Dear Friends,
On Friday, I had the great joy of speaking at NYPL’s The Library After Hours event celebrating banned women writers. I was joined by brilliances
, , and . We each read works by women writers that were censored or banned over the ages.I thought I would share excerpts from my notes with you as well as a brief clip (mostly because the audience participation took an unexpectedly hilarious turn). I really wanted the audience to think about why literary works have been banned in the first place and what this actually—and sometimes sneakily—has to do with the subjugation of women across time and cultures. I also hoped that they would recognize, perhaps for the first time, the power of poetry.
When I think of censorship and poetry, I can’t help but think of the complicated position that poetry occupies in the public consciousness. Raise your hand if you actively read books of poetry. (There were about six hands in a room of 100+) Now raise your hand if you read fiction. (Almost everyone) Nonfiction. (Ditto)
Based on these numbers, it’s safe to conclude that poetry remains the most “niche” genre among readers. It’s the form most people say they don’t “get.” It’s often the butt of the joke.
So, why censor it? Why, if so few people seem to read or seek it out, go through the trouble in the first place?
I think the answer to that question reveals the true nature of poetry, not as some antiquated or riddling form, but as the most powerful vehicle for transmitting human emotion into language. Poetry is the most brief, punchy, memorable form of literary expression. It is the form that is closest to music and incantation—it’s nearest to spells. It sticks—it’s sticky. Poetry is easily passed down. Poetry can easily spread from one person to another.
People have always recognized this power, and so, poets have faced censorship throughout the ages. Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” faced obscenity trials in the 1950s. Vladimir Mayakovsky’s avant-garde poems were censored by the Soviet government. As you’d expect, censorship of poetry often occurs when the content challenges societal norms or political authorities.
Today, I’d like to focus on two women poets whose poems were widely censored for their visionary, iconoclastic, feminist ideas.
The first is Iranian poet and film director, Forugh Farrokhzad (1934 – 1967). After the overthrow of Iran's secular monarchy in 1979, the Islamic Republic banned her poetry for almost a decade, but that censorship only elevated her appeal to new generations of Iranians. Farrokhzad became a symbol of artistic, personal and sexual freedom. She died in a car accident at the age of 32.
Here’s an excerpt from her poem “Window”:
When my faith was hanging by the weak thread of justice and in the whole city the hearts of my lamps were being torn to pieces, when the childlike eyes of my love were being blindfolded by law's black kerchief, and fountains of blood were gushing forth from the distressed temples of my desire, when my life was no longer anything, nothing but the tick tock of a wall clock, I discovered that I must, that I absolutely had to love madly. one window is enough for me, one window to the moment of consciousness and looking and silence. the walnut sapling Is now tall enough to explain the meaning of the wall to its young leaves. ask the mirror the name of your savior. Is not the earth that trembles under your feet lonelier than you?
Yi Lei (伊蕾) (1951 - 2018) astonished readers in China when, in 1987, she published the long poem “A Single Woman’s Bedroom.” In it, a female speaker expresses her passion and sexual desire. The poem’s refrain, “You didn’t come to live with me,” conveys her distress over her lover’s failure to make good on his promise at a time when cohabitation before marriage was still illegal in China. The poem openly criticizes the rigidity of law. [1]
Here’s an excerpt from “A Single Woman’s Bedroom”:
I imagine a life in which I possess All that I lack. I fix what has failed. What never was, I build and seize. It’s impossible to think of everything, Yet more and more I do. Thinking What I am afraid to say keeps fear And fear’s twin, rage, at bay. Law Squints out from its burrow, jams Its quiver with arrows. It shoots Like it thinks: never straight. My thoughts Escape. ... Something invisible blocks every road. I wait night after night with a hope beyond hope. If you come, will nation rise against nation? If you come, will the Yellow River drown its banks? If you come, will the sky blacken and rage? Will your coming decimate the harvest? There is nothing I can do in the face of all I hate. What I hate most is the person I’ve become. You didn’t come to live with me.
I dearly hope that you discovered two writers whose work you may not have come across previously, or reaffirmed your appreciation for two fearless poets. Below, for paid subscribers, I’ve included the lesson plan for a writing exercise on self-censorship that’s designed to get to the heart of our most powerful writing.
If you end up attempting the exercise, please do share it with me below.
xM