November 26 Concert

Big

Mama Shares

Big Mama has been working together for almost four years now. Our concert November 26 is a celebration of this work. A thanks giving. A gathering of familythe huge family of Cleveland women-to share a harvest.

We now have a new book, a second book, which we funded from the tours we gave this past year and which. to our excitement. was printed by Cleveland woman at EmPress. We have a new show directed by Dorothy Boroush which is more dramatic than anything we have done before and is woven with the music of Betsy Reeves And we have a new sense of ourselves as per formers, as revealers of the feelings behind our poems. In performing for women I am continually struck by the sensation of giving something back. of sharing and returning an energy, of a waterfall. When we first began

Poetry

in 1974 we had no idea what the response would be and the women who came to our first reading at the downtown YWCA said to us: we feel what you are saying: we have been turned off to the usual academic poetry but we hear your poems because they are our poems, too. I remember two women in the front row that night crying during Marguerite Beck-Rex's poem Sultana. We realized we were sharing something larger than ourselves.

Writing begins as such a private intimate activity, like going down into a green place deep inside. A place not only hidden but trampled. Describing this journey. speaking true feelings as women, can be terrifying. Mary Ann Larkin tells about this process-"I write poems so I won't choke"-in her new poem The Mak ing. When I sing songs I have written or write poems. I

Harvest

often feel I am fighting the tight grip of hands around my throat-society's hands and my own hands-by deciding that I will let it out.

The exciting, scary, electrifying part of performing in Big Mama has been this letting out of what we see as women. There is a terror in revealing oneself publicly. an old terror probably akin to the fear of being stoned as, a witch. It is a revolutionary thing to speak your real self. It is revolutionary to fight to be oneself, to uncover what that may mean-to let the green inner self rock and gather force and come spilling. flying out. Women are rising. each of us alone rising, as alone we must be when we face our darkness. but women's culture. women's gatherings bring us together, the waterfall returning, in celebration of our battles and our coming through.

The Tour: New York 1976

I

flying

the journey of a poem is not like this change with no feeling of motion

it is upheaval, and thunder

of sometimes the slow passage

of being squeezed through an intestine

we are longing, flying

racing to bring to speech

the silent journeys of women

as the plane hurtles over the ground

-

we embrace the houses, the lives within

we sense women's footsteps behind us as thick as clouds women walking steadily a long distance

underneath us, underneath the exuberant wave we ride, there is the slow passage of many women bearing us along toward hearts open for our story

there is a hush between us,

a tenderness

a ripple of heads

turning, mouths opening, arms

and suddenly we are too large

we are the wild spray of water

dashing against rock

we are a huge tree growing for four thousand years

at the moment her roots break through, beating

throbbing, and she feels the rock crack

These poems

These poems are streams, Chattering like sacks of glass shards emptied over rocks

that are newly exposed and sullen

and over rounded baulders

that are gentle with years

of the frantic water.

Sally Pirtle

Exiles, bright fragments torn from the bolt.

Inland water,

unsullied by the wise salt.

2 mother courage restaurant

sitting there we are with the paintings

the Navaho woman, red clay face

we are mirrored on the walls

a child in the canvas, inheriting.

languid terra cotta figures by the ocean

it is a lush interior

plants and fabrics speak of

woman sensibility

we are talking intently

esch head turned toward companions

It is a company unselfconscious of itself

clear about its work

we are inside something knowledgeably

oge 6/What She Wants/November, 1977

3

performing

there is no showcase

this richness, the mind tumbling

is yours, is ours

life with wide mouth

an out pouring into ears, eyes, open cells

we are in a round high room

of beautiful proportions, white, domed, a whole completed

I want them to run up to you,

hot in the face, blurting the news.

'I want them to move

from side to side, a horse brushing away flies.

To be swallowed as the diver by the water:

o brief churning, then blue silk.

I want them to fall from the highest wire,

a white ribbon from first line to last,

to be caught like a lantern thrown

from a train.

Muscle must be lean, tendon tight,

to carry the body, the phosphorescent brain,

the whole symphony of bones with their unruly occupants,

to

leap across the chasm.

Meredith Holmes