"Autobiography" by Karen Schubert

In my recent posts, I’ve been talking a lot about confessional and autobiographical poetry. Last night I received an email asking me what I have against the confessional form. A short answer to that question I give in the first five minutes of this interview with Grace Cavalieri.  At a later date I might elaborate because I really do have a bone to pick with the so-called confessionalists.  But I thought instead I’d end the series on a lighter note with this wonderful poem by Karen Schubert, which won the William Dickey Memorial Broadside Contest in 2015, and which was inspired by her former professor, Philip Brady. Dr. Brady once advised his students: Don’t be married to autobiography.

 

Autobiography

 

Don’t be married to autobiography.
-Phil Brady

I may be dating myself here…
-Anja Farin

 

I am not married to Autobiography, but we are lovers. This is my first lesbian relationship. I’ve been trying to awaken my inner lesbian for years, but until now all I could muster was an artistic lust for the female figure. Autobiography is different, although she embarrasses me, won’t let me tell the story the way I want to. She reminds me about the wine stain on the satin chair, forgotten Mother’s Day cards, my fear of glass elevators. She makes fun of me, the gray tooth and the way one eye squeezes shut when I laugh. She says beauty is symmetrical. I am obsessed with Autobiography, call her late at night and leave message after message. I just want to hear her voice. I think she is two-timing me. I am afraid she will run off with the other woman. We fight. We make up. We go to our café, bookstore. Later, I will write about it. When Autobiography and I walk by people we know, they tremble.

 

Karen Schubert is the author of five poetry chapbooks, most recently Dear Youngstown (NightBallet Press), Black Sand Beach (Kattywompus Press) and I Left My Wings on a Chair (Kent State Press), selected by Kathleen Flenniken for a Wick Poetry Center Chapbook Prize. Her poems and creative nonfiction appear in Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, Lake Effect Poetry and Winning Writers, and performed at the Cleveland Humanities Festival and The Strand Project; awards include residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Headlands Center for the Arts. Schubert is director of Lit Youngstown, a literary arts nonprofit in Ohio.

 

photo credit, Courtney Kensinger

Comments

[Elizabeth Kauffman]

She deserves every good thing that comes her way!