Jag har läst What are big girls made of?, av Marge Piercy. Jag utgår ifrån titeldikten och eftersom den är ganska lång nöjer jag mig med ytterligare ett textutdrag från en annan dikt.
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Marge Piercy föddes i Detroit, Michigan, i en arbetarfamilj som hade drabbats hårt av depressionen. Piercy var den första medlemmen av sin familj att gå på college, att vinna ett stipendium för att studera vid University of Michigan.
Piercys poesi är känd för sin mycket personliga, ofta arga och mycket känslosamma klang. Hon skriver en snabb fri vers som visar samma engagemang för sociala och miljömässiga frågor som hennes romaner gör. Källa: Poetry Foundation
What are big girls made of?, av Marge Piercy (f. 1936)
(from What are big girls made of? : poems. New York : Knopf, 1997.)
The construction of a woman:
a woman is not made of flesh
of bone and sinew
belly and breasts, elbows and liver and toe.
She is manufactured like a sports sedan.
She is retooled, refitted and redesigned
every decade.
Cecile had been seduction itself in college.
She wriggled through bars like a satin eel,
her hips and ass promising, her mouth pursed
in the dark red lipstick of desire.
She visited in '68 still wearing skirts
tight to the knees, dark red lipstick,
while I danced through Manhattan in mini skirt,
lipstick pale as apricot milk,
hair loose as a horse's mane. Oh dear,
I thought in my superiority of the moment,
whatever has happened to poor Cecile?
She was out of fashion, out of the game,
disqualified, disdained, dis-
membered from the club of desire.
Look at pictures in French fashion
magazines of the 18th century:
century of the ultimate lady
fantasy wrought of silk and corseting.
Paniers bring her hips out three feet
each way, while the waist is pinched
and the belly flattened under wood.
The breasts are stuffed up and out
offered like apples in a bowl.
The tiny foot is encased in a slipper
never meant for walking.
On top is a grandiose headache:
hair like a museum piece, daily
ornamented with ribbons, vases,
grottoes, mountains, frigates in full
sail, balloons, baboons, the fancy
of a hairdresser turned loose.
The hats were rococo wedding cakes
that would dim the Las Vegas strip.
Here is a woman forced into shape
rigid exoskeleton torturing flesh:
a woman made of pain.
How superior we are now: see the modern woman
thin as a blade of scissors.
She runs on a treadmill every morning,
fits herself into machines of weights
and pulleys to heave and grunt,
an image in her mind she can never
approximate, a body of rosy
glass that never wrinkles,
never grows, never fades. She
sits at the table closing her eyes to food
hungry, always hungry:
a woman made of pain.
A cat or dog approaches another,
they sniff noses. They sniff asses.
They bristle or lick. They fall
in love as often as we do,
as passionately. But they fall
in love or lust with furry flesh,
not hoop skirts or push up bras
rib removal or liposuction.
It is not for male or female dogs
that poodles are clipped
to topiary hedges.
If only we could like each other raw.
If only we could love ourselves
like healthy babies burbling in our arms.
If only we were not programmed and reprogrammed
to need what is sold us.
Why should we want to live inside ads?
Why should we want to scourge our softness
to straight lines like a Mondrian painting?
Why should we punish each other with scorn
as if to have a large ass
were worse than being greedy or mean?
When will women not be compelled
to view their bodies as science projects,
gardens to be weeded,
dogs to be trained?
When will a woman cease
to be made of pain?
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En av hennes mest kända prosadikter är "Barbie Doll", från 1971!!, i vilken hon tar upp hur ett patriarkalt samhälle sätter förväntningar och tryck på kvinnor, genom könsrollsstereotyper. Den berättar en historia om en flicka som dör när hon försöker möta orealistiska förväntningar som samhället håller för henne. Källa: Wikipedia
Det andra textavsnittet från kvällens diktsamling följer ett liknande tema, som i dikten "Barbie Doll".
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For two women shot to death in Brookline, Massachusetts, by Marge Piercy
(from What are big girls made of? : poems. New York : Knopf, 1997.)
...
A young man is angry at women
women who say no
women who say maybe and mean no
women who won't
women who do and they shouldn't
If they are pregnant they are bad
because that proves
they did it with someone
they did it
and should die.
A man gets angry with a woman
who decides to leave him
who decides to walk off
who decides to walk
who decides.
...
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