So people who know me, or who have ever met me, know that I read a lot and think a lot and ideas stick with me and I like to talk about books I've read in conversation. It's like having a conversation with footnotes! I don't know if people are interested in what I read and think about, but just in case there are people who are interested, I'm trying something new, cautiously dipping my little toe into the water...blogging! Or blogging sort of. Basically I just want to tell people about books, and maybe sometimes what I'm thinking about.

I read Claudia Rankine's book Citizen: An American Lyric a couple of years ago, soon after it came out in 2014. But it has stayed with me. It's prose poetry. It's a moving, intimate description of the experience of being on the receiving end of racism and feeling how it affects you and the people you interact with, friends and strangers. Reading it is an adventure in empathy. Incidents are recounted along with internal, visceral, subjective reactions, thinking and questioning. The reader is taken on a journey of painful experiences accumulating into a kind of heaviness.

Here's a quote from the book:

"The world is wrong. You can't put the past behind you.
 It's buried in you; it's turned your flesh into its own cupboard."

So I'm recommending this book to you, and maybe there is someone in your life you would like to recommend it to. 

Love,

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Harper, Rich Experience and Friends Go to The Store

This Hatred We Call Tolerance read at Cafe Ballou for W4tB 4-16-12

This Hatred We Call Tolerance

Two kinds of tolerance:

1) the ability

or willingness

to tolerate something, such as

the existence of opinions or behavior

that one does not necessarily agree with;

2) the capacity to endure

continued subjection

to something

without adverse reaction.

Love your neighbor

as he tries to destroy you

by gathering the troops,

circling the legislative wagons.

Why? Really, why are we obligated

to tolerate those who hate us

and are trying to destroy us?

Why can't we assert radically

different worldviews,

different vocabularies,

metaphysics? Why are we

obligated to tolerate stupidity?

Why can't we just say,

"You are wrong,

and you are stupid"?

There's no excuse for stupidity and ignorance.

It doesn't matter how you were brought up

or what your parents thought.

Pick up a fucking book. Google it.

Consider a different perspective.

Hate the right people.

Hate Anita Bryant, George Bush, Sarah Palin,

Hitler, Rick Santorum, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter,

and everyone who makes you want to puke.

It's a free country, right? You should be able

to hate people who make you want to puke.

Because they will hate you, too. Without remorse.

But they won't call it hate.

They'll call it God's commandments

or some other nonsense, appealing

to imaginary authority because

they can't think for themselves.

Or they'll call it tolerance

in self-congratulatory tones,

meaning they find you repulsive,

but aren't they nice to tolerate you.

And we're supposed to tolerate this,

to have respect for their religious beliefs,

when they have absolutely no respect for us.

To deprive someone of their hatred is

to deny their humanity, to deny their right

to be angry at their oppressors.

Hate is strength. Hate is nobility and

pride and standing up for yourself.

This hatred we call tolerance.

Accept everyone, love everyone,

let everyone have their own belief system.

But what if their beliefs are destructive

to your very existence? Or just obviously false?

What if the laws, religious or secular,

deny the legitimacy of your very existence?

Are we supposed to be tolerant?

Tolerance is refusal to think.

Tolerance is a covert putdown.

Tolerance is an euphemism for hatred.

Elizabeth Harper

This is what I think about abortion debates and laws:

It's My Baby (to the tune of "It's My Party")

No one knows where I can go

I'm running out of time

Family and friends are a no-show

Why is my body the site of a crime?

It's my baby, and I'll kill it if I want to

Kill it if I want to, kill it if I want to

You would kill it too if pregnancy was forced on you

Weighing my options, keep thinking all night

Leave me alone for now

Unless you know who can help,

Who's got the wherewithal and know-how

It's my baby, and I'll kill it if I want to

Kill it if I want to, kill it if I want to

You would kill it too if pregnancy was forced on you

Police and social workers busting through the doors

Fascists with guns and expertise

Ignore plaintive cries

Treat me like a social disease

It's my baby, and I'll kill it if I want to

Kill it if I want to, kill it if I want to

You would kill it too if pregnancy was forced on you

Elizabeth Harper

poem read for Overman at The Horseshoe 2-26-11

Overman

She took too much heroin
Don't think that's a bad thing, she said.
I hear voices singing me lullabies.
I feel the history of the world,
evolution of ideas and memes and genes,
coursing through my veins at lightning speed.
I am kings and queens and princesses
and madmen and beggars and scientists.
I am free. I know the world is grander
than those that play by the rules say.
I don't need to be anything I can't be.
I don't need to kill all the flowers
blooming and taking flight inside of me.
Things in the past I can forget, leave behind
as they fade away and disintegrate,
shot through with fireworks and confetti
and silly string and collapsing mitochondria
and smashed tv sets, a trillion pixels shooting
through space, making their escape, living free.
I've found a road to take free of my mistakes


Elizabeth Harper


The first and last lines in italics are quotes from Overman songs, "Princess" and "Sweet Escape," respectively.

Poem read at Heartland Cafe July 8

In My Dreams

In my dreams. Get down to the truth. What are you waiting for. Hurt is the only way to get there. Where you’re trying to go. Where you’ll never get. Is she prettier than me? What makes the world so? It keeps going and going. I lose pieces of me in the scenery. Slacker wish list: an ice cream rainbow radiating out of a cornucopia of lost loves, forgotten dreams, abandoned jobs. Churning endlessly trying to get utopia to rise to the top. Writing a new poem every day only to lose oneself digging through dumpsters for scraps of old love letters trying to explain the meaning of …anything. Does he look like prince charming or just another alcoholic, spendthrift slob? Hey, even prince charming, when you find him, most likely has a day job and a substance abuse problem. The mind wanders and comes back to itself. What, did you forget milk and bread again? Why don’t you make a list? Oh, a lot of good it does folded up in that back jean pocket you use as a filing cabinet. Where are those obsessive-compulsive tendencies when you need them? Obliviousness will get you only so far, and once you get there, you won’t know where you are. To stave off anxiety, you do all sorts of things your mother and public service adds warn you against. Stocking up on band-aids and anti-aging creams. What will they think of next to fill wrinkles up with. Some stuff called “spackle.” Your face is your house. Paint it up so it will appeal to prospective buyers. Designed to sell. The Home and Garden channel. Cosmetic infomercials. We’re all about building equity here, ladies. And gender politics are so boring. Why don’t we just cut off all the penises, preserve them as dildos, and be done with it? It’s emotional neediness that keeps us hooked, keeps us hoping, keeps us trying. So maybe it’s good to long for an unrealizable ideal, a perfect object deserving of perfect love and unending devotion, while we’re munching down on a bowl of popcorn in front of the TV, eyes glued to the Lifetime channel. The jury’s still out. Maybe I’ll switch to Law and Order. Of course, it’s fascist, and yet strangely comforting. There’s always some kind of resolution even though there were false leads and dead ends along the way.

"I Didn't Like Being in Love Anyway" read at Jaks 5-4-09

I Didn't Like Being in Love Anyway


It's alright. I didn't like being in love anyway.
The way I'd look at you with total devotion and admiration.
Getting excited and happy by every phone call, email,
conversation, kiss, touch. Telling you everything on my mind,
reading your poems, showing you mine. Who needs that kind of closeness,
intimacy, involvement with another person. It's bound to get messy. Hell,
it was scaring the shit out of me.


It's alright. I didn't want a baby anyway.
I'd have to find a place to put it. They cry and drool.
So noisy so messy so needy so happy about the simplest things.

I like being alone. Take-out Chinese and anything I want to watch on TV.
There's always new people to meet, to keep at a cordial distance,
to hide from while smiling.