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Books by Caroline Maun
The
Sleeping /
Virtual Identities: The Construction of Selves in Cyberspace
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ChickenBones Poetry Book for 2006
There
are no toss-away poems here
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The
Sleeping
Poems by Caroline Maun
Reviewed by Rudolph Lewis
Professionally, I've known Caroline Maun for several
years; maybe five years, as long as there has been a
ChickenBones. The first poem she shared with me and
that I posted on our website is
Faceless, a poem about a lynching, inspired by
a postcard. It was a good poem, well executed with the
right sympathy and perspective, the right tragic irony.
I did not think much of her outside of that. I knew she
was a professor at Morgan State University (MSU). I saw
her numerous times at conferences sponsored by literary
societies based at MSU. And I saw her more frequently
when I became a member of Mid-Atlantic Writers
Association (MAWA). I had lunch with her once in Charles
Village at an outside cafe when she was planning a
website for MAWA. At that time, I believe she was also
up for tenure; she had been at Morgan for almost six
years (1998-2004).
My
overall impression was that she was an extremely
intelligent, hardworking intellectual, also a computer
wiz and software expert, willing to do all the grunt
work, in a rather invisible capacity. For many she was a
white professional female in a black department at a
black university, in a black city. I was not too
surprised when I heard she had left Morgan for Wayne
State University. I was very happy for her. I did not
think that Morgan was for her, deserving of her. It had
too much bullshit with it. She could look for only more
abuse and neglect. I was certain that Morgan would miss
her more than she would miss Morgan.
I was
indeed surprised, and pleasantly so, to discover that
Caroline was a poet. For everyone who writes a poem is
not a poet. When she told me she was getting a book of
poems published and then I received
The Sleeping and read it, I was stunned. My God,
how brilliant! How could I have not known, as many at
Morgan, that we were all in the midst of such a
wonderful poet, not just someone who ran a writing
center and did all the necessary work needed by MAWA. In
some sense the book represents her liberation from a
"sleeping."
So I am
elated that she counts me among one of her friends and
that she still does all she can to support
enthusiastically our work with ChickenBones. I
feel more than just the fondness of a colleague, I feel
privileged to be in the company of in contact with a
sensitive and insightful genius who is in possession of
wisdom and a mastery of words that speak truths to
hearts about a common struggling humanity.
The Sleeping is a book of 48 excellent, well-crafted
poems. There are no toss-away poems here. Each one is a
special jewel, each one sparkles with some insight, some
special or surprising turn of phrase that one wishes one
had thought of it. I've just finished my second reading
(pen in hand) and I am more impressed than on my first
reading. There is so much one would like to steal. And
though it has a feminine perspective, it goes beyond
that, for it speaks to our common struggle with self,
our bodies, and our places in the world.
I tend
to be impulsive in my likes and dislikes. In this case,
my second reading revealed even more convincingly I was
not mistaken this time that I had indeed experienced
(discovered) something wondrous in my first reading of
Caroline Maun's
The Sleeping. Maybe the key aspect of the work
that appeals to my sensibility is that all the poems are
about struggle, the human soul struggling for its own
liberation, to be free of the numerous chains that bind
us from the day we are born until the day we pass on.
In this
sense, the central sensibility in these poems is that
which is heroic, a promethean spirit, not so much
against the gods above us, but the common humanity that
surrounds us, that is in us, that is, a humanity that
struggles with its self, to be greater than those
momentary selves. This struggle does not take place in
an imaginary world but the one in which we all have to
live. Thus the poems are concrete, relating to lived
experiences. This struggle provides all the poems with
an energy and sharpness that thrill and enliven the
reader. The manner in which she the poet deals with
these conflicts (these chains that bind us) is the
source of the brilliance the light in which infuses
these poems.
The book
opens with the poem "Framed," which concerns itself with
"images/images of images." These poems are very visual.
They have much to do with seeing, especially how one
sees oneself, and sees one's self through the eyes of
others. The superficial (the shell of ourselves)
deceives, distorts, disappoints, hurts. The metaphor
used in her own art is the photograph, the painting, the
mirror, art itself. There are a number of poems in
The Sleeping that render this dilemma. But "Girl
Before a Mirror" might be the most poignant:
| Girl Before a Mirror
We have here the dual difficulty
of a crisis
of self
and a crisis
of meaning.
The divided
self
can't see
inward or outward.
The artist's
eye shows us
the woman
parcelled.
Part of her
looks at us
and another
part of her
looks at us
but the symmetry
we
understand as beauty
has been
ruptured.
Psychedelic
halo,
even the wallpaper flames.
She embraces
the mirror
or fights
it.
Her body
struggles with gravity
one heavy
bulb at a time,
the naked
absurdity
of obsession. |
The
mirror (imagination, art) as metaphor is used again in
one of her five or so "Lovegrove" poems, writings about
a place she lived in Baltimore, destroyed by fire. The
topic in "Lovegrove through the Looking Glass" is the
duality of love vs. lust and the deception and
disappointment of both by means of their superficiality,
their sentimentality. Though it rivals in poignancy the
poem above, its sensuality sets it apart. One should
also note here the poet's skillful handling of rhymes of
alternating lines.
| Lovegrove through the
Looking Glass
It's an old
mirror mirror on the wall
resolutely
reflecting a scrap of the sun
speckled
like interference with the signal
it undulates
the image and makes fun.
I stand
before it naked in the moonlight
dark hands
from behind raise my breasts
I see the
smile bleached bone bright
tongue licks lips before he feasts.
Look at us
look at us
framed in
flaking gold and rust
interposing
susurrus
of shallow breath and fecund lust. |
My
favorite among these poems dealing with the superficial
and the sentimental is "Traveling as Lightly as
Possible." Its beauty is stunning set against rejection
of the uncertain duality of love and lust, of marriage
and commitment. She is not harsh in her response. The
poet represents an emotive defense of the inner self
against farther external encroachment:
| Traveling as Lightly as
Possible
When the
speaker's voice has faded
and only a
few are left in the room
he
approaches me with private gratitude
and the
arrangement.
They are
yellow marguerites
blush roses
nested in fern
baby's
breath haloes.
On the table
they represent the light of the day
but as he
approaches I see them
changing.
Suddenly I am a bride
with bones
for a smile
as I reach
out to grasp my bouquet of dust.
I can't hold
on.
After years
of struggle
I want only
to travel lightly.
He doesn't
see how heavy the flowers have become
how they
have already signified the whole cycle.
His
feelings, simple as the marguerite
and as
precious,
are crushed
under the weight
of my tired thoughts. |
The
poet's struggle against the weight of the symbolism of
tradition is also represented in the poem "The Perennial
Dilemma of the Other Woman": "The ideal handed down: /
once mated, we will not part until death." And she adds
in her response to this "symbolism and narrative" -- "I
have never met a woman / who was immune to its
influence."
The
superficiality of today's relationships is farther
explored in the use of information technologies. In the
poem "On the Difficulty of Every Day," the poet writes
about talking on computers "when we lived in the same
house / before we divorced. . . . When I asked him /
Why can't we just talk face to face? / Neither one
of us could answer." And then there is the poem "Online
Dating." It is a means of "amending the truth
about ourselves." The poet concludes on this "strangest"
of relationships: "The ultimate symptom of a disposable
culture / is the reduction of love / to the syntax of
search engines."
The
struggle is not only with deceit and disappointment, the
superficial and the sentimental but also with loss, not
only lost love. In the poem "The Sleeping" it is the
loss of control, the potential loss of self. Note here
too the skillful handling of rhyme, so much so that it
is almost unnoted by the ear because sense rules rather
than sound:
| The Sleeping
I have been
in the place of the vole
who, still
alive, sleeps within the wolf's jaws.
I have spent
a few hours in the hole
and struggled with men's laws.
A caress
that struck like a blow
stunned me
as it broke
across my
face. Blood, a flow
poured from my numb mouth as I choked.
If given a
second chance I'd have said;
you've take
nothing from me of importance
even if you
leave me dead.
And given a second chance
I'd shoot
you where you stand.
Not as
recompense
or even as
reprimand
or because it would make more sense.
I would do
it because I was robbed
of the
possibility to act
as I fell on
my arms and sobbed
and waited, and lacked. |
What I
like here most is the spirit of defiance, the
consciousness of the victim's own weakness in times of
crisis. In "Affirmations" there's a loss that goes
beyond what words can denote: "The phone will ring / and
your voice will fall / a bit lower to tell me / what
word's can't say."
The "Lovegrove"
poems probably most represent loss because they
concretize the loss of place, of one's home, a place of
memories and desire and love. In some sense the loss of
the physical place is a metaphor. It is a place where
"lies undermine truth." Love like "this building has
sustained fire damage." So much so that "Outside the
world is shrouded in fog / but it is a blindness that
brings warmth." In "Lovegrove: For Sale," the poet
writes: "The heat from the fire was too intense / it
undermined the foundation." She sees "two ghostly shapes
at the table / wrapped in shimmering warmth and light /
sipping love from cups."
And,
finally, in "The Visit," in yet another return to
Lovegrove: "I recall with every threaded nerve / the
triumphs and struggles here / but I can't be here
anymore." Then there is an interlude of poems that deal
with the social world. There is "Colors" that deals with
neighbors: an interchange of two drunks with a couple
from Sierra Leone. This is a struggle to deal with the
ignorance of others. And then there is the "Faceless"
poem: a struggle with racial brutality and
insensitivity. And then the poem "On the Non-Triviality
of Aileen Wuornos": to which the poets writes: "She
nevertheless retains something / akin to the dignity.
She was still a person / however loosely constructed."
This interlude of social pathologies concludes with the
poem "Baltimore Whores." While on her way to a wedding,
as a guest, she comes to a stop light on North Avenue
and observes "a tableau of city life."
Before a
number of what might be called "medical" poems, there is
short nature poem "Sweet Corn," which deals with growth
or the lack of growth of the roots of the plant: "They
were circumscribed by a small cylinder of soil / and
exceeding that, began to fail."
"The
Flowering" is the first of the medical poems. "There is
something dark on my breast / The nipple liberates a
drop of blood." But the poem is also about the struggle
to start anew: "I am half here and half there /
wondering how I should live." "Loose Ends" deals with
the discomfort of the "fissures" (a disease) of the skin
and the accompanying pain: "This skin isn't a shell."
This thin whiteness of her skin is not a badge of honor,
or even a privilege, but rather a condition in which
"The invaginations / are evidence of some past moment /
of carelessness or of passion. / A scarlet letter /
branded on this skin."
There
are two more of these medical poems. "Mammomat"
represents the struggle against objectification: "I
place my breast on it / like so much meat / ready to be
sliced." Then there is "Ultrasound," which describes a
medical check of the ovaries: "She says / Yours is
pretty / Press here with your fingers to push your
ovary down so / I can get it onscreen." And she
notes as she gets down from the examination table: "I've
left something of myself / a moist red text on the white
paper." Then there's the poem "Organization," which
deals with the struggle of indecision and, in effect, is
a break before a set of poems dealing with family: "The
agonizing choice / of what goes where."
The
poems of family and family life (about seven) too deal
with loss and a struggle to come to grips with that
loss. The first of these is "Emergence," which focuses
on the poet's relationship with her mother and a crisis
concerning the house in which she lives: "For the first
time in decades / I spend long days with her / trying to
reclaim her space from nature / These are also good
conditions / for the emergence of what I can't yet
grasp." Time and experience have brought new insight, a
new understanding and appreciation: "From the ruin of
time and nature / something beautiful emerges. / I know
the words to name it will come, / given time."
There
are two other poems that delve into the poet's
relationship with her mother. "Lost" involves her
mother's attempt to forget: "Her voice was drifting / as
she unraveled on the other end." "Ruin" involves moving,
her mother: "Mother's things, caked with mold / one by
one / were sorted." But also a remembrance of her
father: On one page, in father's crooked hand, / all
corners and lines, / each letter a statement, / a word
all by itself / hanging as a question: // Happiness?"
The long poem "Dominia" (two pages) concerns the poet's
relationship with her father: "He was 55 before he met
my mother / and 67 when I arrived."
There is
the struggle with memory: "We remember moments, not days
/ but there were many moments"; the struggle with not
knowing: "What I don't know about this man is vast; /
what I do know is taken / from these fragmentary
moments." This lack of knowledge is complemented by
dreams: "Twenty years later I dream about him still."
And the poem concludes: "There is no time / for
conversations, for knowing. / I live in these dreams
with the tense / expectant absence of him." The final
poem related to the poet's relationship with her father
is "The Banality of Hallucination." It represents a more
negative aspect of her father: "The energy that my
father turned inward, / I realized later, was what he
had to expend / to keep from killing us all while we
slept." These lines suggest a lack/loss of
affection, but hidden and rediscovered.
The last
three poems of
The Sleeping deal with childhood, which too deal
with a loss, the loss of beauty and innocence. In
"Wildflower," she writes, "If only there were a field
guide / for the lost flowers of the soul / So much falls
through one's hands / like broken stamens and pistils."
In "Detour," the poet revisits the ancient family home
in Pennsylvania: "Twenty-five years at least since I had
been here. / He showed this place to me / before I knew
how to drive." The poem concludes: "I came toward the
door / and saw something I never expected to see / had
no recollection of: / in childish yet deliberate script
/ on one slab of stone near the entrance / were the
names of my father and his brothers."
The last
poem "Doll House" is a revisit to the Florida home of
her childhood and she discover the "dollhouse / as I had
left it." And the poem concludes: "I didn't come there
to see this. / I couldn't say why I had come. / This
universe, so intimate, / unexpectedly persisted."
Even with the tragic loss, the poet rediscovers and in
some sense overcomes the loss by a kind of refraining
that occurs through her own growth and revelation. In
some sense that is what art does, that is, discovers,
more precisely, recovers that which has been lost.
The Sleeping, Caroline Maun's first book of
poetry is one I wish were encased in hardback because it
is so special and deserves a special place on every
bookshelf.
See
also:
The Detroiter
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Contents
| Framed |
1 |
| Sun Out of Water |
2 |
| Impatiens |
3 |
| Cicadas as Parable |
4 |
| The Fall That Never Arrived |
5 |
| Just Walking the Dogs |
6 |
| Girl Before a Mirror |
7 |
| Practice Kisses |
8 |
| Red |
9 |
| On the Difficulty of Every Day |
10 |
| Online Dating |
11 |
| Traveling as Lightly as Possible |
13 |
| The Perennial Dilemma of the Other
Woman |
14 |
| The Sleeping |
15 |
| Sexual Geographics |
16 |
| Affirmations |
17 |
| When Things Matter |
18 |
| The Emptiness of Non-poetry |
19 |
| Thanatos |
20 |
| The Poet as Confidence Man |
21 |
| The Muse as Crone |
22 |
| Closure |
23 |
| Impending |
24 |
| That Place |
25 |
| Rosewater |
26 |
| Lovegrove Through the Looking Glass |
27 |
| Lovegrove: Removal |
28 |
| Lovegrove: For Sale |
29 |
| Lovegrove Revisited |
30 |
| The Visit |
31 |
| Colors |
32 |
| Faceless |
33 |
| On the Non-Triviality of Aileen
Wuornos |
35 |
| Baltimore's Whores |
36 |
| Sweet Corn |
37 |
| The Flowering |
38 |
| Loose Ends |
39 |
| Mammomat |
40 |
| Ultrasound |
41 |
| Organization |
42 |
| Emergence |
43 |
| Lost |
44 |
| Ruin |
45 |
| Dominia |
46 |
| The Banality of Hallucination |
48 |
| Wildflower |
49 |
| The Detour |
50 |
| The Doll House |
53 |
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The Sleeping was published by Marick Press
www.marickpress.com
posted 13 June 2006
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Dr. Caroline Maun
Assistant Professor / Interdisciplinary Studies /
Wayne State University / 5700 Cass Ave. / Detroit, MI 48202 / 313-577-6580
/ email:
caroline.maun@wayne.edu EDUCATION· Ph. D. in English, 1998.
University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
· M.A. in English, 1992. North Carolina State
University, Raleigh, North Carolina.
· B.A. in English with high honors, 1990.Eckerd
College, St. Petersburg, Florida.
EDUCATIONAL CERTIFICATION
· PIER Certificate in African Studies, Yale
University, 2001.
TEACHING AND RESEARCH EXPERIENCE
Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
Assistant Professor of Literacy and Critical Thought,
8/04 to present. Teaching interdisciplinary courses in
writing and oral communication.
Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland
· Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition,
7/99 to 5/04. Teaching Freshman Composition
sections face-to-face and online. Co-Coordinator of the
Freshman English Program. Member of the Honors Program
faculty (three-year appointment from 2002-2005).
· Director, English Resource Writing Center,
11/98 to 5/04. Supervising student employees,
managing grant monies, faculty liaison with computer
support services.
· HUD-EDI Special Projects Grant Co-Recipient,
with Dr. Wendell Jackson, 11/98 to 9/99 (period of
grant). Funds in excess of $79,000 earmarked to improve
the English Resource Writing Center at Morgan State
University: designing lab, training tutors,
instructional technologist, and curriculum design.
Internal Morgan State University grant of $50,000 was
also implemented for equipment.
· Lecturer, 8/98 to 5/99. Teaching Freshman
Studies English composition.
|
Greenback Planet: How the Dollar Conquered
the World and Threatened Civilization as We Know It
By H. W. Brands
In Greenback Planet, acclaimed historian H. W. Brands charts the dollar's astonishing rise to become the world's principal currency. Telling the story with the verve of a novelist, he recounts key episodes in U.S. monetary history, from the Civil War debate over fiat money (greenbacks) to the recent worldwide financial crisis. Brands explores the dollar's changing relations to gold and silver and to other currencies and cogently explains how America's economic might made the dollar the fundamental standard of value in world finance. He vividly describes the 1869 Black Friday attempt to corner the gold market, banker J. P. Morgan's bailout of the U.S. treasury, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and President Franklin Roosevelt's handling of the bank panic of 1933. Brands shows how lessons learned (and not learned) in the Great Depression have influenced subsequent U.S. monetary policy, and how the dollar's dominance helped transform economies in countries ranging from Germany and Japan after World War II to Russia and China today. He concludes with a sobering dissection of the 2008 world financial debacle, which exposed the power--and the enormous risks--of the dollar's worldwide reign. The Economy |
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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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