The Freedom to Write [by Nin Andrews]

I've been worrying a lot lately. On a global scale, I've been worrying about . . . well, just about everything. On a personal scale, I've been worrying about my forthcoming memoir, Son of a Bird. I feel I might have spoken too freely in it  . . .  

My father used to say, “Only the artists are free.” It was his answer to Rousseau’s “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” A wannabe artist himself, he gave my siblings and me drawing pencils and pads as children, as well as drawing books—the kind that taught you how to draw a horse or a cow or a cat by starting with a circle. Yes, everything can start with a circle—or series of circles.

At night the family would sit by the fire, drawing. Sometimes he would give a prize for the best picture. Two sisters were extremely talented. One could draw horses that leapt off the page. Another, an ocean that lapped at my feet. Whatever they drew, my father would correct. I watched as his pen come down on their pictures, and the horses froze. The ocean, too. One mark, and the pictures died. The marks were technically correct, but they were also disturbing. They drained the pictures of magic.  “Do not touch my picture,” I said when he checked on my work. “Okay,” he said with a shrug, adding, “You could use some help. But it doesn’t matter—you aren’t exactly gifted.”

I agreed with his assessments. My father was a man who told the truth, even the cruel truth.  Later, when I began writing, and I first published a poem in The Paris Review, he called to tell me my poem was embarrassing. Women, he said, shouldn't write like that.  If I chose to continue, I should think about whether or not I wanted to publish. I saw his point. I did think about it. I decided yes, I did want to publish poems like that.  

After our conversation, I leaned into embarrassment. This was back in the early 1990’s, and I didn’t know other women poets who were writing about sex. The Vagina Monologues had not been published.  I didn’t have an MFA. I hadn’t read Kim Addonizio or Denise Duhamel or Molly Peacock or Sharon Olds. But I did feel a certain creative energy and power in leaning into my own discomfort.

People ask me now if I ever winced  at my work. Yes, I did. If I received creepy calls from men. Yes, I did. If I lost friends. Yes, I did. If women responded to me oddly, too. Yes. (I had one woman ask me after a reading to tell her how to have an orgasm.) If I have any shame about my body of work. Sometimes. I still have poems I’ve held back, poems with titles like “Don’t Look Now” and “The Magic Pussy.” But they would not be startling by today’s standards.    

I have always admired poets who feel free to speak their minds, who toss aside the criticisms of men and culture and tradition and expectations. I love boldness in writers, especially women writers. It’s refreshing in a world that wants to keep us small, cramped, easily defined. 

That said, I also wonder about the role our parents play in who we become, what we do, say, write . . . 

The Sisters of Sexual Treasure by Sharon Olds

As soon as my sister and I got out of our
mother’s house, all we wanted to
do was fuck, obliterate
her tiny sparrow body and narrow
grasshopper legs. The men’s bodies
were like our father’s body! The massive
hocks, flanks, thighs, elegant
knees, long tapered calves—
we could have him there, the steep forbidden
buttocks, backs of the knees, the cock
in our mouth, ah the cock in our mouth.
                           Like explorers who have
discovered a lost city, we went
nuts with joy, undressed the men
slowly and carefully, as if
uncovering buried artifacts which
proved our theory of the lost culture:
that if Mother said it wasn’t there,
it was there.

Comments

[Denise Duhamel]

So great, Nan! I feel like this freedom to write what we want to/have to write is constantly in jeopardy. I'm so grateful that you have pushed through despite your father, despite the naysayers!

Shameless means "without shame" but how often has it been used to shame someone? Just saying....

[Nin Andrews]

Thanks Denise!!

[Rivkah Rubinstein]

Excellent insights.

[Susan Aizenberg]

Enjoyed this; thanks.