Adrienne Rich: Calle Visión

Back when I used to teach at SJSU, I regularly attended their Center for Literary Arts Major Author Series - you'd be surprised how many great authors they get there who come and read, speak, and answer questions. Most authors do a fairly subdued question and answer period on Friday afternoon in the University Chapel, then perform a grand Saturday night reading in a larger hall. I saw and heard a great many authors, from Czeslaw Milosz, Tobias Wolfe, Donald Hall, John Barthe, William Styron, Amy Tan, Galway Kinnell, Sharon Olds, Adrienne Rich, and many others.

I remember when Adrienne Rich came to school. She was a "required reading" canonized poet that we'd read in our poetry classes and discussed and wrote about, one of the few token women writers sprinkled into our anthologies and course syllabi. Reading her, I thought she was OK but never felt any deepness with her words. When she came to our campus to read, the English department where I taught was abuzz: a real poet, a major poet, a star in our midst, an artist is coming here, and she used to teach here!! Many faculty knew her. I didn't, but recall looking out my office window and seeing her walking with her coterie of aged profs hovering around her, all of them smiling, giddy, star struck. She was tired, weary, ill, shuffling along slowly with a cane, barely filling her baggy clothes, short hair, severe face, eyes that though tired were noticable even from afar. Her eyes burned beyond somewhere, not at me, not at the people surrounding her, not at the trees and grass around her - her vision saw somewhere else we all could not see, burning like a force of the universe to someplace or something not visible on this planet.

She spoke during the noon Q&A, and the place was packed, standing room only. She fielded a lot of questions gratiously, gracefully, seriously. For some reason the only question I could come up with was, "Do you like Walt Whitman," to which she laughed! The whole audience followed her lead and laughed too and all eyes were upon me at that moment, as if I had made some inside joke. I got red and embarassed and kept looking at her. I guess I had been reading Walt a lot during that time and saw how closely their styles jibed. She went on to say that yes, she did in fact like him, a lot, and has read him exhaustively throughout the years and feels a great debt to his influence and American letters, blah blah. She meant it, thought, and smiled and did her best to answer more than just hert standard answers she must have learned to give after being asked so many times over and over about her influence. I always hate that question - I mean how does one not be influenced by teverything, including parents, siblings, school, friends, poets, musicans, the sky, crackers and soda pop. I suppose if someone who writes poetry reads another poet a lot, they will inevitably imitate them to some extent, by needs must imiate to flush their influence out of their system and find their own unique words and voice, their own unique visión.

When I went to see and hear her the next night, the auditorium was packed again, all chatty and abuzz of her arrival. She was introduced by some prof, a long winded speechification by some wanna be super star literary man. When she walked on stage the place was still and quiet; everyone watched carefully as the tiny withered logos prophet made her way to the mic with her cane and baggy frumpled up clothes. She looked up and then down, then back at the audience. He eyes were glowing and black, looking beyond us somehow to something she only could see, and about which she was trying to explain as she read the following poem. The words "Calle Visión" still ring in my ears, still sound out with the memory of her eyes burning out somwehre beyond my small consciousness, still prod me to do something about my own visión. Even today, I still hear the chilling refrain of "Calle Visión."


from CALLE VISIÓN
by Adrienne Rich

1

Not what you thought: just a turn-off
leading downhill not up

narrow, doesn't waste itself
has a house at the far end

scrub oak and cactus in the yard
some cats some snakes

in the house there is a room
in the room there is a bed

on the bed there is a blanket
that tells of the coming of the railroad

under the blanket there are sheets
scrubbed transparent here and there

under the sheets there's a mattress
the old rough kind, with buttons and ticking

under the mattress is a frame
of rusting iron still strong

the whole bed smells of soap and rust
the window smells of old tobacco-dust and rain

this is your room
in Calle Visión

if you took the turn-off
it was for you