To be a goddess looking down at women over the centuries has been trying at various times-but positively joyous over the past few days.
For one thing, America might get a new female Supreme Court Justice now that Justice David Souter is stepping down For another, Britain just appointed a female poet laureate after 341 years-think on that!–of all-male appointments. She is 52-year-old Carol Ann Duffy, and her work celebrates (if not always with applause) the dailiness of existence; its smallness, not its grandness. (This alone is cause for celebration, since the idealization of life in writing is well-trod territory, and mostly trod by men.)
Ms. Duffy is a writer of stories as well as poems, and children’s stories as well as adults’. She is also a lesbian, but has made clear her desire not to have that fact define her or her work, if indeed one’s sexual preference could ever do so. I say it only because it’s a fact.
She speaks to women of all persuasions and all ages, and what makes me happiest at the moment is her ongoing conversation with women in middle age. For isn’t that a time when invisibility strikes? When men who once would have struck up a conversation no longer do? When children suddenly want to be with friends and not you? When so much sexuality infuses their souls, but declining interest (from without and from within) awaits?
Yes. And Duffy hears us all and speaks to us all with wit and depth, using a light touch, sometimes, to hit on dark matters. The New York Times chose the poem “Mrs. Rip Van Winkle” to publish this morning. And so will I. (And I will write, in days to come, about her theme. But first, take a look.)
MRS. RIP VAN WINKLE
I sank like a stone
Into the still, deep waters
of late middle age,
Aching from head to foot.
I took up food
And gave up exercise.
It did me good.
And while he slept,
I found some hobbies
for myself.
Painting. Seeing the sights
I’d always dreamed about:
The Leaning Tower.
The Pyramids.
The Taj Mahal.
I made a little watercolour
of them all.
But what was best,
What hands-down beat
the rest,
Was saying a none-too-fond
farewell to sex.
Until the day
I came home with this
drawing of Niagara
And he was sitting up in bed
rattling Viagra.
