An autobiography told in poems, this selection of work spans more than 40 years, beginning with the avant-garde arts movement and political activism of the 1960s. A mixture of intense political poems, intimate love poems, and provocative reflections, it traces the journey of a woman intimately involved with many significant events of the 20th century—the antiwar, feminist, and gay liberation movements, including time spent in Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Barcelona. Accompanied by exquisite photographs, this collection culminates with a suite of 12 poems connecting contemporary history with the 17th century world of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
An autobiography told in poems, this selection of work spans more than 40 years, beginning with the avant-garde arts movement and political activism of the 1960s. A mixture of intense political poems, intimate love poems, and provocative reflections, it traces the journey of a woman intimately involved with many significant events of the 20th century—the antiwar, feminist, and gay liberation movements, including time spent in Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Barcelona. Accompanied by exquisite photographs, this collection culminates with a suite of 12 poems connecting contemporary history with the 17th century world of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
The Light That Puts an End to Dreams: New and Selected Poems
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Overview
An autobiography told in poems, this selection of work spans more than 40 years, beginning with the avant-garde arts movement and political activism of the 1960s. A mixture of intense political poems, intimate love poems, and provocative reflections, it traces the journey of a woman intimately involved with many significant events of the 20th century—the antiwar, feminist, and gay liberation movements, including time spent in Chile, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Barcelona. Accompanied by exquisite photographs, this collection culminates with a suite of 12 poems connecting contemporary history with the 17th century world of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781609402228 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Wings Press |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 176 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Susan Sherman is a poet, playwright, essayist, editor, and cofounder of IKON magazine. She is the author of America’s Child: A Woman’s Journey through the Radical Sixties and The Color of the Heart: Writing from Struggle & Change 1959–1990. She lives in New York City. Margaret Randall is a feminist poet, writer, photographer, and social activist. She is the author of more than 80 books, including Sandino’s Daughters: Testimonies of Nicaraguan Women in Struggle, Stones Witness, and Their Backs to the Sea: Poems and Photographs. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Joséphine Sacabo is a renowned photographer whose work appears in many books, such as a reissue of the classic Mexican novel Pedro Páramo as well as in the permanent collection of numerous museums, including the Houston Museum of Fine Arts; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Wittliff Collection of Southwestern and Mexican Art; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Read an Excerpt
The Light that Puts an End to Dreams
New & Selected Poems
By Susan Sherman, Joséphine Sacabo
Wings Press
Copyright © 2012 Susan ShermanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60940-224-2
CHAPTER 1
A POEM THAT STARTS IN WINTER
This is a poem for people without a history
whatever their color whatever their race
who can't remember their mother ever holding them
talking to them about their past
Who find themselves in unknown places
without instructions & without a guide
This is a poem for the children of immigrants
whose parents wanted so much to forget to leave behind
the places they were born the places they fled
they never spoke of those days to their children
never even told them their grandparents' names
Who died leaving their children lost and restless
rootless hungry
This is a poem that starts in winter
but never ends A poem about people
about individuals with specific features
Proper names
This is a poem for Sarah whose mother was Jewish but no
> one could tell
She had blond hair blue eyes It was 1939
She taught Sarah a lesson about vision
how to make people see past you how to hide
In moments of doubt they would always throw it in your
face
You could count on it
"Dirty Jew"
This is a poem about words
This is a poem about Sarah's mother
Who never stepped inside a synagogue after the age of eight
Who never forgave her own parents for what she was born
an immigrant poor
Who lived her contradictions until the day she died
Who left her lie behind her A legacy drawn
in her daughter's face
This is a poem for Sarah's mother A poem about words
This is a poem for Barbara 1961 Whose father warned her
if she were involved with those radicals at Berkeley those
"Reds"
he would be the first to give her name to the FBI to turn her
in
She never doubted he was serious She learned that day
never to trust
& never to speak
This is a poem about trust
This is a poem for Carole who cried out in shame
discovering her ancestors had killed & robbed
to gain a country Carole who had a history
She no longer wished to claim
This is a poem for a Vietnamese poet Havana, 1969
who praised three young Americans for their courage
standing against their own country their own people
for what they felt right
He had no choice was forced to fight No virtue in that
They thought him too generous mistaken at best
But still it helped But still it healed
It was winter then too
This is a poem about digging images from rage
when all else fails when there is no common past
An anger imbedded so deeply
it survives
This is a poem about war
This is a poem for Brenda who fell in love with a woman
years before it became a political act
Who decades later still stumbles over words long forbidden
jealous of those who proclaim their love nonchalantly
"Lesbian"
This is a poem for Brenda
This is a poem about words
A poem about winter A poem about war
This is a poem for those caught between worlds
squeezed between times for people without a history
who connect with no ancestral past
This is a poem about them about me
This is a poem about words like dialogue compassion
which have yet to appear but people this poem
About war contradiction rage choice anger
trust
This is a poem that starts in winter
but never ends
This is a poem about people individuals
with specific features
Proper names
DEFINITIONS
1
I think it's coming close to death
that does it
both others
& your own
that magnifies the values
begins the definitions
This morning
mild at last
after weeks of chill
Streets heavy with water
People stepping
cautiously
hardly know where
to place their feet
so accustomed to barriers
of salt and ice
My mind resembles those winter streets
gray
with sludge
The snow cover melted
The sidewalks washed of unfamiliar
glare
2
After all she said
What difference does it make?
That's the reason I never write
hardly speak of what is me
I began to answer glibly stopped
Held myself in identical fear
My own touch tentative
almost an excuse
like making love to someone
for the first time
or the third (which is always harder)
once you begin to know experience
another
The tension of your hair brown
streaked with gray
The lines of
your face like wires rushing through
my hands the pressures of your past
your forehead your knees
3
Warm outside the steam
continues forced by habit
I open the window throw the
oracle trace the heat
The heart thinks constantly it says
One constant then the heart another
the drawing back
Four o'clock
two hours till dawn Nightmare
image your face
surrounded by strangers
Beloved you turn
away
4
Death brings us close to it
Death itself
forgetting
And we the living
wanting to remember
not wishing to be forgotten
separated
from what we hold most near
I hold you for a moment lose you
watch you disappear
I hold you
for a lifetime lose you
the next year the next morning
the next minute the next breath
5
You tell me
What can I say to that young woman
eighteen years of age?
That I at thirty-eight must once more lay aside
all sense of definition order
Must once more carefully measure
the accumulation of my years
Or should I say
her question can be answered
in specific needs others
and her own
But she's asking
more than that We both know
what she means
The only real difference being death
The one who stops the heart
THERE WAS A WOMAN ONCE
who was more to me than words any blending
of alphabet and sound We met at the corners of day
in the space where night crosses light
where shadows fold into darkness
The moments between our meetings
were air Twenty years lie between her
and this poem a length of time
impossible to render
There was a woman once who was more
to me than imagination wonder
the chimeras that embrace the night
More than the chill kiss of wind that tortured
her secret into patterns of light and
breeze A woman who was more to me than
forever the bending of syllable and time
We met on a hilltop in Vermont made love
in the sweetgrass of our desire
These are moments that defy forgetting
These are moments time cannot cure with
detail noise distraction Mornings that bound us
sticky and tight with dew
There was a woman once who was more to
me than flesh We touched to open
and then once again to close
the way a negative is held over wary eyes
to keep the sun from blinding in the madness
of its fire What lay between us was that
strong What joined us was that fierce
Lying in each other's arms
Married she had never meant for us to happen
had seen me as diversion a momentary lapse
Now she called me treasure promised
to keep me always cherished
hidden in her private place
But forever is a length of time like any other
One afternoon precisely at the stroke of one
she lapsed into a silence without boundary
The air lay like a tomb around us
She could not look at me touch me say my name
She had never meant it to go so far
It had become too much for her to bear
This woman who meant more to me
than words
Should I be grateful thank whatever gods
or goddesses gifted me this passion this legacy
I cannot relinquish cast aside
Forever is a length of time without forgiveness
After twenty years I search for her no longer
but for that moment between opening and
distance when I held her close
Not yet knowing enough to turn away
HOW A FACE CHANGES
passing from strangeness into something
familiar
The features themselves
changing
becoming somehow
different
I thought : the sun hot the air
clear pleasant
allowing space
breath
a place
I thought : what is missing is something
familiar the face of a person passing
from strangeness
into that other place
Our world is edged by the familiar
is shaped by what is close
How a face changes What that means
Your face has changed for me
as you become slowly one of those people
who border the edges
of my days
DURATION
Many nights I waited Many years
The words slow in coming Often I called
There was seldom an answer The magic
beneath my feet at my fingers Often I dreamed
To find truth different from the dream
Many nights I waited Many years Until the words came
Their form like the earth Beautiful in their face
To understand is to know in just what way I
walked The dream that drove me forward
That rests with me still
My friend As I reach to touch you So still you are
So near There is a truth a mirror cannot tell
To understand the dream To hold it close
As hands As eyes
When it is so cold the fingers grow chill
When there is no speech because the stillness
must not be broken When even poems must cease
If I could give you anything I would give you
this dream In its contradiction In its truth
How in action it changes What in action
it means How the earth opens her body Almost
as an act of grace
THE REAL QUESTIONS
Where do you go when there is nowhere
to go Hesitancy The inability to act
against Even if I The word The sun
barely but rising but rising pressing further
further until there is no And how
so much I want
The eyes open The hands unfold The feet begin
to move Rivers and streams cross Trees
And in the sky Heat Holding this earth to my
lips Covering my eyes with its cool clean hands
Suspended Drained In love with the earth
In love with the smallest things that grow
You go to the north I to the east This green land
that pulls us into its arms As one person we
know As it pulls us steadily in its own
direction And in returning we cross we move
And in returning we move As it pulls up deeper
and deeper into itself
Above my head the depths the darkness Below my
feet the darkness the death Above my head Under
my feet To open is to drop It is a madness
that they dare to grow
In the way the hands play In the way the face
gestures The eyes drawn back In the
attitude In the contours Where do you go
when there is nowhere to go The fingers loosen
There is this thing that must be touched One arm
reaching forward In love with the earth
The sun To open is to drop It is a madness
a madness that they dare to grow
RED
Red means STOP
It is the color of fire
of passion revolution
of the sun rising and setting
It is the color of the heart
Flowers are red & the devil
It is the color of contradiction
of motion As a child
my chosen favorite was blue
It still is But I turn to red
as one turns to the future
As one is pulled by the future
to be acknowledged & met
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Light that Puts an End to Dreams by Susan Sherman, Joséphine Sacabo. Copyright © 2012 Susan Sherman. Excerpted by permission of Wings Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Introduction, by Margaret Randall xi
Genesis
A Poem That Starts in Winter 3
Definitions 6
There Was a Woman Once 9
How a Face Changes 11
Duration 12
The Real Questions 13
Red 15
Genesis 16
Areas of Silence
What I Want 25
First & Last Poems 26
The Meeting 28
A Poem 31
A Quiet Poem 33
A Picture Perfect Day 34
Love Poem for a Capricorn 35
There Is Something Called Longing 36
A Fare/Well Present 37
Areas of Silence 40
The Fourth Wall
Here's a Poem 49
Reminiscences 50
The Fourth Wall 54
Lilith of the Wildwood, of the Fair Places 59
A Word to the Wise 61
Casualties of War 62
It Was Easier Then 64
Facts 66
Letter from Havana 69
Long Division
Migration 75
Sixth Street Rhapsody 76
Long Division 77
Second Thoughts 79
The Plants 80
Awakening 81
It Is Raining 82
Holding Together 84
Morning Poem 86
Love Poem 88
Cantos for Elegua
Cantos for Elegua 93
Incantation 95
Return 96
Opening Stanzas 97
Testament 100
From Nicaragua a Gift 101
Elegy 103
Words 105
Barcelona Journal 107
Ten Years After 112
The Light that Puts an End to Dreams
A Suite of Poems for Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz With photographs by Joséphine Sacabo 119
Notes on text and photographs 139
Acknowledgments 147
Biographical Notes 149