[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: Getting to the heart of things. Marguerite #640

Thank you for taking this work so seriously and for giving it back to me in new ways. Really, thanks.

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: Patrick James on S. Perl: Revealing Secrets, Writing Poems #639

Thank you, Patrick.
Beautiful response — about poetry and secrecy, the need to write and to make meaning, to explore what feels like the truth of our experiences.

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: Joanna Siwiec Response: S. Perl: Revealing Secrets, Writing Poems #632

Joanna,

I think your point about the hierarchy of the English department is true, and very interesting. Why do we stratify different modes of writing, when they all seem to participate in similar projects? I think it’s so funny when literature students say they don’t do creative writing. How is every act of writing not a creative act? Some of my most fulfilling artistic experiences have been working on a literature paper, making rhetorical choices, reconfiguring thinking as an act of beauty. Why can’t a poem be a theoretical text? Why can’t memoir, or writing of the self, operate with the same authority as a critical text? Sometimes we can become consumed with assigning value to certain kinds of writing, and it’s based on arbitrary reasons.

I also really agree with you about the role of vulnerability in Professor Perl’s piece, as well as the role it plays in the very act of writing. You write, “We show our humanity through our pain,” and I would like to take that one step further, and say that we also show our strength. There is an amazing paradox to the act of being vulnerable: only the brave and strong are willing to take the risk of being vulnerable. There is a new understanding of power through the very act of powerlessness. When we write we walk the very fine line of this paradox. I think this is so interesting, and I return to is obsessively in my thinking about writing–thanks for your post!

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: James Romberger on Prof. Perl #623

Thanks for your response, James. Those incidents from the past were hard at the time but no longer pierce me in the way they once did. In fact, having written about them and lived beyond them, I can return to them now and share this writing with some affection for all the people involved.

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: Joshua P Belknap response to M. Pinard's "Hep" #621

Josh:

Thanks for pointing out the correlation between Pinard-Flight-Pinsky-Cornell. Very interesting!

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: Mary Pinard— Marguerite's Response #610

Marguerite, I like your framing of the “journalism” in Pinard’s story as sideshows. Thinking of them that way makes it easier for me to integrate them into the piece–they are beside the narrative, not a continuation of it. There doesn’t have to be continuity, only contiguity.

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: James Romberger's response to Ella #607

James, I think you make a great point when you write: “What I find more compelling in her writing is the idea that so many generations can co-exist in time.” So much of Faery’s essay hinges upon interactions between generations, the ways in which stories get passed down from person to person. I think this says a lot about oral traditions, how there needs to be direct person-to-person contact for stories to be told, for secrets to be revealed. My parents were in their thirties when I was born, and by that time my great-grandparents had been dead a long time. What I know of them now derives mostly from secondhand stories and old photographs, memories which are limited and, at times, unreliable. It really highlights the ephemeral quality of speech, and consequently it emphasizes the importance of writing. I may not have been able to hear my great-grandparents speak, but I can read what they wrote. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything they left behind for me to read, and I wonder if they knew how to read and write. At this point, I’m not sure if anyone could answer that question. For me, this is one of the most important reasons for learning how to read and write: the ability to record ones story. Without writing, stories are so easily lost, and experience is forgotten. In light of these ideas, I wonder how things might have been different if Faery had access to Ella’s writing, her own essay. In the end, it seems that the voices that get heard are the ones that are put down on paper.

• This reply was modified 11 years, 6 months ago by Sondra Perl.

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: Faery_Maggie's Response #606

Exactly, this form of narrative offers the reader the ability to be an active participant and wonder about the motives or conclusions. This enables the reader to adjust perspectives in the hopes to equalize variables (average out) and support (or not support) the author’s viewpoint.

Isn’t most of our history books filled with such conjecture? The more we understand or do not understand causes the reader to wonder and ask questions. Like a forensic archeologist, questioning what is found versus what has been omitted or obfuscated might lead to a completely different account.

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: Patrick James_Response #605

I think Faery’s use of conjecture, offering a voice for the silent, absent Ella, a great method for this narrative. The certainty of the narrative is that Ella left the family. The operative word is “left”. While oral history states, she “abandoned” her family that is pure speculation. When Faery quotes of family members we gather that there may have been underlying causes for Ella’s disappearance. This glaring wide open space of speculation, lends room for many ideas and reasons to come forth.

Faery is asserting her family history of both facts and the possibilities of Ella’s life; a woman, for whatever reason, or numerous reasons left her son and husband, but still existed nonetheless.

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: Lindsey's Response to Hep #604

Yes the command, “Go” and “let go” have to very different meanings.

The idea that Pinard physically let’s go of the trapeze is pretty significant. While I don’t know if that release also gave the author a true release in the sense of closure on her mother loss, it does give the reader that image.

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: Lindsey's Response to Faery's Ella #603

Daimys,

Yes! The loss effected the immediate family and the generations to follow. Makes you wonder…..”what if”…what if she didn’t abandon her son? How would that have effected the family?

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: Daimys – Response to "Hep" #594

Daimys,

I love how you highlight Pinard’s ability to “talk about loss, flying, and writing all at once.” That too is one of my favorite aspects of Pinard’s piece. I think the ways that flight, through different mediums, is articulated is really artful. And it makes me re-think the kind of stakes we bring to writing. It’s interesting, because this is a question that came up in class last week: what are the stakes of what one is writing. I think that Pinard’s piece examines how writing, on some level, courts risk. Which is to say that good writing engages with risk, which I think is deeply connected to postures of vulnerability. Throughout Pinard’s essay, the speaker is rendered vulnerable through her truth-telling–her painful recollections of trauma and grief–and she experiences a paradoxical power that occurs via powerlessness. Again the image of flight is effective when considering these ideas, because all flight involves a gesture of release, and new understanding of control through a concession of control. For me, writing involves the same kind of concession. Only when I step out into the unknown, and leap into risk, do I experience the exhilarating capacities of the writing process. I think your point speaks beautifully to these qualities in Pinard’s essay.

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: Joanna Siwiec Response: L. Bloom: Surfacing #564

I like your equation of all the other women’s voices with safety. You made me think about the idea of multiple voices in a new way, as support and companionship for the narrative voice as well as a contrast to it. In a way, this idea complicates the whole issue of what is (or may be) necessary to tell a story.

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: Patrick James_Response #563

I like the link you make between the old-fashioned qualities of the story and the digital medium it deals with. I also was struck by the antique turns of phrase, but I hadn’t really considered the contrast between the occasionally Victorian language and the plotline, which can only take place in a post-internet age. I like your insight about how this contrast creates a connection to the past in this emphatically contemporary story.

[Sondra Perl]

in reply to: Harriet Malinowitz, Marguerite Van Cook #559

Marguerite, it wasn’t until I read your post that I realized how much Malinowitz’s essay is something of an updated version of Cyrano de Bergerac. As you put it so beautifully, “[Malinowitz] seems to leverage writing to come to the ‘real world’ of people. It is as if she is reminding us of the real world behind the text, (which she now inhabits) and perhaps asks the question where the ‘real’ resides and what are the boundaries of text.” For me, this is a fascinating point, one I had not considered before. And I would go further to ask the same question about identity–which part of us is real? The text we create or the body we inhabit? Where do I come to be my most authentic self? I often find myself writing things I would never say out loud–the blankness of the page, the silence of writing gives me a strange kind of permission I don’t always feel in everyday conversation. And this question of “reality” becomes even more complicated when I think about issues of mortality–the written word lasts longer than the body, and in a way it comes to occupy a space more real than our flesh.

Identities that emerge through writing, this question of the “real” self, allow for a kind of truth telling that walks a fine line–one you identified as negotiating “bravery” and something a little more unsettling, a little “creepy.” I think this is a common fear most writers have–that our willingness to tell the truth will somehow render us stigmatized. And with these thoughts in mind, I personally have come to appreciate Malinowitz essay just a bit more. It is creepy. But, it is brave as well, and that messy posture of bravery and creepiness is something I can easily identify with.

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