Kathi WolfeLABOR PAINS AND THE MUSE: THE BIRTH OF UPPITY BLIND GIRLAs the summer ends, some of my friends are both exhilarated and bereft. Their children (once so child-like, now young adults) are leaving home for the first time to go to college and they are left behind feeling the freedom and dread of the empty nest. I've never been a parent, but, as a poet, I have (metaphorically) experienced the "empty nest." For nearly four years, I worked on my chapbook Helen Takes the State: The Helen Keller Poems (Pudding House. 2008). During that time, whenever I could spare a moment, I read about, thought about, dreamed about, talked to (in my imagination), lived tethered to her skin and wrote poems about Helen Keller. At the insistence of (and with the mid-wifery) of my muse, Keller was born as a character to me, and I did my best to be a good "parent" to her. Until, as is the case with one's children, I discovered one day that Keller (as a character) had "grown up." Though I knew that she'd come visit me often and that I'd frequently check in on Helen, I had to let her out of the nest. The true biography of Keller, who was deaf and blind, is still largely unknown. Many people are familiar with "The Miracle Worker," (the play and movie of the same name) which tells the story of how Anne Sullivan Macy taught Keller language. But, it's not generally known that Keller, who lived from 1880 to 1968, was a 1904 Radcliffe College graduate, an early feminist, author, vaudeville performer or that she had a love life. As a poet, I was thrilled that I'd given Keller an inner life. As a legally blind poet with a disability culture sensibility, I was happy that my work brought some of Keller's hidden history to light (being a poet, I'd felt free to engage in invention). It was time, I told myself, to let Keller go so she could make it on her own as a character. Letting go of Keller wasn't easy! Creatively, I felt utterly alone – devoid of imagination. It was as if my muse had gone on a vacation to a tropical paradise and left me behind in a desert. For over a year, I wondered if the poetry goddess had ditched me. Ideas for poems wouldn't come to my hollow mind for love or money. I enjoyed going to poetry readings, poetry workshops and other poetry events and did some writing exercises. But nothing sparked my creative juices. I felt like the Wizard of Oz – maybe I wasn't a poet any more, just a has-been hiding behind the curtain. Finally, after downing a few bellinis and talking to poet friends, I decided not to worry about it. That as the saying goes, I'd expect the unexpected–I'd chill and wait for my muse to return. I don't know why but about 18 months ago, the poetry goddess took pity on me. My muse returned, not exactly escorting me to paradise, but taking me away from the desert island. "To create something that never existed may be called a miracle," poet, playwright and host of the radio show "The Poet and the Poem" Grace Cavalieri e-mailed me, "creating, or birthing, may be seen as religious, sexual, and mysterious." "But it's what the artist does every day," added Cavalieri, whose newest poetry collection is Sounds Like Something I Would Say, "It's the artist's job: creating a thought form that becomes real." If I could tell you why, how, or from where, my muse gave birth to Uppity Blind Girl, I'd be rich, famous and writing this from a yacht. For if that were true, I'd have a ringside seat to the mysterious of creation, that none of us mere mortals has. I only know that during a couple of months, in dreams and in waking daydreams my Uppity Blind Girl character (or persona) emerged. Since then I've been writing a chapbook of poems about Uppity. Though Uppity is blind, she's in many ways quite different, as a character, from Keller. To begin with, Keller was a real-life character who came of age in the early 1900's. Though she was ahead of her time in many areas (from feminism to race), Keller, as are all of us, was a creature of her Zeitgeist. Though she and a journalist fell in love, Keller's family wouldn't let them marry. When she lived, there were laws on the books in many states that prohibited people with disabilities from getting married, having children–even being out on the streets. In my chapbook, Keller's age ranges from youth to young adulthood to old age. Because she was deaf-blind and of the period in which she lived, Keller, though she wanted to be as independent as possible, couldn't travel or live alone. Keller was a character who was sexual, but whose sexuality seems reigned in or tame today. In contrast, Uppity is 25 and lives in New York City. She is blind, but hearing. Unlike people with disabilities in Keller's time, Uppity was born and has grown up in a post Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and American with Disabilities Act (ADA) world. She's gone to school in inclusive classrooms, socialized with disabled and non-disabled peers, and lives on her own. Unlike Keller who had to repress her sexuality because of disability based prejudice, Uppity is a sensual creature looking for love and romance. Uppity is queer, she loves who she loves. She dates, has former lovers and goes clubbing. For her work, she blogs and writes about fragrances and spirits (wine and beer). Uppity adores high-heeled shoes. In her free time she volunteers at a hospice. She's a blind Carrie Bradshaw. Unlike past generations of people with disabilities who often tried to assimilate – to hide their blindness – or to behave in ways pleasing to able-bodied people in power, Uppity owns her blindness. She will not stand for ableism in any of its manifestations: from "faith healers" who want to "save" her to "liberals" who want to foist their pity-based metaphors of blindness on her–to employers who won't hire her because of their disability based prejudice. "My passport/to the Land of Darkness/has expired," Uppity says in the poem "Uppity Blind Girl Confesses" riffing on the (to most blind people) maudlin cliched metaphors about blind people and darkness. "You think I'm musical,/ I write opera/for the tone-deaf," Uppity says in the same poem, poking fun at ableist stereotypes that insist that people who are blind are so musical, "In fact, the gods/cut off their ears/when they hear me sing." I suspect that my muse gave me Uppity as a refreshing switch from working with Keller as a character. It's not that I don't love or miss Keller, who was loving, high-minded, adventurous and witty. But it's freeing to give voice to a persona who's young, contemporary, unabashedly sexy, feisty, funny, self-aware and, at the same time, vulnerable. Actually, I don't see Keller and Uppity as being opposed to each other. Rather, I see Uppity as being someone who Keller if she were alive today might like. They share a love of adventure and a willingness, almost a compulsion, to speak truth to power. I imagine the two of them having a drink together – perhaps, a shot of Scotch (Keller's drink). While a few of my Uppity poems have been published, many are still works in progress. As I've been writing and revising, I've been reading the poems at workshops, poetry readings and open mikes. The response to these poems has been interesting. Engaging in too much generalization is dangerous–as it can lead to inaccurate perceptions. Yet keeping this caveat in mind, it's safe to say that generally, people with disabilities, even if they have critical comments about the poems, are comfortable with Uppity, and that people without disabilities, often are so uncomfortable with Uppity, that they almost can't hear the poems. The issue of how we poets should react to reactions to our poems is a touchy one. I'm aware of the imperfections in my work and of the need for me to pay attention to critical feedback during the vital process of revision. Yet as someone all too familiar with disability based prejudice (whether subtle or overt), how do I separate the ableist elements out of this response? How do I keep the essential critique and disregard the prejudice? "The first thing to do to cope with the strong potential of ableist response is to recognize that it could well be coloring how someone reads the work," Jim Ferris, author of The Hospital Poems and the chapbook Facts of Life emailed me, "the trick of course is teasing out responsibility." "When a particular piece doesn't work with a particular reader, I try to figure out where the flaw is," Ferris, director of the Disability Studies Program at the University of Toledo added, "is it in my poem? Did I just not write it as well as I could have/should have? Or is the flaw in this reader?" Thinking from the other side of the box: do I ever need to think about ableism as I write the poems? At a workshop, a well-regarded gay male poet told me that I needed to make Uppity "more vulnerable" so that I could draw more people toward her. At first, I was angry that he felt that Uppity was too hardened–that I should, in effect, soften her up around the edges. After thinking about it though, I decided he was right – up to a point. Uppity is feisty, strong and lets people know when she's angry, and I wouldn't give that up to appease ableism. But Uppity is a three dimensional human being. Meaning that she is also, by turns, vulnerable, caring, soft-hearted, sentimental and nostalgic. In a prose poem (an affectionate parody of Pulp Fiction of the same name), Uppity is recovering after her lover stood her up after a midnight movie. "My cane, a dagger, will slash the heart of my ex who left me....In a blind passion, my hands will stalk the crumbling wall. Looking for unrequited love. A sightless idiot, believing that it can be found." Uppity's sexual orientation – her queerness -- may be part of the reason for the discomforted response to the Uppity poems. Poet Moira Egan, whose most recent poetry collection SPIN was published in 2010 by Entasis Press, e-mailed me that the ableist response of some people without disabilities to the Uppity poems "reminds me of the types of responses that the ‘majority' or ‘in-power' classes or groups tend to have when they read outspoken work by ‘minority' or ‘underdog'...etc. writers," Egan wrote, "....Uppity doesn't fit into a neat category. {She is} a blind, feisty, lesbian, bar napkin sonnet type of woman. People aren't comfortable with category breakage. "Blind and feisty, sure, but sexy and prowly too?" Uppity is one of a few, but growing number of characters with disabilities conceived through a disability culture sensibility. By that I mean, Uppity isn't ashamed of her disability. She doesn't believe her life is tragic because of her impairment. And, most important for poetry, Uppity owns not only her disability but the metaphors and images used to describe her impairment. Traditionally, non-disabled writers and poets have controlled the stories (poetic, fictional and non-fiction) that have been told about people with disabilities. Some examples include the traditional rendering of Keller's story, the children's book "Heidi" and "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter." Some of these ableist stories may be good from a literary perspective, but they are ableist from a disability perspective. Their renderings of characters with disabilities are inaccurate. These stories often portray people with disabilities as "other," exotic, objects of pity or metaphors for everything from courage to wickedness to madness (think "Ahab" in Moby Dick). Talking about schools of poetry is like talking about herds of cats. That being said, though there are many variations in aesthetics, disability culture poets often have this in common: the stories of characters with impairments are told from a disability perspective. In the Uppity poems, Uppity herself controls the metaphors used to describe her life and world, including her disability. She inverts, plays with and breaks through ableist metaphors of disability–as well as creating her own images. "Happy Hour" one of the Uppity poems, inverts tropes about blind people longing for vision. In the Fun House Pub, Uppity during a waking dream is granted the ability to (briefly) see. Instead of seeing sunsets, lovers' faces and tulips, she sees "a roach...doing the breast stroke in my glass!", "The bartender's nose hairs twitch and the "smoke-stained teeth" of a woman at the bar. Before being able to see, Uppity is fairly sure of herself. When she can see, Uppity asks herself, "Am I getting chubby?....Am I going gray at 25?....Would I kiss anyone with zits? Or less than perfect abs?" At the end of the poem, Uppity ironically voices her epiphany, "Seeing isn't for the faint of heart.....I'm not ready for my close-up." As her creator, I beg to differ with my character here. Despite her ironic protestations, I believe Uppity is ready for her close-up. Uppity is strong enough to cope with the ableist response that she encounters from some audiences, and nurturing enough to feel the love she receives from other readers. I'm already preparing for the day when Uppity will leave the nest.
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