from Report from the McCarthy Society, Vol. 1 No. 1
From the first line of her first book, bk of (h)rs, Pattie McCarthy establishes many of the recurring concerns in her body of work:
“blue, then. again she is—bending against”
One might read this “blue” as the arrival of a new day at dawn, the sky turning from darkness to varying shades of blue or maybe it’s an allusion to sadness, as in feeling blue. Perhaps it suggests loyalty, as in ‘true blue’ or maybe it refers to serenity, a feeling of tranquility or it could be a reference to water, the ocean, eye color, something unexpected as in ‘out of the blue.’ All equally plausible.
But, for me, it’s the sound of this line which I find so compelling: the rhyme of ‘then’ and ‘again’ which is then echoed in ‘bending against’. This subtle shift from ‘again’ to ‘against’ signals how McCarthy uses both repetition and variation throughout her work at the level of the word or phrasal unit, building more nuanced meaning with the addition of a single letter or two.
Then again, I’m tempted to read “then. again” as a reconsideration of a previous statement, taking something back, approaching it from a different angle or perspective, allowing for multiple meanings. “then. again” as an insistence on repetition, a repeat performance, returning to a previous thought or theme.[1]
This single line might be the most concise statement of McCarthy’s poetics: “again she is—bending against” as both privileging the place of women at the center of her work while also resisting or ‘bending against’ the treatment and representation of nameless faceless women as ‘she’ in history, art, and literature, questioning even while paying homage to such depictions, returning to the past (then, again) and her use of repetition (again).
McCarthy’s use of repetition extends beyond a single collection. Her seven books share a constellation of themes; certain tropes are woven from one book to another. A recurring line in the first book might reappear in a later book, as if the lines themselves make cameo appearances.*
In her second book, Verso, for instance, the phrase “a story told as though it is true” appears in varying constructions: “a story told as though / it is true” (17); “these sorts of stories told as though they were true” (18); “a true story” (22); “a story told / as though it is true” (25). Each repetition casts the notion of truth further into doubt, hence the line breaks around “as though” to underscore the unreliable nature of the story. Finally, in its last occurrence, McCarthy offers her pithiest variation on this theme: “the story goes like this & has too many commas. / the story was told to me as follows & will be on the final” (45).[2] This questioning the veracity of a story emerges again in Marybones: “this is a story told as though it is / true I don’t know / whether or not it is” (12). This is just one of the ways that McCarthy emphasizes that history is all too often his story—a narrative told by men—reminding readers how much has been left out, insisting that every supposed fact must be questioned, called into doubt, examined more deeply.
Her work is driven by an insatiable fascination with language over time and in time, in all its most archaic and arcane forms. Her poems reference Olde English and Middle English, religious texts, military acronyms, medical and diagnostic terminology, legal parlance including interrogations, depositions, testimonies, and court records. The point for McCarthy is not so much who or what is on trial but rather the nature of accusation and persecution. She indicts the inclination to indict, particularly as it pertains to women.[3]
This is a poetics that is smitten with scholarship, in love with libraries. One almost imagines the books rubbing against the library stacks (or maybe that’s just me). Each collection becomes more enamored with the artifice of scholarship; the back matter becomes more extensive with each collection including bibliographies and ever more elaborate notes on sources. Her fifth collection, xyz &&, offers perhaps the most meticulous notes specifying not merely source texts but even the particular lines of each poem where they appear. The breadth of her references encompasses modernist greats—Stein, Joyce, Zukofsky, Eliot, Loy, Niedecker, Woolf, Williams—to more contemporary sources—Susan Howe, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Caroline Bergvall, W.G. Sebald, Deleuze & Guattari, Radiohead—though the majority of the research draws on medieval texts.[4]
I want to say—echoing one of her former student’s misguided papers—that McCarthy writes with one foot planted in medievalism and the other foot saluting the modern long poem.[5] That is to say: medieval texts haunt much of her work whether it is her contemporary re-casting of the medieval books of hours, her ekphrastic send-up of depictions of Mary in medieval artworks in Marybones, or her poetic retelling of the Book of Margery Kempe in wifthing.[6]
I can’t claim to always understand everything that she’s doing in her work—the references are vast, the allusions so rooted in medieval texts I’ve never read. No matter. I understand that’s part of the process.w I am reduced to making lists of recurring themes and images:
magpies maps margins martyrs matriarchy midwives mirrors mothers mourning museums mystics[7]
McCarthy flirts with disaster as much as with the dictionary, with margins and marginalia, reading and misreading geographies and etymologies, every word giving birth to the next, ‘eye’ turns into ‘eve’ to underscore that every letter matters. With each word, the reader is on the brink of discovering something even if you’re not quite sure what.
saints sky sleeping smoking spells superstition
Fascinated by “secret / languages & language / acquisition” (Nulls 89), hers is a poetics of silences and sighs, the seen and the unseen, the said and the unsaid, a poetics of historiography & hagiography.[8] McCarthy explores the representation of women as mothers and daughters, virgins and saints but always with the mind of a sinner—maybe a reformed sinner but a sinner all the same, stirring up trouble on the page.[9]
Obsessed with cryptographies & telegrams[10], at times the poems read as if McCarthy’s telegraphing a private message. Read enough of her work and everything begins to feel coded. In addition to lists of tropes, I find myself chasing down numerological significance. The poems seem to encourage it. Table Alphabetical of Hard Words, for instance, includes a long sequence entitled, “spaltklang: is good broken music,” a series of fourteen poems of fourteen lines each—McCarthy’s series of sonnets on the birth of her first son. She then again repeats this form for her second son and daughter in xyz &&, including a series of three poems, one for each child’s labor “the first birth in fourteen lines,” “the second birth in fourteen lines,” “the third birth in fourteen lines” (28-30).
Her most recent collection, wifthing goes a step further: divided into three sections, beginning with 25 poems of 14 lines each titled “margerykempething” followed by 25 poems of 14 lines each titled “qweyne wifthing” which are then followed by 30 poems of 14 lines each titled “goodwifthing.”[11] One could argue the deconstructed sonnet has become McCarthy’s preferred form as she leans in even more heavily to repetition.
babies birds birth blood bodies buildings[12]
McCarthy’s work is grounded in the mind as much as the body. Her poems are full of fingers, feet, hands, hair, noses, eyes, mouths, tongues, and wombs as much as bodies of water. We read of wifthings, daughterthings, even “poor thing” (10), drawing attention to the thing in birthing for McCarthy’s emphasis on the labor of childbirth is as much a metaphor for the labor of writing. A poetic midwife, she delivers the poem onto the page:
she / makes her body by making other bodies…
the text begins imperfectly with blank
spaces where her body betrays her
in a new way (30; 31)
Then again, for all of the constancy in McCarthy’s work, the recurring themes woven from one book to the next, each book feels entirely singular. Every time I return to one of her books, I am then again captivated as if for the first time, fascinated by the workings of her mind on the page yet again, still watching, still reading hungrily, still wishing always for one more thing, discovering new meaning then again & again.
[1] I first met Pattie McCarthy in Spring 1996 when we both showed up on the same day to observe Rachel Blau DuPlessis’s graduate Poetry seminar at Temple University. As prospective students newly admitted to the MA in Creative Writing program for the following Fall, we were there to decide whether we would choose Temple. What we didn’t know is that this choice would change the course of our lives.
I had arrived hours earlier and spent the morning exploring the department, chatting up faculty and grad students, methodically checking off the list of questions I had prepared in advance. Pattie blew in after the session had already started and quietly grabbed the chair right next to me. For two hours we sat in silence—perhaps the first and last time we’ve ever been silent in each other’s presence.
At the seminar’s conclusion, a group moved to the office of Kevin Varrone—one of the students I had pestered that morning with endless questions, the person Pattie would end up falling in love with and eventually marrying. Though we didn’t know that yet. (There was so much we didn’t know.) (Strike the above—she would hate me turning this into anything to do with romance or matrimony. It perpetuates all of the most objectionable writing about women writers that we both loathe. Even if it is true.)
What I did know already on that first day was how Pattie commanded the room—not in a domineering way but with her dramatic presence. Poker straight blond hair that fell just below her waist, Ivory girl scrubbed face, a studied flatness that was utterly fascinating. And that smoky voice holding forth authoritatively, her quick laughter, dry wit and unusual turns of phrase had everyone captivated, her blue-gray eyes piercing through each one of us.
Though I had been there all day at that point and should have felt at-ease inserting myself into the conversation, I was too mesmerized to have a thought of my own to share. All eyes were on Pattie. Including mine. I left campus that day hoping she would decide to go elsewhere. How could I possibly compete with such a force?
* But on the first day of Orientation, there she was in tattered cut-offs, black tee shirt, 12-hole well-worn Doc Martens, sitting legs akimbo reading the newspaper, while everyone else sat in awkward silence waiting for the session to begin. Her attitude exuded something between disinterest and disdain. It was impossible not to stare. It was impossible to know that this woman would save my life. (Is that too hyperbolic?)
Within a matter of weeks, this woman I hoped I’d never see again became my everything: confidant, mentor, sister, friend. Twenty-five years later, it is humbling to reflect on how much I have relied on her, turned to her as the voice of reason when I seemed most determined to fuck up my life, the sympathetic ear when I faced the most insurmountable challenges, the calming presence who sat quietly listening through interminable long-distance calls, breathing hope into my weary heart with every exhalation of smoke I heard on the other end of the phone. How many people can you call from a parking lot and just begin the conversation, devoid of niceties or greetings, by declaring “I’m afraid to go home?” No other person has so consistently pushed me out of my comfort zone, tacitly encouraged me and candidly shared her darkest secrets and deepest truths.
[2] That first fall at Temple, we were both enrolled in a Victorian Literature seminar populated almost entirely by PhD students. After the first week, it was abundantly clear that, as the youngest person in the program, fresh out of an undergraduate institution that privileged canonical texts, I was at a hopeless disadvantage as I feigned understanding the discussions, nodding my head as my presumed peers bandied around the names of writers and theorists I’d never even heard of let alone read. While I was trying to hide my sense of panic, discreetly jotting down names like “Fooko?” or “Badtie?” in the margins of my notes, Pattie’s stoic poker face gave nothing away.
It is almost too mortifying to remember my lack of discretion, how forthright I must have seemed a few weeks later when I turned to Pattie in the cramped restroom of what was then known as Anderson Hall while on break from Victorian Lit to ask her point blank: “Are you dating X?” which I followed up by stating: “We’re going to spend two years together in this place—you might as well tell me.” That bold declaration opened the floodgates to a friendship of sharing everything—innermost thoughts, phobias, misgivings, early drafts of poems, dreams and aspirations.
[3] As students of a certain generation, we were presented with a limited range of women writers, our literary education dominated by madwomen, spinsters, social oddities, and suicides. Aspiring to be a woman poet felt somewhat dangerous (not merely because of anonymity or financial precarity). We bonded immediately over our love of writers like Plath & Sexton, finding parallels in Sexton’s close friendship with Maxine Kumin. I remember discovering with awe that Sexton had a pet dalmatian as if this confirmed some cosmic truth given Pattie’s devotion to her dalmatian, Finnegan. (See also: “I’m / never more confessional than when I / write about salem” (wifthing 82)).
But serious students at that time in those circles eschewed Confessional poets and so we broadened our horizons, devouring the works of H.D., Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, Mina Loy, Lorine Niedecker, & Gertrude Stein among so many others under Rachel’s guidance, opening our minds and forever altering our understanding of what poetry could be.
[4] Are you seriously not going to mention Beckett here?
[5] Pattie remains unparalleled in remembering unfortunate student constructions and even, on occasion, weaving them into poems (cf. this reference to cherubs: “the angels are naked in baby bodies”)
[6] After spending long days on campus together, we’d go our separate ways to our respective homes only to commence speaking by phone for hours. Always more to say. Always more left unsaid.
w Though only three years my senior, Pattie was better read, had more life experience, possessed far more knowledge about movies and art, had traveled & lived whole lives when I met her whereas I, a naïve 21-year-old, felt as if mine was just beginning. (I am tempted to write, “In many ways, my life only began to take shape once I met her,” but, then again, think better of it.) She has preceded me in most things—marriage, motherhood—but never makes me feel less than.
[7] While traveling in Ireland with Pattie and Kevin during the summer of 1997, they’d frequently pull our tiny rental car over to the side of a small country road to jot down a line or two or ten in the small notebooks we carried with us at all times. No explanation needed.
Should I confess that I often felt like their child in these moments? (No, confess nothing) Sitting in the backseat, along for the ride, aware that I was witnessing something profound unfolding between them. (Stop this confessional impulse.) How much we read and wrote and debated that summer, swapping the texts we had brought from Philadelphia—a single box of mutually agreed upon books that we shipped over in advance of our arrival to the little farmhouse we rented in County Kerry. (Then again, should I say “the farmhouse they rented?” Having never left the States at that point in my life, I knew nothing of traveling abroad let alone how to rent a house in another country in those days when the internet barely existed. Pattie showed me two small photos of the house and, in a leap of faith, I said “yes,” putting aside my trepidation, convinced that if Pattie was masterminding the operation, it would somehow all work out.) (It did. As it always does for her.)
Lacking a computer or printer in the farmhouse, we wrote out multiple drafts of poems by hand to share with each other, slipping them under each other’s bedroom doors at night. After writing drivel for a year, when I finally wrote my first acceptable poem, Pattie greeted me in the morning with shining eyes and open arms, hugging me with maternal pride and whispering, “It’s good. It’s really good” in my ear. Her praise meant everything.
[8] After entering the Poetics Program in Buffalo, whenever Pattie came to visit, I’d drag her to seminars, conferences, academic talks, trying to recapture the heady halcyon days of our time at Temple. But it was never again as it had been back then. (Does that sound too melancholic?) Then again, regardless of how much geographic distance separates us or how much time passes between seeing each other, having lived in different cities for the majority of our friendship, we begin every conversation in medias res, as if no time has passed, as if nothing has changed.
[9] Having close to 30 years of Catholic schooling between us, we share an appreciation for church architecture, an affinity for nuns, a distrust of priests, a reverence for ritual, a predilection for Latin, and a pervasive fascination with relics, religious iconography, and stories of saints—the bloodier and/or more macabre the better.
[10] & ampersands
[11] Why do these numbers matter? I can’t say exactly and yet I know they do.
[12] When giving the eulogy at my mother’s funeral, my gaze falls on her face every time I look up from the page as if her eyes alone, so steady & sure, could keep me standing erect.
Barbara Cole [photo credit: Lianna Hogan] is the Artistic Director of Just Buffalo Literary Center and a 2011 Fellow in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from Temple University and PhD in English from the University at Buffalo specializing in Poetics. Her writing has appeared in the Poetry Project Newsletter, Open Letter, P-QUEUE, and Traffic East as well as numerous essay collections including The Consequence of Innovation: 21st Century Poetics.
