Pretty

Let's hear it for poetry and how it can help us express

what we really need to express.  

Listen to Katie Makkai define the word "pretty".

Comments

[Flannista]

A big sass out to Sistadawg who posted this video on her Facebook wall a few weeks back. Wish every girl in the world could see this.

[treesta]

As a woman, I applaud every time I see Katie Makkai read "Pretty". I fought, and truth be told, fight that battle every day.

As a teacher, this is the poem that gets me pumped every time I see it, entitled "What do I Make?":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU

[Flannista]

Wow, treesta . . . POWER-FULL poem about what teachers make.

I love stuff like this.

[half-a-sista]

Sistadawg, thanks for the poem. Flann, thanks for posting it. I wish everyone in the world could see and hear it.

treesta, liked the poem and the presentation of it. He couldn't do it for his students because of the content and lots of parents wouldn't like to hear it either, but he says true things.

[treesta]

This young man was the 2011 Australian poetry slam winner:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3Z5r4FkJDU&feature=related

[half-a-sista]

Flann, when are you going to begin performing poetry on stage expressing what you need to express? Maybe we Sassistas! need to have our own public poetry slam.

[babysis]

Sometimes you just gotta say it - where others can hear it. Bring it on. More please.

Off to the DMV. Saying goodbye to my driver license of 16 years. Worried my new picture won't be as pretty.

[frida]

That a mother would make or let a girl have plastic surgery (except for real deformity) seems like the worst kind of child abuse.
I also think the delivery of this poem would be more effective done quietly so that you are lured into the horror. And, as with racism, I think we ought to see what is there(our desire to be pretty, our desire to fit in, our desire to connect)so we may sort out what is real beauty, and real connection. I totally agree with the idea underlying the poem...but see it as a diatribe and therefore, kind of insulting.

[Flannista]

treesta -- "May your pen grace the page" (the link in your 8:54 comment) is FABulous . . . and reminds me a bit of Gertrude Stein's formidably innovative poetry.

Thanks for posting it.

half-a: you have challenged me. I've been wanting to do a rant/slam, thank you ma'am ode to TRM. I haven't yet, but am going on a walk now and will rip a rhyme off later and post it here.

HEY EVERYONE -- TODAY, LET'S RANT AND RHYME!

[Flannista]

babysis -- send me your new driver's license photo. I'll post it to inspire us to rant and rhyme.

[Flannista]

Very interesting perspective, frida.

How, as a "diatribe" is "Pretty" insulting?

[treesta]

My question, too, Flann. frida, I'd really like to hear more on your perspective.

Earlier this week, I read an article which basically asked, is poetry a dieing art. How can it ever be? So long as people cry to have their voices heard, there will be poetry. That a single presentation of a single poem evokes such strong feelings points to the power of poetry.

Off to the dentist. Check back in a bit later.

[frida]

Because the angry delivery assumes that I won't get the idea? or it seems like the very anger that moves men, and women, to want prettiness? I am not sure. As a woman artist, as somebody born in 1947, I deeply get the pressure to be pretty and not to be real. I don't need a poet to knock me in the face...and diatribes are insulting because they deny somebody's humanity. They are divisive. Finally, rants let people off the hook--oh just another angry woman. These are some of the reasons...haven't thought it out very well. SO maybe my post is a kind of rant.

[half-a-sista]

The rant as an art form.

I don't like people screaming about anything because it takes me to a very scared place inside where my father exists--the volatile man who yelled and cussed (nevet hit anyone) but lost control. It takes me to a powerless place that I have where my fear has solidified as an anger so hard and bitter that to let it go, even to hear someone else let their anger so, makes me deathly afraid that I will explode if I even prick the surface of that iced over lake of fear and anger deep in the pit of my heart. I don't like angry poets or bus riders or anger people at all because they are expressing what I don't dare express, what I don't want to hear that I share with others.

Will I be pretty? Will I be smart? Here's what she said to me, "Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be. The future's not ours to see. Que sera, sera." And I want to slap her face. But being socially polite I smile and turn away, the anger channeled into the cold dark lake in the pit of my heart.

I don't like anger. Otherwise I would buy a gun and settle some scores with bullies I knew growing up. I'd stalk them and corner them and look in their eyese as I filled them with lead, little missiles of hate I've saved all these years. But, then I ask myself, would I if I ould even pull the trigger. That was then. This is now. But "that was then" has stayed with me when I couldn't express my anger, when it was bad, when I was punished for feeling deep sorrow.

I'm sorry if my anger makes you uncomfortable because I have no right to have it. I should have expressed it as it came up, addressed the issues that scared me to death, and dealt with the people who made me feel less than human.

I have never liked anger and I don't like to see angry people or hear them or be forced to listen to my own anger coming out of their mouths like I was some ventriloquist and they were my dummy, speaking the words that are locked away and can only be said through someone else.

I never liked anger. I still don't and the sadness kills my heart.

[half-a-sista]

Sorry for all the misspellings.

[Flannista]

half-a: the misspellings are nothing.

Your "rant" of 9:59 demonstrates how it is an art form.

Damn, I loved it. I wish I could record you reading it.

[Flannista]

frida -- while I understand that "Pretty" might be more powerful if it had been "done quietly" -- I bet no one would have heard it, especially the poet's mother and other men.

Flannery O'Connor once said that some people's hearts are so stubborn that they have to be knocked upside the head. I get it.

Politeness never got me anywhere I really needed to be.

[Matissta]

Why should she read or perform the poem quietly if those are her true emotions? The performance adds to the poem in my opinion. The anger she shows is honest and real.

Her mother worried about how pretty she would be, but her mother never cared about her intelligence? That's insulting.

I wonder how the mother feels after hearing this poem. Or has she dismissed it, as she did her daughter?

[Matissta]

And half-a, LOVED your rant as an art form. Absolutely loved it.

Thank you for sharing it.

[half-a-sista]

I understand not wanting to see or hear anger. I tend to avoid it whether directed at me or at others. Anger makes me nervous, uncomfortable, and afraid. I understand frida's point AND I believe that sometimes we all need to express anger in a healthy way. A poetry reading/rant/slam seems like one of those places even as uncomfortable as I was when I listened to Katie read that poem.

[Flannista]

Just read your rant a fourth time, half-a.

It helps me.

Thank you.

OH.

[frida]

Okay...I did not say she should be polite. And I am very much like Half-a and am afraid of anger...but I see a difference between anger that honors us and anger that is part of a planned poem, event, art. I think it takes away from the devastation we all face...I am not against anger. I am against the manipulation of others' feelings... through bombast. George Wallace tried to be reasonable about race. He felt it didn't work to get him elected so he began the racist rants. Part of these rants was lots of working up of anger. Was it true anger? Loving anger? No.

[frida]

Gotta go to my studio...but I look forward to more comments! Half-a, what you have written means a lot to me.

[Justista]

My beautiful daughter has had her face rearranged several times over the last 16 years by a man we call "dickhead." She has let this happen because she hates her body. She has this voluptuous body-a big round bottom and a small waist but she doesn't measure up she thinks. She was told by me always how beautiful she is but she wanted to hear it from him and all she heard was "fat." He is gone now, I think for good. But she still wants that male approval. I am angry.

[Justista]

Flann: I would also love to see you read some rants.