Grace Paley
Responsibility
It is the responsibility of society to let the poet be a poet
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the poet to stand on street corners
giving out poems and beautifully written leaflets
also leaflets you can hardly bear to look at
because of the screaming rhetoric
It is the responsibility of the poet to be lazy
to hang out and prophesy
It is the responsibility of the poet not to pay war taxes
It is the responsibility of the poet to go in and out of ivory
towers and two-room apartments on Avenue C
and buckwheat fields and army camps
It is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the female poet to be a woman
It is the poet's responsibility to speak truth to power as the
Quakers say
It is the poet's responsibility to learn the truth from the
powerless
It is the responsibility of the poet to say many times: there is no
freedom without justice and this means economic
justice and love justice
It is the responsibility of the poet to sing this in all the original
and traditional tunes of singing and telling poems
It is the responsibility of the poet to listen to gossip and pass it
on in the way storytellers decant the story of life
There is no freedom without fear and bravery there is no
freedom unless
earth and air and water continue and children
also continue
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman to keep an eye on
this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be
listened to this time.
by Grace Paley
As I age it becomes clear that what I have battled all my life is my own antipathy to my masculinity. The source of both my narcissism and self-loathing are bound by my masculine self. Perhaps I am finally achieving a balance where I can now understand that my self esteem is dependent upon my embrace of the divine feminine within.
There is a beautiful resonance when the words “woman” and “moment” are paired together. And now their pairing is most timely and indeed appropriate for our place in history. If ever there was a time when I have been able to see through the mask of masculinity and see the better parts of that noble spirit, it is now. And it is the feminine part of my nature promoting that view.
Life bombards me with contradictory messages all day long. At this moment I can celebrate paradox as I suffer those who are slow to enlightenment. This is the pain of being alive and being an artist. Seeing things that others do not see and working to lift veils and illuminate possibilities.
Grace Paley is from the Bronx. Her words in this poem have inspired me to study her more closely.
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