Janet Buck, Ph.D. is the author of
four collections of poetry. Her work has appeared in CrossConnect,
Pif Magazine, The Melic Review, Big Bridge, Disquieting Muses,
Stirring, Avatar Review, pith, Perihelion, The Rose & Thorn,
Atomic Petals, 3rd Muse, Apples &  Oranges,
Kimera, Firefly Magazine, Thunder Sandwich, Tripwire, Zang Spur
Review, Gnome, In Motion, Ariga, PageONE, OffCourse, and hundreds
of journals world-wide. In the year 2000, Janet was of ten U.S.
poets to be featured at the "One Heart, One World"
Exhibit at the United Nations Exhibit Hall in New York City.
Her poem "Acrylic Thighs" was translated into five
languages and paired with original artwork. The tour traveled
to France, Australia, Vietnam, Brazil, and Japan. In the last
several years, Janet has been invited to read her work in L.A.,
Vancouver, B.C., Houston, Texas, and Seattle, Washington, where
she spoke at the opening of the Auburn Library. Her prose and
poetry have been widely anthologized in print collections including:
The Red Booth Review, Gifts from Our Grandmothers, Life Shards,
In the Company of Women, Silhouettes, Sand to Glass, and the
up-coming Chicken Soup for the Volunteer's Soul. Recent awards
include First Place in Kimera's Poetry Contest 2001, Editor's
Choice Award for Sol Magazine, and the 2001 Kota Press Anthology
Prize. In 2001, Janet’s poem "The Teapoy" was
nominated by The Pedestal Magazine for a Pushcart Prize.
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- Deciding on a Flag to Raise
- by Janet Buck
Editorial receptions of what is now known as "9/11 Poetry"
have traveled the teeter-totter of embracement and disgust. Some
publishers consider ink to be a feeble retort to magnanimous
grief; others consider a quill the only temperate feather we
own in processing such a universal tragedy. As a writer, I hesitated
to take a stand, fearing my stanzas would be labeled a travesty
in the context of such sadness, a tacky and opportunistic ploy
for the attention of readers. It didn't take me long to shed
that cloak of fear when my sense of urgency emerged. I was not
writing to build up the biceps of imperialism; I was writing
to survive and learn. It was the only oar I owned that could
cope with the size of these waves.
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- The writing process itself these past few months has taught
me a great deal about where I stand in relation to grief as well
as the complex issue of patriotism. Shortly after 9/11/2001,
Amercian flags literally came out of our closets and attics and
wrappers in stores. Emotionally, I saw these patriotic gestures
as a sign of engagement, tinged with anger, but engagement nevertheless.
If I look honestly at the blossoming of this symbol, it is a
mixed blessing. While it demonstrates respect and involvement,
ideally we should be pinning the flags of every nation around
the world to our homes and to our cars. Our concerns should be
global rather than national. Few would argue the fact that a
battlefield is the quicksand of death and bombs are instruments
of annihilation, not peace. The question then becomes how freedom
can be salvaged and protected from the omnipresent facts of terror
and mass murder. Insulation is never the answer; while I take
pride in the spirit of America, I see a flag, any flag, as a
singular symbol of potentially limited concern.
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- If I am not being naive, I sense that American poetry is
responding to a literary call to arms with a complex duel of
emotion fueled by the fall of the towers in New York City and
the attack on the Pentagon in the same way Langston Hughes used
verse to attack racial discrimination. Poetry and politics have
always been Siamese twins. In October of 1963, at the opening
of the Robert Frost Library in his last major public appearance,
John F. Kennedy said: "When power leads man towards arrogance,
poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the
areas of man's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and
diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.
For art establishes the basic human truth which must serve as
the touchstone of our judgment." Even in 1963, in response
to other threats to Democracy, Kennedy was calling on art to
be more than a relief valve to let the steam of anger out. He
was labeling poets as a catalyst for social change, a tool for
humanity at large. This is our responsibility as thinkers and
writers.
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- Much of my 9/11 poetry began as the "stung cheek"
of grief, an urn in which to bury the ashes of our dead. It is
now our duty to rebuild the dream without forgetting the lingering
sadness on city streets, a signal that our spirit has been burned
and there are lessons, formidable ones, in the context of this
ash.
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- Not long after the towers in New York City fell, The Pedestal
Magazine ran a special issue on the terrorist attacks and the
world's reply to this horrendous tragedy. John Amen, senior editor
of Pedestal, chose an even 100 poets from around the globe: "On
September 12th, I was trying to polish up some of my own manuscripts
and organize the October issue. I quickly found that it was next
to impossible to engage myself in these quotidian tasks, these
chores that seemed trivial in the light of what had just happened.
I was compelled, instinctively perhaps, to find some way, no
matter how insignificant, to connect with the destruction that
had taken place in New York. This was probably my primary purpose
in creating the September 11th issue: to experience, or at least
attempt to experience, some sense of intimacy with the catastrophic
sublimity of that day. Another perhaps slightly more ancillary
purpose was to create a vessel that could 'contain' the Thanatos
of the day, something that could permanently mirror both the
tragedy and the subsequent mass (international) response. Not
to compare the events of September 11 to the Holocaust, but I
do recall that I kept thinking, 'there are people who deny that
the Holocaust even happened.' If it weren't for photographs,
writings, and first-hand accounts, who knows, eventually we (yes,
I say 'we,' you and I) might become convinced that it was little
more than a ghastly myth, some sort of hyperbolized fairy tale."
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- The day after the attacks, I scoured The New Yorker for essays
and perspectives. While the prose of John Updike and others were
helpful in processing the shock and the sadness, I came away
from those essays feeling as though the journey of grief had
just begun. As a writer and feeler, I needed to know how others
were dealing with grief, outrage, and loss. In "American
Air," Wendy Carlisle writes: "What I know for sure/is
a short list: in October/There is no warning of the weather/except
the weather..." In "Paint Over This Poem," Cathy
McArthur says: "city poem of red./ Face it, then--/paint
over it ..." Poems like these were my salve and my inspiration.
Pedestal filled a gaping void that headlines in the evening news
only seemed to be widening and salting with the rapidly escalating
body counts.
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- What Amen offered the world was a diary of grief from all
angles and an opportunity for readers and writers to engage in
this cathartic dialogue. To read that issue was to literally
sift through the ash on New York streets and the rebounding rumble
on every corner of a global map. As Amen pointed out, his gravest
fear was that without blunt and emotive art the world would be
too quick to return to some complacent routine. He went fishing
under the ice for a truer sense of the sea, regardless of the
chill, regardless of the risk.
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- PageONE was another site to which I returned again and again
in an effort to garner perspective on the tragedies of 9/11.
Essays by such reknowned writers as Dave Barry, William Hazelgrove,
and John Weaver helped America connect with the magnitude of
its grief. The nuts of bolts of emotion were tempered with a
rational dialogue that offered substance for the rebirth of hope
and the coverage of issues was by no means limited to interests
of one country on the world map.
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- Poignant art is nearly always unsettling. I had a teacher
in graduate school who always explained the creative process
as an onion; she suggested we peel away the skin to get to the
heart. This seems particularly relevant to the events of last
year. Poetry can slice, chop, and dice the core; we need to do
it, whether it stings our eyes or not. I am ashamed to say this,
but writing about pending war put me in touch with the gravity
of my apathy. Before 9/11/2001, I saw burkas as a fairly innocent
piece of cloth, an unnecessary cloak which was heavy and coarse,
but just clothing nevertheless that amounted to a brand of culturally-enforced
modesty. Writing about the plights of women in Afghanistan cemented
my own sense of liberation and brought into a clearer light the
many simple freedoms I have taken for granted.
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- I hesitated to publish my work about the women in Afghanistan,
because I felt I had no right to shed feeble and second-hand
illumination on the body their struggles, none of which I had
experienced myself. Writers worry that they are stepping on foreign
soil, that they are invading a sacred pasture when they explore
someone else's grief. But that step is how the world grows more
unified regardless of the pain in the awkward stride. Writing,
in a small way, landed me on Afghan soil, took me into their
homes and opened my eyes to injustice and oppression. Reading
what other poets and essayists had to say took me even closer
to the center of their horrors; I had no choice but to grow more
compassionate and aware.
- A Smothered Woman's Estrogen
- "Take care my sister. Tell Americans this horror
is not what Palestinian women want.
Your nightmares and our own are now the same."
- --Arwa (from The Quote Quilt)
- Behind her shroud,
a smothered woman's estrogen
is coming to the boiling point.
Identities stripped blank and black.
The hideous, this megrim
and cafard of hate
pressed like blades on ivory necks.
Numbers of your missing faces
mirror ours. Calligraphy we are,
unread.
- Evil's roots aren't tweezeable
without your fingers on the prongs.
We live in corsets of their fear
personified by turbans
wrapped around a snake.
Still twitching 'til we shoot it twice.
We were born inside this war.
Wombs of terror are all we know.
If we rise, we'll need your hands.
- The poet's voice inside her breath
I never felt across my cheek
until its acid met my luck.
Her silence should have wakened me,
but I have never worn her clothes.
Behind her shroud,
a smothered woman's estrogen
is coming to the boiling point.
I ignored the overspill
until it landed on our soil.
- by Janet I. Buck
- ***First Published in The Pedestal Magazine
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- Grief is not resolved simply by the airing of regret and
guilt, but it is a starting place. The first step is the fanning
of emotion. As writers, we have the duty to be that breeze. The
scent is of corpses, not chicken soup and easy solutions to the
ills of the world. These are scars, not silk. But awakening is
a stage we cannot expect to skip. From this base, a fever for
instilling hope grows wings, answerless ones, but wings nevertheless.
- Buried Rubies
- It's a delicious rumor running
its thin band under the Evening News.
The Taliban has fled one city,
left its scar a cuticle
hanging from the battered ruins.
Defections beat the stinging sand.
Camel humps begin to smile.
Venders push a scrap of music --
buried brick of gold it was,
wasting years in closet dark,
the Hell of which I'll never know.
- Several women lift their shrouds.
Burka, djellaba, sari, toga virilis --
oppression spelled so many ways,
woven in religion's cloth,
turned against identity.
Maybe we are hangers down
a rotting cast that would
have peeled its heaviness.
I have a dream of ears and necks
emancipated from a noose.
- Of vinegar tongues tasting the moon,
deciphering bowls of sugarcane.
I have a dream of fleshy cheeks
turning rubies in the sun.
Skin no longer Jezebel.
Heart no longer withered prune.
Mandolins are humming up from secrecy.
Lids lift crust around a sore.
I pray a shining eye remains.
That peace is more than
hope's pastiche, threads of which
will ravel when our soldiers leave.
I've had such a Hallmark life
of sequined luck and fluff parades.
Closest thing I ever stitched for Barbie Dolls --
muumuus for Hawaiian luaus
staged on spotless carpet floors.
- by Janet I. Buck
- ***First Published in Facets Magazine
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- As President's Day passes and July 4th grows near, and the
daffodils begin to trumpet their yellow horns, I will be waving
a paper flag, one that admits my limitations and tries, in its
own frail way, to be a sounding board for change. Because I took
that risk and wrote, I will be less comfortable on the granted
couch of liberty. It's like tasting blindness for an hour and
coming home with a new appreciation for your eyes.
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