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A Myopic Poetry Series event
Sunday May 16 at Myopic Books
Hatmaker is working on a series of "crime lyrics": poems which take crimes (and crime writing) as their subject/inspiration
The poems she presents at this reading focus particularly on the unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short in Jan 1947, the case which comes to be known as the Black Dahlia case
In her opening remarks, she outlines the facts and speculation on the case through a discussion of the various texts written about it (Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon II, John Gilmore's Severed, James Ellroy's Black Dahlia, Janice Knowlton's Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer, and several others)
"I'm interested in her as a person ... I'm also interested in her as the Black Dahlia, [a figure] who resonates in a lot of psychological ways"
"a kind of similar figure to Williams' Elsie, a pure product of America gone crazy"
The poems themselves seem to use the murder as a springboard for broader meditation. Some (the early ones in particular) retell parts of the narrative in a narrative-lyric style, but then begin to circle outwards from there, meditating on various topics
Some of these meditations sketch out the cultural landscape of 1947—she incorporates reflections on both the recently-ended World War II and 40's-era dental science and funerary techniques
Some segments move into Short's consciousness, although (mostly) remaining at a third-person remove: "when she cooks, she sees the glint of steel before she feels the pain"
Some segments are dialogues
Some are Hatmaker's present-day reflections: one segment riffs on the upcoming film about the Dahlia, to be directed by Brian DePalma (she wonders whether Lynch would not in fact be the more apropos choice)
One poem is in the form of a jukebox track listing, although I'm uncertain as to whether the song titles she lists are actual songs from the era or poetic inventions. In any case, the song titles presented seem to emphasize body parts, presumably female (lips, eyes, etc.) and themes of finality (the end of relationships, and the like). Taken together, they imply a culture obsessed with morbidity and disembodiment
She meditates on how best to tell these stories; who to validate (the cops? the lawyers? the victims?)
One poem applies the logic of dismemberment to the alphabet: "take the t and tear the arms off ... deflate the o"
One poem in Short's voice (first-person this time) has her take on the role of the oppressor: "You'll shout my name—Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Elizabeth!—and you'll masturbate on my command"
"I'll bury the myths of your flesh"
"That's the final logic. That's the new world order"
The contemporary culture of violence seems to operate in the background of many of these poems, implying the figure of G.W. Bush although not invoking him specifically by name
A poem which imagines the Dahlia as a comic-book hero
"she holds the hand of the rapist and the victim as well"
"She knows the world is lonely whether you hold the knife or not"
A poem inspired by Sun Ra's "Space Is The Place," imagining a zone in outer space where the Dahlia can peacably exist
The final poem raises the question of poetic activism: it asks overtly "what can a poem do?" (presumably in the face of a violent world)
This poem instructs directly: "Talk to your children tonight about what it means when you call a woman a cunt or a whore"
It includes the phone numbers of women's health centers and rape crisis centers
"Poetry can be didactic ... Poetry can be about public outcry, same as the next form"
Labels: poetry_commentary
Thursday, May 27, 2004
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