “Direct Address” in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 138

#poetry #lit #Julia Alvarez #The Woman I Kept To Myself

[revmeg]

...there's a list as long as an epic poem of folks who'll swear a poem has never done a thing for them . . . except . . . perhaps adjust the sunset view one cloudy afternoon, which made them see themselves or see the world in a different light---degrees of change so small only a poem registers them at all. That's why they can be trusted, why poems might save us from what happens in the world.

from “'Poetry Makes Nothing Happen'?” in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 133-134

#poetry #lit #The Woman I Kept To Myself #Julia Alvarez

[revmeg]

The earth is just too big, too beautiful: I like it small, through a window... ...Take one small thing in hand, open it up, and there's another door, and another, long corridors of views into the heart of darkness or of light. There's no such thing as a small portion once you bite in and savor the flavors. If truth is in the details, I'm the pope of the particular.. ...My lot's to be a nibbler at life's feast. Bit by bit, I'll devour all of it!

from “Small Portions” in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 131-132

#poetry #lit #Julia Alvarez #The Woman I Kept To Myself #beauty

[revmeg]

...I complained to his buddy who ran the department. He paid me no mind, complimenting my 'talents,' promising to have a little talk with the old goat, a nudge and a hand slap over bourbon and rocks. By then, I had dropped out, feeling ashamed as women often do when Eden, marriages, or dreams don't work--a sin to have refused to be muse fodder for a great man's work, using the lame excuse: I'm here for art. But then, a glorious revenge ensued: he disappeared in anonymity! Over the years, I never heard his name in writerly discussions, never found his books whenever I searched the shelves, relieved each time he wasn't there: another hammer blow on the coffin lid of a ghost. --Now, here he is! (no justice in the life or in the work?) a grizzled eminence, pronouncing stuff some girls in the front row are writing down.

from “Famous Poet, Years Afterward” in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 125-126

#poetry #lit #Julia Alvarez #harassment #The Woman I Kept To Myself

[revmeg]

I have a friend who tangos and attends meetings in Helsinki, amazingly the largest convention of tango lovers in the world.... ...Another man I know adores Star Trek and meets with other Trekkies once a year. Get him started and the dinner party is ruined, except for the amusement of seeing him so worked up.... ...The man who cuts my hair spends his spare time making doll furniture. Each time I hear off one new passion, I feel gratitude at one more instance of the many ways we learn through what we love to love the world-- which might be all that we are here to do.

from “Aficionados” in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 115-116

#Julia Alvarez #The Woman I Kept To Myself #poetry #lit #love #hobbies #passions #fandom

[revmeg]

...Another friend said he waited for months that turned to years after his father died for a sign promised from the afterworld. My friend said he would set up little traps: if the light turns green . . . if the doorbell rings . . . if the leaf falls before the count of five . . . Meanwhile his favorite maple shed its leaves, replaced them, lost a branch in a windstorm, burned gold--seasonal incarnations galore, which my friend missed waiting for his dad's sign. These stories came when I was full of grief about my own losses, wondering what, if anything, my words could do for those broken on the hard edge of the world. Vanity, I thought, this is vanity. Roll up your sleeves and do something useful! But here on paper, I fit piece to piece until the roses match, the cracks are sealed, the cup fills to the brim, and over the brim. Drink, my sad friends, be briefly whole again.

from “Signs” in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 89-90

#Julia Alvarez #poetry #lit #The Woman I Kept To Myself #death #grief #family

[revmeg]

...Gone are my waif days, waiting in the wings, my butterfly touch, my pretty satin things, the beauty of the body vanishing . . . No more withholding, I am almost home. Deep in my self, a light has been left on-- as if somebody, knowing I'd return, has set the table, kept my supper warm.

from “Gaining My Self Back" in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 86

#Julia Alvarez #poetry #lit #The Woman I Kept To Myself

[revmeg]

...Probably God smiled on the seventh day, looking down at creation, calling it good. Let's hope. But it's His son I want to see in stitches, infused with the holy spirit of the ridiculous, a god made flesh and full of nonsense... ...Maybe he smiled at virgins toweling his feet with their hair or fumbling Pharisees, but I want much more! If I were doubting Thomas I would ask to hear him laugh. Who cares about his wounds!....

from “Why Don't We Ever See Jesus Laughing?” in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 75-76

#Julia Alvarez #poetry #lit #Jesus #God #laughter

[revmeg]

"Hairbands" by Julia Alvarez

My husband has given away my hairbands in my dream to the young women he works with, my black velvet, my mauve, my patent leather one, the olive band with the magenta rose whose paper petals crumple in the drawer, the flowered crepe, the felt with a rickrack of vines, the twined mock-tortoise shells. He says I do not need them, I've cut my hair, so it no longer falls in my eyes when I read, or when are making love and I bend over him. But no, I tell him, you do not understand, I want my hairbands even if I don't need them. These are the trophies of my maidenhood, the satin dress with buttons down the back, the scented box with the scalloped photographs. This is my wild-haired girlhood dazzled with stories of love, the romantic heroine with the pale, operatic face who threw herself on the train tracks of men's arms. These are the chastened girl-selves I gave up to become the woman who could be married to you. But every once in a while, I pull them out of my dresser drawer and touch them to my cheek, worn velvet and faded silk, mi tesoro, mi juventud-- which my husband has passed on to the young women who hold for him the promise of who I was. And in mid ream I weep real tears that wake me up to my husband sleeping beside me that deep sleep that makes me tremble thinking of hat is coming. And I slip out of bed to check they are still mine, my crumpled rose, my mauve, my black hairbands.

#Julia Alvarez #The Woman I Kept To Myself #poetry #lit #girlhood #aging #youth #womanhood #romance

[revmeg]

...And you, whose names I sometimes can't recall, came out of nowhere with buckets and vans to help me move to the next rental, packing my books, my clothes, my manuscripts, storing my overspill in your garages. Some of you even let me stay with you on living-room couches, fold-away cots telling me that old story: happiness is around the next corner, heroines were once sad women who got lucky. You were right! At long last, happiness arrived-- a steady job, true love, a first novel. By then, you, my bad-weather friends, were gone, like thoughtful fairies in a Shakespeare play who having cleaned up after our mistakes tactfully vanish before the last act. Now in my own house sitting at my desk, looking out on a sunny autumn day, I hear a roll call in the wind of thanks, Zohreh, Jay, Greg, Judy, Marcela, Ann...

from "Bad-Weather Friends" in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 46-47

#The Woman I Kept To Myself #Julia Alvarez #poetry #lit #friendship

[revmeg]

....'Keep it to yourself!' my mother said, which more than anything anyone in my childhood advised turned me to this paper solitude where I both keep things secret and broadcast my heart for all the world to read. And so, through many drafts, I became the woman I kept to myself...

from "By Accident" in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 36

#Julia Alvarez #poetry #lit #The Woman I Kept To Myself

[revmeg]

"The Red Pickup" by Julia Alvarez

The wish I always made in childhood before the blazing candles or when asked what gifted I wanted the Three Kings to bring was a red pickup, which Mami vetoed as inappropriate. And so I improvised, trading in speed for a pair of cowboy boots, bright red with rawhide tassels that would swing when I swaggered into my fourth-grade class asking for an exemption from homework from my strict teacher, Mrs. Brown from Maine. She called my mother weekly to complain of my misbehaviors, among them a tendency to daydream instead of finding the common denominator. (But what I had in common with fractions? I wanted the bigger, undivided world!) She was one more woman in a series of dissuaders against that red pickup in all its transformations, which at root was a driving desire to be a part of something bigger than a pretty girl, the wild, exciting world reserved for boys: guns that shot noisy hellos! in the air and left crimson roses on clean, white shirts; firecrackers with secret explosions that made even my deaf grandfather jump. I wanted what God wanted when He made the world, to be a driving force, a creator. And that red pickup was my only ride out of the common denominator.

#poetry #lit #Julia Alvarez #The Woman I Kept To Myself #gender #desire

[revmeg]

It is mine, my prize, a body that's going to die!

from "Intimations of Mortality from a Recollection in Early Childhood" in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 20

#poetry #lit #Julia Alvarez #The Woman I Kept to Myself #mortality

[revmeg]

...It took some getting used to but, of course, life feeds life. Where'd I get the idea that art and happiness could never jive? I felt stupid, wasting so many years. But I took solace from those locust trees, known for their crooked, seemingly aimless growth. We have to live our natures out, the seed we call our soul unfolds over the course of a lifetime and there's no going back on who we are--that much I've learned from trees.

from "Locust" in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 14

#The Woman I Kept To Myself #poetry #lit #Julia Alvarez #soul #growth #self

[revmeg]

...We clipped ourselves off from the family tree, independent women! Or so we thought, until our babies started to be born, sporting Mamita's dimples... Even I, the childless one, intend to write New Yorker fiction in the Cheever style, but all my stories tell where I came from.

from "Family Tree" in The Woman I Kept To Myself: Poems by Julia Alvarez, p. 4

#Julia Alvarez #poetry #lit #family #The Woman I Kept To Myself