MARGARET STETZ

Unbound: Two Herstories   

I. “Gertrude Käsebier (1852–1934), American Photographer”

The journalist was an ass.
She let him know
(they always sent a “he,”
though lady correspondents
also needed work)
he’d asked a stupid question.
No, she never said to
“watch the birdie” to her sitters—
not Zitkála-Sá or Chief Flying Hawk;
disreputable teenaged Evelyn Nesbit,
dress falling from her shoulders;
the painters William Glackens and John Sloan;
Monsieur Rodin, the sculptor
(What? “Regardez l’oiseau”?)—
she was an artist,
no one’s cozy aunt
in corsets.
(She wore no corsets—
smocks the working costume in her studio.)
“Might I see some pretty pictures?”
by this time shouting.
(He finally understood that she was nearly deaf.
Childhood scarlet fever).
She heard him, anger purpling her face,
and brought out Portrait of the Photographer
(published in Camera Notes by Alfred Stieglitz—
he should have done his homework).
The same squared jaw in black-and-white,
shot from below,
eyes almost mournful, locking with the viewer’s gaze,
hands intertwined, the smallest fingers slightly parted,
where her genitalia lay,
her self exposed,
but with exposure mastered, stylized,
through chemical manipulation,
so that the visible emerged and merged
with what was disembodied, ghostlike.
No “birdie” here, but from the mist,
its outline rising into view as it took flight,
an eagle. 

II. “Sylvia Plath, 1953” 

Dresses flung off the roof of the Barbizon
launched into flight like pigeons
riding air currents
down through the streets of Manhattan
falling onto the bags of the homeless in alleys
(Danaë showered with golden cloth)
farewell to the narrow suit worn at the office of Mademoiselle (farewell to being a Mademoiselle)
a satin evening gown sailing away toward the river
caught by the monument
nestling around its neck—
now Lady Liberty’s scarf.
Padded bodices padded hips
stripped and released
petticoats soaring airily into the clouds—
to stand naked before the eyes of skyscrapers
an art installation avant la lettre
a fashioned statement.
Only the “New Look” corset
refused to be torn off
(it was always a straitjacket-in-waiting)
still a decade too soon for its bindings to be dissolved
to be swept away by the force
not of a single mad girl
but a Wave.

 

 

 

                                                                          

       

           

         

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