Anna Akhmatova’s Requiem

A reference to this poem appeared in my twitter feed and I had to go reread it. I used to have this posted on my office door, in a clipping from the Christian Science Monitor, back when I was an academic librarian. I kept the yellowed clipping for years because the poem was a story about the power of writing and description, of naming the unspeakable, giving the reader power over it. Her words are matter of fact but powerful, and I was also fascinated by the painting of Akhmatova (above) that illustrated the article. by Nathan Altman.)

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE

During the frightening years of the Yezhov terror, I
spent seventeen months waiting in prison queues in
Leningrad. One day, somehow, someone ‘picked me out’.
On that occasion there was a woman standing behind me,
her lips blue with cold, who, of course, had never in
her life heard my name. Jolted out of the torpor
characteristic of all of us, she said into my ear
(everyone whispered there) – ‘Could one ever describe
this?’ And I answered – ‘I can.’ It was then that
something like a smile slid across what had previously
been just a face.
[The 1st of April in the year 1957. Leningrad]

From the poemhunter site

Why historical fiction?

Here’s Hilary Mantel’s take, from her series on BBC Radio Four:

As soon as we die, we enter into fiction. Just ask two different family members to tell you about someone recently gone, and you will see what I mean. Once we can no longer speak for ourselves, we are interpreted. When we remember – as psychologists so often tell us – we don’t reproduce the past, we create it. Surely, you may say – some truths are non-negotiable, the facts of history guide us. And the records do indeed throw up some facts and figures that admit no dispute. But the historian Patrick Collinson wrote: “It is possible for competent historians to come to radically different conclusions on the basis of the same evidence. Because, of course, 99% of the evidence, above all, unrecorded speech, is not available to us.”

Evidence is always partial. Facts are not truth, though they are part of it – information is not knowledge. And history is not the past – it is the method we have evolved of organising our ignorance of the past. It’s the record of what’s left on the record. It’s the plan of the positions taken, when we to stop the dance to note them down. It’s what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it – a few stones, scraps of writing, scraps of cloth. It is no more “the past” than a birth certificate is a birth, or a script is a performance, or a map is a journey. It is the multiplication of the evidence of fallible and biased witnesses, combined with incomplete accounts of actions not fully understood by the people who performed them. It’s no more than the best we can do, and often it falls short of that.

From “Why I became a historical novelist” in the Guardian.

The lecture is wonderful and especially needed in these times of alternative truths.

Tatterdemalion

A person in tattered clothing; a ragged or beggarly fellow; a ragamuffin.
OED

Today is Gwendolyn Brooks’ Birthday

That seems like cause for celebration.

One of my favorite poems of hers is Kitchenette Building.

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in, and gray. “Dream” makes a giddy sound, not strong
Like “rent,” “feeding a wife,” “satisfying a man.

You can hear her read it here at the Poetry Foundation site.

I remember being introduced to her work in grade school in Illinois. That was the first time I realized women could be writers. You’d think it would’ve been Emily Dickinson, but Illinois was proud of its Poet Laureate and made sure she was taught in our classes. Ms. Brooks was alive and part of my world, not part of a distanced past. She was writing about things I’d seen and experienced myself, not Victorian philosophizing.

She and Jane Addams made growing up in Illinois a lucky thing – I was exposed to two extraordinary thinkers and writers at an early age, because they were part of local history. (And, not to pile on here, but did you know Jane Addams won the Nobel Peace prize?)

Bay Area Book Festival

I went to the second annual Bay Area Book Festival last weekend, had a great time and acquired the nifty bookbag above from PapaLlama. A truly interesting mix of topics and speakers – if you read at all you would have found something to your taste. I most enjoyed hearing Susan Griffin and Starhawk speak on this present moment in our culture. I also just liked seeing the entire community of book folks turn out, along with clowns, music, bouncy houses, carousels, food trucks. Pretty much a downtown Berkeley street fair. Also, nifty bookbag.

If you didn’t hear about it and you’re local (I think publicity is the one thing they don’t do well) you might want to get on their mailing list to be sure to catch it next year. Food for the soul.