A Repost that Requires No Additional Comment

This poem is also in Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite. In fact, this is the poem by Sojurner Truth, that gave it its name. I'm not using the book's version, however. This one has a bit of narration from the poem's origin as a speech that adds to its power.

Aint' I A Woman!

Several ministers attended the second day of the Woman's Rights Convention, and were not shy in voicing their opinion of man's superiority over women. One claimed "superior intellect", one spoke of the "manhood of Christ," and still another referred to the "sin of our first mother." Suddenly, Sojourner Truth rose from her seat in the corner of the church.

"For God's sake, Mrs.Gage, don't let her speak!" half a dozen women whispered loudly, fearing that their cause would be mixed up with Abolition.
Sojourner walked to the podium and slowly took off her sunbonnet. Her six-foot frame towered over the audience. She began to speak in her deep, resonant voice:

"Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter, I think between the Negroes of the South and the women of the North - all talking about rights - the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this talking about?"

Sojourner pointed to one of the ministers. "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me any best place. And ain't I a woman?"

Sojourner raised herself to her full height. "Look at me! Look at my arm." She bared her right arm and flexed her powerful muscles. "I have plowed, I have planted and I have gathered into barns. And no man could head me. And ain't I a woman?"
"I could work as much, and eat as much as man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne 13 children and seen most of them sold into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman?"

The women in the audience began to cheer wildly.

She pointed to another minister. "He talks about this thing in the head. What's that they call it?"

"Intellect," whispered a woman nearby.

"That's it, honey. What's intellect got to do with women's rights or black folks' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?"

"That little man in black there! He says women can't have as much rights as men. ‘Cause Christ wasn't a woman." She stood with outstretched arms and eyes of fire. "Where did your Christ come from?"

"Where did your Christ come from?", she thundered again. "From God and a Woman! Man had nothing to do with him!"

The entire church now roared with deafening applause.

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right-side up again. And now that they are asking to do it the men better let them."

OTHER SOURCES OF INFORMATION: Modern History Sourcebook, About.com: African-American History, Wikipedia, Women writer's net, AIAW Campaign,

SOJOURNER TRUTH, THE LIBYAN SIBYL, by Harriet Beecher Stowe

LISTEN WITH OPEN HEARTS

TO MY UNKNOWN FRIEND
- Irina Ratushinskaya, USSR
(trans. David McDuff)

Above my half of the world
The comets spread their tails.
In my half of the century
Half the world looks me in the eye.
In my hemisphere he wind's blowing,
There are feasts of plague without end.
But a searchlight shines in our faces,
And effaces the touch of death.
And our madness retreats from us,
And our sadnesses pass through us,
And we stand in the midst of our fates,
Setting our shoulders against the plague.
We shall hold it back with our selves,
We shall stride through the nightmare.
It will not go further than us - don't be afraid
On the other side of the globe!

Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry
From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite

SONG OF HOPE
- Daisy Yamora, Nicaragua
(trans. James Black, Bernardo
Garcia-Pandavenes, & Cliff Ross)

One day the fields will be forever green
and the earth will be black, sweet and moist.
Our children will grow tall on her
and the children of our children.

And they will be as free as the trees
and the birds of the wilderness.

Each morning they will wake in the joy of having life
and will know that the earth was reconqured for them.
One day . . .

Today we plough the parched fields
but each furrow is soaked with blood.


Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry
From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite

SYNERGY

GREENHAM WOMEN
- Wendy Poussard, Australia

Rugged up for winter snow
you have put your bodies
where your hearts are . . .
against the gates and
under the wheels of war.
Today the missiles came
to Greenham Common.
We saw it in the papers
and wept for you.
You are our elder sisters,
making the time kindly
to send us greeting as
you beat against the storm.
Like you we sit
on the doorstep of the world's end
and will not look away.
The people long to know
something is indestructible.
It may be only you.


Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp (1981 - 2000)

I had never head of the Greenham protest until I read this poem. Wasn't it in Greece, where the women boycotted (sex) for the end of the Pelopennesian war?

This one goes out to all our sisters who are on the front lines, risking far more than disapproval.
It seems that when we women aren't distracted by our myriad differences, we can be quite formidable.

Synergy

• A dynamic state in which combined action is favored over the sum of individual component actions.
• Behavior of whole systems unpredicted by the behavior of their parts taken separately.

Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite

FIRE BREAK

This one reminds me of the scene in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, where the firemen go into the woman's house to destroy her books and she chooses to die rather than give them up. She couldn't stop the firemen's overt actions, but by claiming her agency, she subverted their power over her and ultimately planted seeds of discord and doubt. (Boy, do I sound like an English teacher!) My husband always says that she is me. I'd like to think that I was that brave, but ...

THE SURVIVOR

- Katherine Gallagher
(for Anna Akhmatova)

A woman sits in a corner of sun
tracing a poem. Slowly
she is woven into it like the day
as smells of burning
carry her outside.

There, soldiers and jailers
are blocking the street,
books are being burnt—
thousands of words collapsing
in on each other. Suddenly
she sees her own fate,
her fellow-poet is taken
leaving her only silence.

She goes back to continue the poem:
it will go on for twenty years
islanded in her head
and Russia will remember her
as a lover
waiting for the ice-walls to break,
for her hermit’s cry
to be carried like fire
from hand to hand.

Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite

REDUCE - REUSE - RECYCLE

UGLY THINGS (A SONG)
- Teresita Fernandez, Cuba

In an old worn out basin
I planted violets for you
and down by the river
with an empty seashell
I found you a firefly.
In a broken bottle
I kept a seashell for you
and coiled over that rusty fence
the coral snake flowered
just for you.
Cockroach wing
carried to the anthill:
that's how I want them to take me
to the cemetery when I die.
Garbage dump, garbage dump
where nobody wants to look
but if the moon comes out
your tin cans will shine.
If you put a bit of love
into ugly things
you'll see that your sadness
will begin to change color.

Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite

Revisionist?

LOVE LETTER
- Carole E. Gregory, USA

Dear Sampson,
I put your hair
in a jar
by the pear tree
near the well.
I've been thinkin'
over what I done
and still don't think
God gave you
all that strength
for you to kill
my people.

Love - Delilah

Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite

Childhood ...

Dad

- Elaine Feinstein, UK

Your old hat hurts me, and those black

fat raisins you liked to press into
my palm from your soft heavy hand:
I see you staggering back up the path
with sacks of potatoes from some local farm,
fresh eggs, flowers. Every day I grieve

for your great heart broken and you gone.
You loved to watch the trees. This year
you did not see their Spring.
The sky was freezing over the fen
as on that somewhere secretly appointed day
you beached: cold, white-faced, shivering.

What happened, old bull, my loyal
hoarse-voiced warrior? The hammer
blow that stopped you in your track
and brought you to a hospital monitor
could not destroy your courage
to the end you were
uncowed and unconcerned with pleasing anyone.

I think of you now as once again safely
at my mother's side, the earth as
chosen as a bed, and feel most sorrow for
all that was gentle in
my childhood buried there
already forfeit, now forever lost.

Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite

A VERY GOOD ARGUMENT

This poem is also in Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite. In fact, this is the poem by Sojurner Truth, that gave it its name. I'm not using the book's version, however. This one has a bit of narration from the poem's origin as a speech that adds to its power.

Aint' I A Woman!

Several ministers attended the second day of the Woman's Rights Convention, and were not shy in voicing their opinion of man's superiority over women. One claimed "superior intellect", one spoke of the "manhood of Christ," and still another referred to the "sin of our first mother." Suddenly, Sojourner Truth rose from her seat in the corner of the church.

"For God's sake, Mrs.Gage, don't let her speak!" half a dozen women whispered loudly, fearing that their cause would be mixed up with Abolition.
Sojourner walked to the podium and slowly took off her sunbonnet. Her six-foot frame towered over the audience. She began to speak in her deep, resonant voice:

"Well, children, where there is so much racket, there must be something out of kilter, I think between the Negroes of the South and the women of the North - all talking about rights - the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this talking about?"

Sojourner pointed to one of the ministers. "That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody helps me any best place. And ain't I a woman?"

Sojourner raised herself to her full height. "Look at me! Look at my arm." She bared her right arm and flexed her powerful muscles. "I have plowed, I have planted and I have gathered into barns. And no man could head me. And ain't I a woman?"

"I could work as much, and eat as much as man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne 13 children and seen most of them sold into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. And ain't I a woman?"

The women in the audience began to cheer wildly.

She pointed to another minister. "He talks about this thing in the head. What's that they call it?"

"Intellect," whispered a woman nearby.

"That's it, honey. What's intellect got to do with women's rights or black folks' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?"

"That little man in black there! He says women can't have as much rights as men. ‘Cause Christ wasn't a woman." She stood with outstretched arms and eyes of fire. "Where did your Christ come from?"

"Where did your Christ come from?", she thundered again. "From God and a Woman! Man had nothing to do with him!"

The entire church now roared with deafening applause.

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right-side up again. And now that they are asking to do it the men better let them."

OTHER SOURCES OF INFORMATION: Modern History Sourcebook, About.com: African-American History, Wikipedia, Women writer's net, AIAW Campaign,

SOJOURNER TRUTH, THE LIBYAN SIBYL, by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Does it have to be this way?

Poem Untitled
- Sumangala's mother
(trans. from Pali by Willis Barnstone)

A free woman. At last free!
Free from slavery in the kitchen
where I walked back and forth stained
and squalid among cooking pots.
My brutal husband ranked me lower
than the shade he sat in.
Purged of anger and the body's hunger,
I live in meditation
in my own shade from a broad tree.
I am at ease.

Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite.

Happy Monday to all

POEM UNTITLED

- Sappho, Greece (6 BC)

(trans. Josephine Balmer)

Lucky bridegroom,

the marriage you have prayed for has come to pass

and the bride you dreamed of is yours . . .

Beautiful bride,

to look at you gives joy; your eyes are like honey,

love flows over your gentle face . . .

Aphrodite

has honoured you above all others

Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite

NEW FACE

I have learned not to worry about love;

but to honor its coming

with all my heart.

To examine all the dark mysteries

of the blood

with headless heed and

swirl,

to know the rush of feelings

swift and flowing

as water.

The source seems to be

some inexhaustible

spring

within our twin and triple

selves;

the new face I turn up

to you

no one else on earth

has ever

seen.

- Alice Walker, USA

Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite

Oh! Those shameless manners!

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. We Watched the fireworks with the Boston Pops. It reminded me of watching them while standing next to Niagara Falls, as the beautiful explosions seemed to come from the music itself. A pleasant memory from a long time ago. We switched channels then, and caught Grover and the gang singing. A second fireworks show, and the grandkids were mesmerized.

I continue, now, with another poem from Aint' I A Woman!. This is a powerful collection, echoing the experiences of being a girl/woman, world wide. (But you don't have to be a woman to appreciate it.) I hope you continue to enjoy it.

(Had to laugh at the dates here, along side the sentiment.)

OTHER FABRICS, OTHER MORES!
Anna Maria Lenngren, Sweden
1754-1819

'When I was young,' said Aunt to me,
'Women then, about the year,
Seventeen-thirty, Betty dear,
Dressed in decent linsey woolsey!
No painted faces would one find,
Nor flimsy gowns on womenfolk.
The fairer sex possessed a mind
Of sturdy fabric, like a cloak.
Now all is different in our lives -
Other fabrics, Other mores!
Taffetas, indecent stories
Of young girls as well as wives!
The path of lust they boldly walk;
Shameless manners, daring ways,
Make-up, muslins, daring talk
Go hand-in hand with modern days.'


Forgive me for highlighting the date given in the poem (1730), but does it not seem that some complaints are ageless?

"A JOURNEY OF A THOUSAND MILES ... "

I have several anthologies of poetry written by women. They span centuries and cultures and geography. I love to listen to the differing voices and gaze inward at the myriad pictures they paint.

I am especially drawn to these books when I hear phrases like, "Women are ..." , "Women like .. " or "All women ...". You can fill in those blanks with any number of inanities, that seek to reduce half the world's population into tiny little boxes. In these books, however, no two voices are the same. Each is whole and unto itself, as are we all. (In the interest of full disclosure, I myself, am a woman.)



I decided to embark on a bit of a world tour, on the distaff side that is. So, for a while I will be posting poems from women all over the world.




The anthology I am using is Aint' I A Woman! A Book of Woman's poetry From Around the World, Edited by Illona Linthwaite.



My first offering is from Mahsati, twelfth century, Iran. It was translated from Farsi by Deirdre Lashgari.


QUATRAINS

Better to live as a rogue and a bum,
a lover all treat as a joke,
to hang out with a crowd of comfortable drunks,
than crouch in a hypocrite's cloak.

Unless you can dance through a common bar,
with a vagabond's step, you're not going to make it.
This is the road of the restless who gamble
their lives; risk yours, or your not going to make it.