Mash Waldman:
‘Trickster Feminism,’ Here and Now
A review by Jaime Groetsema
“Trickster Feminism,” Anne Waldman
Penguin Poets, 2018
141 pages, softcover, $20.00
Anne Waldman, Powerhouse of Poetry; Originator of the Outrider; Woman of the Forest City; Neighbor of Trickster Rabbits!
I have had the opportunity to hear Anne Waldman read from the manuscript for this book several times, and again an opportunity to hear Waldman read from it during an official book release reading this past month. At these readings, I always find myself with a mixture of thoughts and emotions that I can only reconcile as a true experience of Art. I don’t think this is a singular feeling, because when I cross paths with other people that have heard Waldman read, there is an equal inability to describe the experience, all the while feeling beholden to it.
When I read “Trickster Feminism” myself, during my daily commute, I felt the same mixture of thoughts and emotions that I had felt at the reading. Waiting at the bus stop, I felt emboldened; on the bus, I felt enthralled, humbled; walking to work, I felt impassioned and ready to take on the hateful jabs of those lost in the milieu of their own foggy-mindedness; they, the anti-human and anti-Earth.
As I read and read, I could easily hear Waldman’s voice. The strength and energy that comes so naturally to her, and through her, was unmistakable. I felt tempted to say that the impression I received from reading “Trickster Feminism” was due to the fact that I heard it read aloud first, but what a disservice that would be to the book, Waldman, and you, Reader, as you read it yourself:
little tones piling up to make a melody of
a way your various parts organize to
be here in fiction
stones can be struck
Waldman immediately centers us in the present moment. Continuing on through “trick o’ death” the poem that opens the book:
innermost being
insides of things, as poet feels
inner bark from a ghost tree
aspiration, and go down
and some still resting on laurels of survived
dominance look again
a factotum
a dead book perhaps
drive my sex into its covers
driven by lust outside
fear that money drives
the world down under
to shut all feeling of existence out
great mind
will I be bought by
last-ditch patriarchy
how weakens
I think: reading is an act of living and I am responsible for my own living by choosing the books I would like to read and then reading them and then thinking about them and then talking about them.
Over the course of many years, working either as a book seller or librarian, I often meet people that cannot choose their own books. They ask me to focus their reading, to help them buy a gift, if it is okay to take a photo of the cover, so it can be consumed in the moment with little effort, and maybe again later, too. I have also met people over the course of my career that are unable to touch or investigate the materiality of books on their own. After a short pause and some silence, I pull a book from the shelf and hand it over. It needs to be chosen first before it can be investigated. To them the public bookshelf is a collection of overwhelming-limitlessness, in which, it appears, that only I am able to find the right one for someone else.
When we hold the book “Trickster Feminism,” we are confronted with the bright illustration of the rabbit-trickster-deity—but what does this image mean? Aside from acknowledging the awesomeness of the collaboration—the handwritten text and trickster image were designed by Laurie Anderson, a powerhouse of Art in her own right—I take it as an invitation to enter a dualistic text, that may challenge my current notions of what it means to be, which, of course, I gladly take. Can you? Will you?
The trickster-rabbit is referenced throughout the book, a glimpse here, a glimpse there, while the effigaic illustration from the cover also appears at the end of every poem. I am reminded to delve deep into the meaning of every sentence, to cast off the ligatures of unwanted text, to question the reality and appearance of our life, and to laugh with the incongruities of our world.
An excerpt full of metaphysical questions from the poem “mash butler” is striking:
Is there no thing here
variety of form?
Reproducing?
And is ontology?
Is Timaeus?
And haunting?
“Trickster Feminism” asks us: to what extent the world we live in is the. way. things. are. How much of this perceived ordering of things is the. truth. Is what someone told us, the only thing there is?
This poem responds to its own questions:
I was born but…
nothing perfect
sexed body
not a given
The notion that there is only one way to live, or one thing to be, is not a given. The act of choosing my own book, is a step towards the act of rendering my own life.
There are two poems in the book with a similar title “mash butler” and “mash de beauvoir.” It is clear that these poems reference the gender theorist Judith Butler and the existential feminist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir. From “mash de Beauvoir”:
Test your own power. What is her
hand in a river. Swept by breath that
animates her. This the fruit of
suffering, hanging bodies lest you
forget. You must never forget pleasure
in women in sex a “magic spell.” You
must never forget cruelty in women,
immanence and repetition. Through
such action grasp smoke. Pride is in the
word “liberation” if blood were only
food. Struggle. Intoxication. Don’t spill.
this was all deduced from the topic
“he.” Deduced from monsters. This is
about interlocutors. The leaf cutters
would stay on track. Then start all over.
Harvest the growth spurt. Harbor
the mold, fight memories of wartime
girlhood. Smile in a mirror. This is
sovereign on a hillside, up-tempo.
Dipping a hand in the river.
Contumacious. To conquer, unite.
“Trickster Feminism” reminds us of the centenary of women’s suffrage; reminds us of the oppression and the struggles that brought us to the present; reminds us what it takes to get through it: Contumacious. To conquer, unite.
At first glance, I thought the term ‘mash’ implied the use of a writing constraint, a method that would ‘mix together’ the voice of the writer and the voice of the person the poem is written to.
Mash as a method of constraint, I knew nothing about. I was intrigued reading the notes about other methods of constraint that were employed in the text (“Constraints were to be as a child, and I had to bring in the son and I had to bring in the mother. […]”).
I looked it up in the dictionary and found that the meaning of the word also included: ‘affection for’. I came across these lines in “trick o’ death,” too:
memes of evolving feminism
and the means of it
speak your heroes, mash them
mixed with fervor of protists
how assiduously seeking truth
this is what to do
as in ways or means
and a committee meets to
make sure
a con won’t push over you
force goods that enhance
misty feminine way of life
how to sell it? undiluted
disempower the girlget down, morphing sister
get down
what are your ploys
stacking up capitalist wiles
may they be dashed
lauded over aroma
scents of perfumed doom
I feel that the ‘constraint’ of Mash is to write an ode, instead; to write and remember our human history, to write and act in reflection of it; to keep moving. I will put my worry, sadness, and disheartened, real-world ailing into the work to build our community and protect our environment!
What will you do?
The book closes with the poem “trick o’ life,” creating a somewhat symmetrical format with the first poem “trick o’ death,” but this relationship is dialogic. Do we begin at the beginning or to we begin at the end? I think there is no beginning or end. From “trick o’ life”:
this is and this is
fluid like bell keeps
resonant
and precarious night
hooks us together,
inextricably
aspects of identity
matrix-oppression
intersection of everything
breathes
sister outsider
roil in you, in all
There is only now.
“Trickster Feminism” isn’t a collection of nostalgic, odious rememberings, though. These poems are witty, clear-sighted, magical, and active cuttings of history. These moments are a mural of events, where life is always changing, political problems persist, people are oppressed, things aren’t always what they seem. Read this book to find a way through the darkness. Use its magic, conspire with its energy, continue to fight the persistence of oppression.
Jaime Groetsema is a bibliographer, artist, and librarian.