and rhetorical ones" (Carruthers, 1983, 294).
[. . . .]
Grahn attempts to walk the dividing line in the essentialist/ constructionist debate.
Grahn commented in 1987 that her book Another Mother Tongue, which traces the
folklore and speculates about the origins of North American lesbian and gay cultures,
"has become the basis for a new philosophical stance in gay men’s culture, which they
call essentialism, to argue against the sociological/socialist view that ‘gayness’ was
only invented in this century and is the product of our particular industrial
culture" (Constantine and Scott 7). Grahn calls the opposition to essentialism
"the sociological/socialist view" rather than "social
constructionism." This is perhaps a slip of the tongue, or a mistake in transcription
of the interview. While Grahn—or those gay men to whom she refers—may be making
a point about homosexuality" as a form of alienation under industrial capitalism, she
does not elaborate; "socialist" as an oppositional term to
"essentialist" is unusual enough to suggest that Grahn’s use of the term is
accidental, if provocative. In any case, it is a nomenclature clearly outside the academic
"essentialism/social constructionism" debate. Further, Grahn says that
"essentialism" is what "they call" the position for which they use
her work. Were she to take part in the debate, Grahn would argue her position from the
perspective of history and her belief in the folklore she writes about in Another
Mother Tongue: "Actually, I don’t think the two views are mutually exclusive.
Certain elements of gay culture are very 2Oth century, but we’re so much older than that
it’s absurd to imagine that all of this is brand new" (Constantine and Scott 7).
Elsewhere, Grahn engages directly with terms that are central to recent literary
criticism: margin, center, and difference. The relevance to both postmodern theory and
Grahn’s poetry merits quoting at length:
If the world were shaped like a plate, "exile," "marginal" and
"difference" would be words accurately descriptive of life at the edge of a
single universe. . . . Our social groups, countries and plant and creature groupings are
globe shaped, and interactive; the walls can intermingle without losing their integrity.
Reality continually folds in and out of itself, with as many "worlds" as we have
the ability and judgment to perceive, each with its own center.
In a many-centered multiverse, exiles from one place are first class citizens of
another, margins of one "globe" are centers of another, "marginality"
itself becomes a ribbon of road, of continual and vital interaction shaping and reshaping
whatever lies within borders, and "difference" is so essentially common (and
self-centered) that it is duplication that is the oddity. It is a matter of perspective,
of metaphor: to seek not what is "universal," rather to seek what has
commonality, what overlaps with others without losing its own center (Grahn, 1989, 145).
Grahn’s insistence in The Highest Apple that by "common" she does not
mean "universal" is clearly an answer to accusations of essentialism that had
been leveled against lesbian feminism by the mid-eighties.
Universal, "one-world" implies everyone having to fit into one standard (and
of course that one, that "uni," is going to turn out to be a white, male,
heterosexual, young, educated, middle class, etc. model). . . . Common means
many-centered, many overlapping islands of groups each of which maintains its own center
and each of which is central to society for what it gives to society (Grahn, 1985, 74).
Grahn compares her sense of commonality , particularly the "international
connection present in the ‘She Who’ series" to Audre Lorde’s work, in which
international, cross-cultural elements are "vividly apparent."
"Commonality," as Grahn applies the term to women, "means we get to belong
to a number of overlapping groups, not just one." She points to the term
"’common differences’: defining and retaining racial and ethnic identities without
losing either our affinity as women and or as Lesbians." While acknowledging and
honoring the diversity of lesbian poets and of women in general, Grahn maintains the
importance of "a common structure" to lesbian feminism and the women’s movement
(Grahn, 1985, 76-8).
In 1981 Grahn wrote that she "sought nothing universal to mankind in writing"
The Common Woman poems. "In fact, in order to make certain they were really
there in the flesh, I avoided all thoughts of ‘universality,’ ‘the masses,’ ‘the
common people’ or ‘mankind."’ On the other hand, she confesses to writing
"deliberate pro-woman propaganda":
so as to bypass the built-in patriarchal hatred of, condescension toward, deliberate
ignorance toward: 1. the details of women’s lives; 2. especially of
"workingclass," everyday women: 3. more especially women of color; 4. most
especially of lesbians; 5. always of women who fought back, had abortions, did not love
their bosses, and desired to change their lives (Grahn, 1981, 547).
Numbers three and four are problematic: although Grahn addresses racism directly
in" A Woman Is Talking to Death," none of The Common Woman poems is
clearly about a woman of color; only one is about a lesbian. Although none of the poems
makes claims to universality, readers would tend to assume that the characters are white,
in the absence of information pertaining to race or ethnicity—because the poems exist
in the context of a white-dominated society, and because Grahn herself is white. Grahn’s
lesbianism could lead a reader to guess that individual "common women" are
lesbians, but the specific indication of one character’s lesbianism implies that the
others are heterosexual, where their heterosexuality is not otherwise clearly indicated.
Any of the common women could be a lesbian and could be a woman of color,
but with the exclusion of specific information about race and sexuality (cf. Spelman),
they do not "especially" appear to be so.
"What Is a Lesbian?" and what constitutes lesbian literature have been
burning questions for lesbian studies and politics since the early days of lesbian
feminism. Grahn wrote, performed, and published some of the first poetry within the
context of the movement to attempt to provide answers. In so doing, she presented a
complex picture of lesbians, rather than the monodimensional (and pathological) portrait
of "The Lesbian" that had been invented by psychiatry and sexology and which
reigned supreme until the 1970s, and in contrast to the "politically correct"
stereotype of the lesbian feminist purveyed by some vocal postmodern queer theorists.
Grahn’s poetry addresses issues of gender, sexuality, class, and race, but her main
contribution to the diversity of lesbian feminism is her insistent working-class
perspective. Although in the 1980s Grahn wrote and spoke many times of the racial and
ethnic diversity of early lesbian feminism, it fell to her colleague and friend, the
African-American poet Pat Parker, to illustrate through poetry how lesbian feminism in the
early 1970s dealt with issues of race in the context of an analysis based primarily on
gender and sexuality.
from Garber, Linda. "Lesbian Identity Politics: Judy Grahn, Pat Parker, and the
Rise of Queer Theory." Diss. Stanford U, 1995. Copyright ? 1996 by Linda Garber.
Delia Fisher
Judy Grahn’s life and work contrast markedly with H.D.’s. Born of another generation in
1940, Grahn’s writing has from the beginning eschewed tradition and disrupted notions
of structure, expressing themes which celebrate lesbian culture, its endurance and danger,
and issues of marginality and oppression and oppression of women. The images in her work,
rather than expressing intense but abstract emotion, are those of what she calls
"common women," flesh-and-blood persons whose lives reflect specific struggles
and personalities. Her poetry includes prose dialogue, narrative, lyric, and drama, often
in combination. In contrast to H.D.’s strict but supportive upbringing, Judy Grahn grew up
in an atmosphere of potential disapproval. Her working-class background would have
permitted no space for a young lesbian in the early 1960’s, and she recalls her
utter isolation at sixteen, when I looked up Lesbian in the dictionary,
having no one to ask about such things, terrified, elated, painfully self-aware, grateful
it was there at all. Feeling the full weight of the social silence surrounding it, me, my
unfolding life.
Her writing and her marginality led to a discharge from the Air Force because of her
lesbianism; moreover, she experienced denials of jobs and housing, and was even
"beaten in public for looking like a dike." As a woman writer and a lesbian, she
had become doubly Other, a recognition which, instead of silencing her, radicalized and
motivated her. By the late 1960’s, she had helped found a gay women’ s liberation movement
and was publishing her work through independent women’s presses. Unlike H.D., Grahn needed
no male mentor to inscribe her, as Pound literally enscribed and created "H.D.,
lmagiste" at the beginning of her career. As a lesbian, Grahn was far removed from
H.D’s "romantic thralldom" and dependence on male approval. Rather, she had come
of age and to an age in which a woman could proclaim,
I’m not a girl
I’m a hatchet
I’m not a hole
I’m a whole mountain. (Work 25)
Despite these differences, H.D. and Judy Grahn share striking commonalities. Each has
rejected poetic forms of the past to express a woman-centered vision.
[. . . .]
The horrors of World War I galvanized H.D.’s pacifism, as the Civil Rights, Anti-war,
and Women’s Movements galvanized Judy Grahn’s commitment to justice. H.D. published her Trilogy,
which condemned patriarchal structures which further war and violence, and revised the
Christian myth to exalt a feminine spiritual presence. Grahn challenged the homophobic,
misogynist, and racist culture of her day with her long poem, A Woman is Talking to
Death in which she considered "the subject of heroes in a modem life which for
many people is more like a war than not" (Work 112).
[. . . .]
Grahn’ s challenges to culture, evident in her early work, find full expression in her
two-part epic. The Queen of Wands exposes historical and contemporary
oppression of women while at the same time weaving a woman-centered myth of the Spider
Webster. In the Spider’s web, history and pre-history converge to rewrite Helen’s story,
re-forming her into the Queen of Wands, the Flama, "Keeper of the Flame" of
women’s ancient knowledge, the "weaving tree" who weaves a story of female
power, past and future. As Helen is a goddess in The Queen of Wands, she
becomes a hero in The Queen of Swords, which retells the Sumerian myth of the
goddess Inanna, who willingly descends and embraces Death, the dark goddess Ereshkigal, in
order to ascend to her autonomy and heroism. By returning to a myth of quest which
predates the myths and quests of warrior heroes, Grahn shows that a narrative of a female
subject and her journey toward selfhood has simply been waiting for rediscovery.
[. . . .]
As women poets such as H.D., Judy Grahn and others embark into the unexplored landscape
of a feminized quest, they open the door to the closed systems of the past by disrupting
conventional forms; this is a "poetic revolution" indeed. These poets and their
female heroes create narratives which move according to patterns which may refuse to
"go somewhere" because that somewhere has already been mapped out and claimed by
the male quester.
[. . . .]
The career of Judy Grahn has from the beginning paralleled and celebrated the struggles
of women to redefine themselves as heroes. She describes her early writing as developing
within an atmosphere of potential disapproval, fearing "that someone might see the
scribbled notes in my pockets." This fear, which often accompanies women’s attempts
to claim authority and voice, was magnified by the specific danger inherent in Grahn’s
subject matter, which was "women in general and lesbians in particular" (24).
from Fisher, Delia. "Never-Ending Story: Re-Forming Hero in the Helen Epics of
H.D. and Judy Grahn." Diss. U of Oregon, 1997. Copyright ? 1997 by Delia Fisher.
Billie Maciunas
In terms of feminist history in the United States, Grahn was anomalous as a
working-class lesbian who identified with the African American movement of the 1960s. Her
acknowledgment of diversity among women and her reaching for a metaphor by which to garner
this diversity as a collectivity undermined the male/female oppositional metaphor on which
heterosexuality (and separatism) is founded. In her attempt to see a commonality between
the lesbian and the heterosexual woman she proposed a mutuality among women, as well as a
space that theoretically enabled a return of the )lesbian) monster’s gaze (cf. Williams,
"When the Woman Looks" passim).
[. . . .]
Using the palindrome as a template we may expect to find Grahn’s work bordering on the
queer, unassimilable and indefinable world of the "feminine."
[. . . .]
My reading of Grahn is centered in her concept of "the common woman," a
figure that, like the vampire, encompasses the queer feminine as aporia and the
"phallic" woman’s self- reflected gaze at the monstrous "other," her
double. The term lesbian as metaphor for this "crossing" of Woman as sign
and the woman as creator, is based in lesbian theory, which recently has focused on a
destabilized or provisional identity for political purposes, removed from a destructive or
simply "tired" binary paradigm.
Like Irigaray’s two lips touching as "metaphor for metonymy," lesbian is
a metaphor for the touching, crossing, and assimilation of doubles, even across national
boundaries, and within an ongoing women’s discourse. The "new mestiza" is thus
an important metaphor, for the knowing lesbian "exile," whose home is in
linguistic "space" rather than geographical space
[. . . .]
Of those of Grahn’s books of poetry less germane for this study than The Common Woman
are She Who and Confrontations with the Devil in the Form of Love.
All of these works are reprinted in The Work of a Common Woman. The Queen of
Swords and The Queen of Wands are brilliant epics and the poetry is rich and
moving. For my limited purposes, however, each of these works is dealt with only in terms
of the archetypal figures that Grahn portrays. In particular, these figures are
"crossing" figures. Helen, the mythic icon of feminine beauty, crosses into the
underworld of Ereshkigal, the terrible queen of swords, in, order to effect the wisdom of
rebirth.
[. . . .]
Grahn’s irony also plays on the misperception of el lector inimigo. She uses
humor as a lacquered surface, that is, "openly" as sarcasm, jokes,
irony, and puns. Her lexicon includes words from working class, gay, and Black cultures,
recognizable to an audience of "metaphorically feminine" readers. Of her
technique she says,
Of course sometimes high humor is involved in maintaining . . . secrecy. Gay people of
all social strata develop intricate codes and language inflections that operate within
ordinary-sounding language patterns to convey information that members of the Gay culture
can understand. The idea is that hidden things may be least noticed when contained in what
is most obvious. (Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds 24)
Grahn’s characteristic deadpan humor reflects the gap between her knowledge, based on
the reality of being a talented, daring lesbian in the 1950s and 1960s, and popular images
of femininity and familial perfection. As a "baby butch" Grahn was early
sensitized to the consequences of surpassing heterosexual gender codes. She did not enjoy
the benefits of middle-class cushioning or a cosmopolitan environment. She was reared, she