Tag Archives: Penn Museum

Unlovely drafts

Well, I have been writing. But less about the current wintry days than I expected, because of the online poetry seminar I’m taking.

One recent prompt in Anita Skeen‘s workshop involves employing phrases from a text and using those words, or images, as a start to a poem that would not encompass or even relate to the original topic. I’ve written work that does that; but more commonly I continue the topic in some way, most notably with my long-poem/chapbook manuscript The Librarian of Pyok Dong. And what I notice is that I tend to choose “unlovely” texts, articles or essays that are historical, scientific, or academic, rather than to use the words of poets or novelists. Why that is, I can’t say for sure; it may simply be due to my deep-rooted nerdiness. But I think of poets like Martha Silano, Rebecca Elson, Muriel Ruykeyser, and others who have created amazing work, beautiful poems, from newspaper articles, scientific papers, academic texts, encyclopedias–so I feel encouraged. The result, for me, however, is often an unlovely draft.

Etching by or after J. Gamelin, 1778/1779. Created 1779. Contributors: Jacques Gamelin. Work ID: h3ybfzwe.

I have recently spent some time proofreading one of my brother’s papers that addresses the origins of some of the crania in Samuel George Morton’s collection, which resides at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia and is among the controversial holdings there of sacred/religious objects and human remains. The University has committed to “repatriating” such items in its collections that belong to indigenous peoples, for example, and to returning human bones to places of origin or to “respectful interment.” The challenge with Morton’s large collection is to ascertain where, in fact, these human beings came from. [Informational page is here.] My brother has been trying to track down the people, likely young Africans, who made up one set of about 55 skulls collected in Cuba around 1839-1840.

It’s a terrible history, of course. The Middle Passage, slavery, illness, misery, abandonment even in death. And it’s an academic paper, so the language–not to dismiss the author’s writing ability, since he’s keeping to the conventional style–does not lend itself to poetry.

Basically, I’ve given myself a difficult task. Yet we learn through difficulty, do we not? Often, too, the unlovely poems are those that deal with how rotten human beings can be, or illuminate the worst of times and offer us insight and information that we had not been taught, hidden horrors, trauma, all of the above. I have written many lovely poems about lovely things. The world, however, manages to be far more complicated than beautiful, a mixed bag of joys and miseries, and it seems to me that literature and art ought to reflect that fact sometimes.

What I’m posting below is a very rough draft, just to demonstrate how I begin a difficult poem, a poem based upon historical facts that I’m learning myself. It’s a completely different process from when I write from an image or observation of my own. For example, the “Librarian” poem, which is about 15 pages long, took me a couple of years and a visit to the United States Army Heritage and Education Center (USAHEC) at Carlisle Barracks, PA! First I pull some quotes, make a lot of notes, highlight images or place names that seem most resonant. Then I develop these into what I call “jottings” and fragments, and start setting them into an initial sequence–which I often change later.

Stanzas? Line breaks? Metaphors? Meter? All of that can wait; I like to work on structuring the narrative first when I try something in this vein, and I want to find images that might speak to a reader. So it is clear to me that this poem is not one I’ll have finished before the end of the 5-meetings-long workshop. Assuming I ever do finish it. Yes, poetry is hard work.

~

José Rodríguez y Cisneros, Havana Physician, Ships 55 Human Crania
to Samuel George Morton, Anatomist (1840)


A Cuban journalist writes that by 1915
“The Vedado of my childhood was a sea rock
over which the seagulls flew”

sandy, overgrown with Caleta sea grapes
the nesting-place of rats, iguanas

but once a cemetery for paupers and bozales,
the unbaptized, slaves, the suicides

abandoned on this coast as carrion

where turkey vultures and wild dogs
fed on corpses hastily interred

“el Pudridero” they called it—
the rotting place—
local people thought it cursed

for a more scientific-minded man, opportunity
to harvest skulls for anatomic pursuits.
Nameless, blameless nobodies

who were otherwise less than worthless:

the definition from a 19th century
Spanish dictionary:

“bozales. A Negro recently removed
from his [native] country—
metaphorical and vernacular,
one who is foolish or idiotic…

can be applied to wild horses.”

~~

*note~

“the Vedado Interment Site…originated as a sinkhole that came to be utilized as a mass grave…[the majority] of the Vedado Group likely consisted of enslaved people born in Africa during the early 19th century, most of whom died of infectious diseases soon after arriving in Cuba.” —John S. Michael

Monumental

Historical record is a palimpsest, erased in whole or in parts and reinterpreted, rewritten, revised, rebuilt, restructured, reconsidered, and–often–reviled. In the USA, we are once again evaluating our statuary monuments. Columbus. Juan de Oñate. Mayor Frank Rizzo. General Robert E. Lee. 

What a society considers beautiful, or of aesthetic value, usually differs little from what it considers to be of cultural value. Such judgment seems natural; but it frequently provides societal blinders because citizens want to avoid what’s ugly, brutal, and complicated. If it’s good, it must be beautiful; if it is beautiful, and has been around a long time, it must be a good symbol for our society.

One thing about a symbol is its simplicity–we think we know exactly what it stands for, and we can admire our own reflections about that shared idea. Except that human perspectives are annoyingly unique, and it turns out we cannot even agree about what a symbol represents, let alone what it means, and whether or not it should be interpreted in the context of the society that created the symbol or in light of the point of view of the person who now perceives it.

Monuments, though we think of them as commemorations or reminders, are intentionally raised up to become symbols or icons in a way at variance with the more common, individual headstones or grave markers. They are not art but society’s major markers. I learned about the difference a decade or so ago on a visit to the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum). A tour group was walking through the Ancient Egyptian galleries, and one of the visitors asked the docent about how and when the artistic styles of the large sculptures changed.

“Anthropologists seldom refer to these objects as art, actually,” replied the docent. She went on to add that while they are beautiful and most people think of them as art, the monuments really were indicators of society–status, leadership, importance in the world of the time. While they seem lasting to us, because they’re large or carved of stone, they were created by craftsmen, not artists. No one cared who made them; they were there to tell the people living in the cities, towns, and countryside who was in power, whom to worship, and what the governing powers valued. Many statues were destroyed or vandalized once a nobleman was out of power. It didn’t matter that they were made of stone, or whether they were aesthetically beautiful or made by a renowned craftsman–the figurehead kings or gods were no longer important. They could safely be demolished.

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Granite sphinx of Ramses II, Penn Museum

Or re-used. Speaking of palimpsests, read about this sphinx at the Penn Museum’s gallery. The cartouches show definite signs of having been repurposed from a previous pharaoh. “The previous king’s name is entirely eradicated.”

~

If you suspect I am making an analogy to current events, you suspect correctly. It is human nature to want things to stay as one remembers them, and we tend to feel confused when change occurs rapidly. But renaming, erasure, and destruction of socially-sanctioned monuments has been going on for a long, long time. We should not be as surprised as news media seems to want us to be when monuments become controversial.

~

The Online Etymology Dictionary says this about the word monument:

late 13c., “a sepulchre,” from Old French monument “grave, tomb, monument,” and directly from Latin monumentum “a monument, memorial structure, statue; votive offering; tomb; memorial record,” literally “something that reminds,” a derivative of monere “to remind, bring to (one’s) recollection, tell (of),” from PIE *moneie- “to make think of, remind,” suffixed (causative) form of root *men- (1) “to think.” Meaning “any enduring evidence or example” is from 1520s; sense of “structure or edifice to commemorate a notable person, action, period, or event” is attested from c. 1600.

Monuments relate to thinking, to memory. We want our thoughts to endure–our society, our “own way of life”–to last forever, because we know we will not last forever.

Monuments have the disturbing quality of often belonging to only one group in a culture, however. The victors, or those who wish they had been victors. The victims, mourned. The powerful, because they have the means to build monuments. Monuments can fade from significance; the culture can change its point of view, making the old statues controversial or useless; new leaders can appear.

I am rethinking what I consider to be cultural and social monuments.

Here’s something I love to hear when my head and heart get too full of complicated histories and emotions: Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” sung by Otis Redding. *

~~

* [FYI from Wikipedia: “In 2007, the song was selected for preservation in the Library of Congress, with the National Recording Registry deeming the song “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important.”[2]]