Tag: Nancy Dunlop

Dispatch from the Holding Tank

By Nancy Dunlop

 

It is my first day in—  what are they calling it? Self-quarantine? Social distancing? Shelter-in-place? I suppose, for me, it’s isolation.

But unlike many others my age, I’ve been in isolation for almost a decade, due to a disability. Today is really no different than any other day for me. Except that I sense other people are also in isolation. So, in some bizarre way I have company.

But when this virus is controlled, when “the curve flattens,” those who are newly self-isolating, and fortunate enough not to get infected, might return to a busy world. A world where people interact. Are productive. Are externally defined.

Another difference between me, an old hand at this isolation thing, and those who are brand, spanking new at it is that I’ve had a long time to deal with introspection. To look inside myself for answers. I had to re-define myself, by myself, from within. But I’m not particularly good at this. I am not good at loss: no more external validation or respect or job title or credentials or any sort of official auspices; no podium, microphone, cubicle, corner office, daily commutes, or jostling for a subway seat to distract me from any need to get quiet and go within.

If you saw my immediate surroundings, you might say, “How perfect for a writer!” The knotty pine cupboards and thick stone fireplace. Those birds racketing out the window. What the sun does to the afghans my grandmother crocheted for me, draped on the back of the love seat. If you could see what I see from my desk. My framed diploma. The photo of Stephen and me at the very moment we were pronounced husband and wife. My two gentle cats, Piper and Chloe. All the things that can bring comfort. Such a perfect retreat for a writer. A writer needs solitude, after all.

But not isolation.

It has taken almost a decade of being by myself to come to terms with being by myself. With my holding tank. So, to the young and healthy I say, “Welcome to the holding tank.”

I am following the news, social media, the stock market, the hoarding-of-toilet-paper and guns. I am following reports of people denying any problem or defying any precautions. And I get it. I know how difficult it is to go from 100 mph to zero. What it is like to hit a wall. To be told that you need to stop everything. That you’re not really essential. Oh, and by the way, nothing will ever be the same.

In the U.S., we’re told that we are a strong people. That we are the strongest people on Earth. We celebrate robustness. Vigor. Movement. Staying busy. Underneath all of that, though? I suspect fear. And anger. And a wicked need to blame. Or to scapegoat. But not a whole lot of anything more subtle or gradated. Like patience. Or acceptance. Or empathy. Not right away. Maybe not ever. Such things take work. Work that doesn’t necessarily look busy.

In addition to being strong, we are said to be ruggedly individualistic. We pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, gosh darn it, and are told to just go for it. Grab that brass ring. We are blasted with seemingly countless opportunities to be on the go.

I’ve noticed this all over social media, a well-meaning impulse to provide ways to stay exactly the way you were before you were isolated. How to work from home. Set up workstations. Put up with your family. Home-school. Learn to draw. Or knit. How to cultivate new interests, immediately. In general, how to stay cheerfully in the world when you are anything but. How to remain unchanging and robust in the midst of a situation demanding change and acknowledging we are not robust.

So, yes, I get it. I understand the sudden burgeoning of tricks and techniques and lists for how to do everything just as before. To do anything but deal with what comes with actual isolation. Like the opportunity—the actual human need—to feel vulnerable. To be soft. Or receptive. Or quiet. To practice not fearing fear. To be kind, despite.

 

Nancy Dunlop is a poet and essayist, who resides in Upstate New York. She received her Ph.D. at UAlbany, SUNY, specializing in Creative Writing and Poetics. She also taught at UAlbany for 20 years. Most recently, she has been curator of Wren, an international online forum for women in the arts. A finalist in the AWP Intro Journal Awards, she has been published in a number of print and digital journals, including Swank, Truck, The Little Magazine, Writing on the Edge, 13th Moon, Greenkill BroadSheet, and Writers Resist: The Anthology, 2018. Her work has also been heard on NPR.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash.

After Charlottesville

By Nancy Dunlop

And may one be
happy in the face of bad things?
And may one make
art or knit or bake a bundt cake in the face of bad things?
And may one have a hopeful
meditative life, a restful prayer life, an active inner life in the face of bad things?
And may one laugh, make jokes in the face of bad things?
Is one allowed to have a sense of humor,
keep her charming, darling self alive and thriving,
in the face of bad things?
And may one take a walk, looking at the princely tops of
the white pines, remembering
the bald eagles over the lake, bulleting across the sky,
instead of reading another
article, another perspective, another call
to action, in the face of bad things? Is one
allowed to delete the emails screaming
“URGENT! We need YOU more than ever!
We haven’t heard from you, in a while. LOOK
at what just happened, NOW.”
May one skip the upcoming March Against Whatever-It-Is-Today because
she is tired, just
tired. And distressed by all the distress. Just for today,
may one keep her
dental appointment, go about her business, hold on to that
deep and abiding
crush on George Harrison in the face of bad things?
May one let down her guard in the face of bad things and feel safe doing so?
Or how about this:
Can one be outraged, scream, hurl
curses like fire balls from her mouth, be a dragon and a good person all at once?
And while we’re at it, can one feel
simple, straightforward outrage, all the while knowing she has privileges others do not?
Is one allowed to own her fury, even with her blind spots?
Or how about this, and this sounds dangerous: May one just let things
be, in the face of bad things?
May one seek silence for a little while, without
feeling complicit in enabling bad things?
May one feel love for some very specific reason or person or animal or love
for no reason at all, in the face of bad things?
May one maintain a sense of wonder in the face of bad things, a sense of yearning, of
eros, of beauty too large to encompass, in the face of bad things?
Can one hear past the static of bad things? See past the constant
interruptions of bad things?
May one write poems
about, say, one’s mother, or that young grackle at the feeder, which have
nothing to do with some kind of bearing witness to bad things?
Is one willing to be censured
but speak up anyway in the face of bad things?
Is one willing to make a fuss at a quiet dinner party
in the face of bad things?
May the poet claim oracular sanity in the face of bad things? 
May she say, “I see you,
more than you see yourself”?
May she see what she sees and say, “This is my truth and it is valid”?
Is one willing to be yelled down
by a cop in the face of bad things? Is one willing to be shoved
to the pavement? To be imprisoned for pushing back in the face of bad things?
Is one brave enough to put the sign back up
at the end of the driveway
in the face of bad things?
May one not smile back, although she was groomed to do so,
in the face of bad things?
Is one allowed to dance for two hours a day
in the face of bad things? Or pet the cat, losing all track
of time?
Can one maintain her mental fortitude, her faculties, her intellect, her sense of purpose, of moral compass, her connection to Source
in the face of bad things?
Does one need to forgive one who does bad things
because she senses he hates himself?
May one just avoid the one who does bad things?
May one simply trust that there is a very large God, a larger reckoning, which will take care of the one who does bad things?
May the poet do her job, surveying the Universe, swooping into galactic wormholes, caves of newly formed words, like spores, waiting to be plucked at their most pure?
May one just. Just just just watch
the new family of grackles whooshing
by the kitchen window, and, not even thinking about bad things,
consider how different she is from them, and how
much the same? How it’s all about
wing power?
Can one say to herself, I am an Artist, capital “A,”
and that matters most right now, and mean it? Really
mean it? Believe it?
Believe that is enough? Believe
that Art is what is needed more than
anything in the face of bad things?
May one hold a pen in one hand, a sword in the other and still
recognize herself?
Or is one given the wisdom to know
what to hold, when to hold it, when
to hold on, when to loosen
her grip and stop
just stop
thinking
that she must embrace
all the suffering in this bruised world, just stop
assuming that is, somehow, her job,
a joyless one, a dark and lethal one.

Is there joy seeping out, seeping out, seeping not weeping? Is joy
still there, waving to us, in full sight?

Can one feel joy despite
Joy despite
Joy despite
Joy despite

 

Nancy Dunlop is a poet and essayist who resides in Upstate New York, where she has taught at the University at Albany. A finalist in the AWP Intro Journal Awards, she has been published in print journals, including The Little Magazine, Writing on the Edge, 13th Moon: A Feminist Literary Magazine, Works and Days, and Nadir, as well as online publications such as Swank Writing, RI\FT, alterra, Miss Stein’s Drawing Room, Truck, and Writers Resist. She has forthcoming work in Free State Review and the anthology, Emergence, published by Kind of a Hurricane Press. Her work has also been heard on NPR.

Photo credit: Meal Makeover Moms via a Creative Commons license.

Some Poems

By Nancy Dunlop

                  Brutal Things Must Be Said  –James Baldwin

 

Some poems reside
in oven mitts, opening
the stove and reaching
for the pan with the leavened
bread flowing over its edges,
the mitts pull it out, piping
hot. A safe and soothing thing.
We are okay.

Some poems are like an arrow
in a bow, pulled taut, held
with great control, and then
released, the point
searing the air, straight
to the bull’s eye. Such poems
can be hard to watch without
flinching. You
avert your gaze before
the moment of puncture.

But what is the Poem to do? Not
hit its mark? Not speak?

Some poems wait
to be written on
the Reporter’s notepad, upon
arrival at the scene of
an accident. Yes,
it can be that acute
and chaotic and hard
to get the words to dribble
down the page, what with the
flashing lights, the mix
of bloodied coats, limbs
akimbo, sharp spikes of metal
and glinting glass. Just
getting through the barrier
of Yellow Tape surrounding
this type of poem can be
daunting.

But some poems
demand that much of you.

Some poems are loaded
guns, standing
in the corner of a Lady’s
bedroom. You will look
away from these poems,
unless they are tucked
in an anthology, padded by other,
softer Literature. The Professor
turns to this Emily
of a poem, asks
the class, What
does the gun represent? The students
come up with flailing
answers, or they don’t. Every
semester is different. The bell
rings, and it’s on to Psych 101.

Some poems contain
a knife blade, a bottle, a needle, a taser.
some poems rush their sick children
to the ER. Again. Some poems
are raped and constantly
interrupted. With flashback. Flashback. Flashback.

Such poems make it minute
to minute, if
they are lucky. They do not
have the luxury
to protest a Pipeline a trillion
miles away. Or, for others,
a Pipeline is the only thing they have
in front of them, getting
closer, bulldozers trenching
through their land. Tell me,
what is coming through
your front door?

Poems are like people. Each one
has a story, a dark thing they
carry.

You’ll see these poems lying in Hospice beds
when the Chemo stops working.
They use walkers, because their limbs
are dying. They are propped up in institutions,
alone and waiting for some nurse,
to bring a meal, so they can say hello
to someone today. Some poems
have distended bellies and parasites
crawling on them. Some crouch
on sidewalks, covered in cardboard.
Some poems are soldiers
home from combat, never finding
their words, never trusting anything, anybody
ever again. Some poems have survived
concentration camps and are branded
into the skin.

Some poems are typed
on Brown paper, Black paper,
fearing for their safety. Some
poems love other poems,
but are told they shouldn’t.

Such poems expect silence when they appear. Or
brutality. Never sure
of which. They have always
known that they will be
pushed to the margins,
until they fall off the edge
of the page on which they cling.

Some poems are called Nigger,
Cunt, Pocahantas, Fag, Irrelevant,
Wrong, No room
at the Inn.

But some poems can be found
in oven mitts, reaching
into a stove, pulling out
the finished loaf. Your family’s
favorite. You sit around the table,
and break bread, newly
nourished. You bless the world
inside and out your kitchen window,
a hum and patter of words draped
on the counter behind you,
in the oven mitts still warm, still
holding the memory of the shiver
and pop of the yeast, the stretch and
rip of the leavening
that makes way for the release,
the Rising. The final fruition.

 

Nancy Dunlop is a poet and essayist who resides in Upstate New York, where she has taught at the University at Albany. A finalist in the AWP Intro Journal Awards, she has been published in print journals including The Little Magazine, Writing on the Edge, 13th Moon: A Feminist Literary Magazine, Works and Days and Nadir, as well as in online publications such as Swank Writing, RI\FT, alterra, Miss Stein’s Drawing Room and Truck. She has forthcoming work in Free State Review and the anthology, Emergence, published by Kind of a Hurricane Press. Her work has also been heard on NPR.

Photo credit: Guru Sno Studios via a Creative Commons license.