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Penelope’s Web: The Early Poetry of Joanne Kyger

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Abstract

In this paper I aim to reintroduce the poetry of Joanne Kyger, a contemporary and intimate of the Beat poets, whose first volume of poetry, The Tapestry and the Web, re-reads classical mythology as a female-centered nontraditional narrative. Kyger eschews traditional definitions of ‘epic’ in favor of a poetics that allows for the inscription of the female poet as a ‘maker’ or artisan, who crafts a text like a tapestry, crossing and re-crossing the page in an effort to create an open space for the work of reading. Kyger deliberately employs a mythic cycle to break through limits that constrict one’s ability to place oneself in the poetry, either as poet or reader. The use of myth prevents her poetry from becoming personal or confessional, yet, it is a female-centered ‘epic,’ a category that in and of itself breaks down conventional poetic barriers. Thus, Kyger’s poetry transforms the Odyssey into a multi-vocal, transgressive narrative, which de-centers and destabilizes the epic masculine narrating ‘I.’

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Notes

  1. Penelope herself defines epic as ‘many other charms of humans,/the deeds of men and gods, the things that bards make famous’ (Φήμιε, πολλὰ γὰρ ἄλλα βροτῶν θελκτήρια οἶδας,/ἔργ᾽ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε, τά τε κλείουσιν ἀοιδοί, Odyssey 1.337-38). More contemporary scholars have attempted to define epic beyond a ‘long narrative form’ (John Miles Foley, ‘Epic as genre,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Homer, ed. Robert Fowler [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004] 171-187). On Greek epic as a genre, see Andrew Ford, ‘Epic as genre’ in A New Companion to Homer, eds. Ian Morris and Barry Powell (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 396-414.

  2. Unlike some of her female poet contemporaries, such as Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath, Kyger’s poetry is not overtly confessional. Confessional poetry is perhaps best typified by poets such as Robert Lowell, who is typically read as revealing himself warts and all in his poetry, and W.D. Snodgrass. See also, footnote 5 (below).

  3. Indeed, in writing about her poetry, Alice Notely emphasizes Kyger’s use of the first person to create movement and intimacy, but not a personal or confessional stance: ‘the voice has charm, but though it says “I” intimately it isn’t calling attention to a person.’ Alice Notley, ‘Joanne Kyger’s Poetry,’ Electronic Poetry Center, http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/kyger/notley.html. In the late 1970s female classicists began to look for similar moments of destabilization within the Odyssey itself, though their project is quite different from Kyger’s. See note 15 (below).

  4. Details of Kyger’s early career can be found in Amy L. Friedman, ‘Joanne Kyger, Beat Generation Poet: “a porcupine traveling at the speed of light”,’ in Reconstructing the Beats, ed. Jennie Skerl (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) 74,78; Nancy M. Grace and Ronna C. Johnson, Breaking the Rule of Cool: Interviewing and Reading Women Beat Writers (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2004) 133-153; David Meltzer, ed., The San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2001) 122-132; and Linda Russo, ‘To Deal with Parts and Particulars: Joanne Kyger’s Early Epic Poetics,’ in Girls Who Wore Black: Women Writing the Beat Generation, eds. Ronna C. Johnson and Nancy M. Grace (New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press, 2002) 181-182. Kyger’s own first-hand account of her travels in Japan and India can be found in The Japan and India Journals 1960-1964 (Bolinas, CA: Tombouctou Books, 1981), republished as Strange Big Moon: The Japan and India Journals 1960-1964 (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2000).

  5. Russo, ‘To Deal with Parts and Particulars’ (above, note 4) 187-188. Kyger’s mentors, Spicer and Duncan strove to maintain a distinction between the poem and the personal. For example, Duncan (Robert J. Bertholf, ed. Selected Poems [New York: New Directions, 1993] 53) articulates his own theory of poetic production in ‘Poetry, A Natural Thing’:

    Neither our vices nor our virtues

    further the poem. "They came up

    and died

    just like they do every year

    on the rocks."

    The poem

    feeds upon thought, feeling, impulse,

    to breed itself,

    a spiritual urgency at the dark ladders leaping.

  6. Joseph G. Kronick, ‘Robert Duncan and the Truth That Lies in Myth,’ Sagetrieb 4 (1985) 203-204.

  7. Mark A. Johnson, Robert Duncan (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1988) 8-9.

  8. Johnson, Robert Duncan (above, note 7) 11.

  9. Boundaries form an important part of many approaches to and aspects of scholarship on mythology. Investigations of ritual and myth, for example, necessarily interrogate boundaries. For some examples of how boundaries may inform discussions of classical myth, see Ken Dowden, The Uses of Greek Mythology (London and New York: Routledge, 1992). Though Kyger’s debt is less to the Beat poets than to mentors such as Spicer and Duncan, it is interesting as Amy Friedman observes that ‘outward travel and inward states’ were a particular concern of Beat writers (Friedman [above, note 4] 75).

  10. Robert Duncan, Fictive Certainties (New York: New Directions, 1985) 220.

  11. On the female as poet/artisan in contemporary retellings of the Odyssey, including Glück, see Isobel Hurst, ‘“We’ll all be Penelopes then”: Art and Domesticity in American Women’s Poetry, 1958-1996,’ in Living Classics, ed. S.J. Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009) 275-94.

  12. Carolyn Helibrun, ‘What Was Penelope Unweaving?’ in Hamlet’s Mother and Other Women (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990) 103-111.

  13. Heilbrun, Hamlet’s Mother (above, note 12) 106-08.

  14. Heilbrun, Hamlet’s Mother (above, note 12) 108.

  15. Heilbrun, Hamlet’s Mother (above, note 12) 110.

  16. The notion of feminist classicist critics responding to Heilbrun is well explicated in Hurst, ‘“We’ll all be Penelopes then’ (above, note 11). Many recent feminist studies have focused on Penelope, and agree in their assessment that Penelope possesses a wiliness akin to that of her husband, evidences a capacity for decision-making and yet remains ambivalent or contradictory in her behavior. See, for example, Nancy Felson, Regarding Penelope: From Character to Poetics. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Helene Foley, ‘Penelope as Moral Agent,’ in The Distaff Side: Representing the Female in Homer’s Odyssey, ed. Beth Cohen (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) 93-115; Marilyn Katz, Penelope’s Renown: Meaning and Indeterminacy in the Odyssey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); Sheila Murnaghan, ‘Penelope’s Agnoia: Knowledge, Power and Gender in the Odyssey,’ Helios 13 (1987) 103-115; and John Winkler, ‘Penelope’s Cunning and Homer’s,’ in The Constraints of Desire (New York: Routledge, 1990) 129-161.

  17. Nancy Felson and Laura Slatkin, ‘Gender and Homeric Epic,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Homer, ed. Robert Fowler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 91-114, especially 104.

  18. Felson and Slatkin, ‘Gender and Homeric Epic,’ (above, note 17) 105. This aspect of their argument draws heavily upon the seminal work of Helene Foley, who discusses these similes in ‘Reverse Similes and Sex Roles in the Odyssey’ in Women in the Ancient World: The Arethusa Papers, ed. John Peradotto and J.P. Sullivan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984) 59-78.

  19. On the metis of the poem from a gendered perspective, see Felson, Regarding Penelope (above, note 16), and Laura Slatkin, ‘Composition by theme and the metis of the Odyssey’ in Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) 23-37.

  20. Felson, Regarding Penelope (above, note 16) 7; Katz, Penelope’s Renown (above, note 16).

  21. Felson and Slatkin, “Gender and Homeric Epic,” (above, note 17) 107-08.

  22. Hurst, ‘“We’ll all be Penelopes then’ (above, note 11). Of particular note is, as Hurst observes, Alicia Ostiker’s ‘A Woman Under the Surface,’ who professes her husband to have authored the Iliad, but herself as the poet of the Odyssey, demonstrating the potency of this mythic cycle (above, note 11) 278-79.

  23. Hurst, ‘“We’ll all be Penelopes then’ (above, note 11) 280.

  24. Indeed, Kyger has stated that part of her project is to criticize Penelope, to interrogate whether she is ‘being true or not.’ Linda Russo, ‘Particularizing people’s lives (Joanne Kyger in conversation with Linda Russo),’ Jacket 11 (April 2000), http://jacketmagazine.com/11/kyger-iv-by-russo.html.

  25. Grace and Johnson, Breaking the Rule of Cool (above, note 4) 143-144; Meltzer, San Francisco Beat (above, note 4) 123.

  26. Grace and Johnson, Breaking the Rule of Cool (above, note 4) 149. See also Russo, ‘Particularizing people’s lives,’ (above, note 24) for an elaboration by Kyger on breath and the poetic line.

  27. Kyger speaks in interviews of the influence of and her familiarity with the work of Robert Graves, who notes variant mythic traditions, particularly in his Greek Myths (New York: Penguin Books, 1955). See Meltzer, San Francisco Beat (above, note 4) 130; Russo, ‘To Deal with Parts and Particulars’ (above, note 4) 182; and Russo, ‘Particularizing people’s lives,’ (above, note 24). Graves’s own attitude toward female characters tended to veer towards idealization. See, for example, Simon Brittan, ‘Graves and the Mythology of Desire,’ in New Perspectives on Robert Graves, ed. Patrick Quinn (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1999) 84-93.

  28. Meltzer, The San Francisco Beat (above, note 4) 130.

  29. Joanne Kyger, The Tapestry and the Web (San Francisco: Four Seasons Foundation, 1965) 29, emphasis in the original. Kyger likely learned of Pan as the son of Penelope via Graves, Greek Myths (above, note 27) 101-03. The original source is Servius Georgics 1.16. See also Dale Smith, ‘Joanne Kyger and the Narrative of the Every Day,’ Jacket 34 (October 2007) http://jacketmagazine.com/34/kyger-by-smith.shtml.

  30. While earlier parts of this poem clearly evoke the Odyssey (later we checked the harbor/to see if it was safe… Held captive in a cave/Ulysses/sobbed for his wife/who was singing high/melodies/from the center of a/cobweb shawl/of their design…), the ‘insane insect’ may suggest the tale of Arachne as yet another intertext for this poem. See Hurst ‘“We’ll all be Penelopes then”’, (above, note 11) 288-89, on ‘defiant weavers,’ such as Arachne, Philomela and Helen, who, while more creative and powerful, are likewise problematic and figure less frequently in contemporary female poetry.

  31. Kyger explores this in depth in The Japan and India Journals 1960-1964 (above, note 4).

  32. Numerous scholars and Kyger herself have spoken of her interest in moving beyond ‘oppositional, sexed’ roles in her representations of the narrator, though she remains acutely sensitive to gender dynamics. See Linda Russo, ‘”to be Jack Spicer in a dream”: Joanne Kyger and the San Francisco Renaissance, 1957-65,’ Jacket 7 (April 1999), http://jacketmagazine.com/07/spicer-russo.html; Grace and Johnson, Breaking the Rule of Cool (above, note 4) 134, 148.

  33. The Penelope of Carol Ann Duffy’s poem of the same name offers an interesting echo of a wife who elects to hang back and embroider, who chooses ‘to amuse [her]self’, sewing ‘a girl/under a single star—cross-stich, silver silk--/running after childhood’s bouncing ball’ (The World’s Wife [New York: Faber and Faber, 2000] 70-71). Here the reference to the childhood ball and the silver thread, suggest both Nausikaa and Helen’s own sewing basket, suggesting a universality of female experience, even as Penelope purports to be embroidering her own life. Unlike Kyger’s participles, however, Duffy uses simple, indicative verbs in the simple past, indicating here her decisive action.

  34. Odyssey 1. 356-59. Similarly, see Odyssey 22.50-52 and Iliad 6.490-92.

  35. References to modern textiles are found in multiple poems, including ‘The Maze,’ ‘Tapestry,’ ‘My Sister Evelyne,’ and ‘The persimmons are falling’ (11-13, 28, 38, 50). Medieval tapestries are alluded to in ‘Tapestry,’ ‘vision of heaven & hell,’ and ‘Tapestry’ (14, 36, 40).

  36. Here there may be echoes of other mortal weavers, including Arachne, Philomela and Helen (see above, note 30).

  37. Smith, ‘Joanne Kyger and the Narrative of the Every Day of the Every Day,’ (see above, note 29).

  38. Telemachus’ baths appear at Odyssey 3.464-68 and 4.48-51. Odysseus is also represented as being bathed, most famously by Helen at Odyssey 4.251-252 and by Eurykleia at 19.392-393. Andromache prepares a bath for Hector that will never be realized at Iliad 22.437-445.

  39. Smith, “Joanne Kyger and the Narrative of the Every Day of the Every Day,’ (see above, note 29).

  40. Iliad 3.121-28.

  41. Maria Pantelia, ‘Spinning and Weaving: Ideas of Domestic Order in Homer,’ AJPh 114.4 (1993) 494.

  42. On weaving as women’s work in times of domestic uncertainty, see Pantelia, ‘Spinning and Weaving’ (see above, note 41). On Helen as enclosed and homeless, see Hanna Roisman, ‘Helen in the Iliad; Causa Belli and Victim of War,’ AJPh 127.1 (2006) 9-11, 23-28.

  43. As Russo observes, Kyger does not explicitly note the source of the quotation, though she too suspects it may be a paraphrase of Odyssey 20.45-48. (‘To Deal with Parts and Particulars’ [above, note 4] 198). Yet, these words are also reminiscent of several Biblical references, including Psalms 31:10, Ruth 1:16, and Matthew 28:20.

  44. Homer, Odyssey 13.187-371.

  45. See above, note 16.

  46. A similarly vacillating Penelope also descends from above at Odyssey 23. 85-95, though by then the suitors are already slaughtered, and her dilemma is not whether to choose a suitor, but whether now to acknowledge Odysseus as her husband.

  47. The ‘indecision’ of Penelope may be in Kyger’s rendering much as some have suspected in Homer’s: that it is a ploy and that Penelope is a craftier figure than one might initially perceive. On the impenetrability of Penelope’s intentions, see Uvo Hölscher, ‘Penelope and the Suitors,’ in Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays, ed. Seth Schein (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) 133-40. See also Felson and Slatkin, ‘Gender and Homeric epic’ (above, note 17) 110-11; Felson Regarding Penelope, (above, note 16) 3-5, 16, 18; and Nancy Felson, ‘Penelope: Character from Plot’ in Reading the Odyssey: Selected Interpretive Essays, ed. Seth Schein (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) 166-67.

  48. Homer, Odyssey 1.337-344.

  49. Odyssey 19.535-53.

  50. Odyssey 19.600-04. On the jarring nature of her dream and her reaction, see Felson, ‘Penelope: Character from Plot,’ (above, note 47) 176-79.

  51. Cf. Russo, ‘To Deal with Parts and Particulars’ (above, note 4), 200. Though I read ‘him’ as referring to Odysseus, Russo correctly observes that it too is ambiguous (‘to be Jack Spicer in a dream’ [above, note 32]).

  52. On Glück’s meditations on the Odyssey (in contrast to a re-telling), see Sheila Murnaghan and Deborah H. Roberts, ‘Penelope’s Song: The Lyric Odysseys of Linda Pastan and Louise Glück,’ Classical and Modern Literature 22 (2002) 1-33.

  53. Odyssey 11.121-34.

  54. While the twelve maidservants here provide a cautionary note, they are recast in fascinating ways in later Odyssey retellings. In particular, Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad (Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2005) reconceives the twelve as a chorus of Penelope’s intimates. Yet, when they are slaughtered, Penelope does not protest their innocence in the service of preserving marital harmony. Likewise, Derek Walcott’s The Odyssey: A Stage Version (New York: Faber and Faber, 1993) pairs Nausikaa and Melantho, where the latter represents a corrupt, yet defiant version of young womanhood, and a complement to Nausikaa.

  55. I am immensely grateful to the many voices who have helped me shape this essay: the students in my first-year seminar “Odysseys Ancient and Modern,” where I first read Joanne Kyger’s poetry; audience members at the annual meeting of the American Philological Association and at Calvin College, where I presented early versions of this paper; and the two anonymous readers who added immeasurably to the texture of and context for my reading. Any errors are, of course, my own.

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    Elizabeth A. Manwell

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Manwell, E.A. Penelope’s Web: The Early Poetry of Joanne Kyger. Int class trad 23, 55–76 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-015-0380-4

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