Lydia Davis

Interesting little poem about how we define ourselves and how we are defined-- none of which can ever at any given time be completely true. Nonetheless, we go about our days assessing other people and giving worth to ourselves based on something like having a position at the university which is both revealing and superficial. As people, we are always sliding in and out of roles simultaneously, morphing between the truths of what it means to be you or me.

A Position at the University

by Lydia Davis

I think I know what sort of person I am. But then I think, But this stranger will imagine me quite otherwise when he or she hears this or that to my credit, for instance that I have a position at the university: the fact that I have a position at the university will appear to mean that I must be the sort of person who has a position at the university. But then I have to admit, with surprise, that, after all, it is true that I have a position at the university. And if it is true, then perhaps I really am the sort of person you imagine when you hear that a person has a position at the university. But, on the other hand, I know I am not the sort of person I imagine when I hear that a person has a position at the university. Then I see what the problem is: when others describe me this way, they appear to describe me completely, whereas in fact they do not describe me completely, and a complete description of me would include truths that seem quite incompatible with the fact that I have a position at the university.

For this poem and more go to the Poetry Foundation

Shelley Puhak

Shelley Puhak and I studied together for a summer in Italy. She was working on her MFA from the University of New Orleans and I was working on my MA. Although, we've lost touch as the years have gone by, she kept me kind of sane while I was there, and I have a great respect for her talent. So, I was very pleased to see that she's gotten a book of poems published-- some of which we discussed in our creative writing workshop. Stalin in Aruba is being well-received and can be purchased through Black Lawrence Press or Shelley's website: http://www.shelleypuhak.com/. I have not received my own copy yet, but from what I gather and remember, many of these poems are dramatic monologues based (loosely?) on Russian history. I am including here a poem from the book which was first published in the Adirondack Review.

Support emerging poets, and buy the book!

WHAT THEY LEFT OUT OF MY OBITUARY

What They Left Out of My Obituary:
Father Pritikin, Dead at 85
You've heard of me: when I was seventeen
I threw the perfect pass, seventy yards,
breaking the school record. Those present said
the pigskin arched into the sun, but I
saw nothing, only that same sun spinning spots
while my breath's smoke pawed the cold.
You wouldn't have heard I spent my twenty-first
in a Guatemalan hut, shivering with heat,
brown-skinned women crowding me, muttering padre,
padre, and forcing me to drink hot tea.
Or that at seven, I found my mother's razor
in the bathtub nook and slipped my thumb across
the blade. As blood spilled forth I knew
nothing but dead leaves crisping underfoot.
When I was conceived, it was winter. That spring
the snow never melted, just crusted into ice.
My mother toe-heeled, toe-heeled as belly swelled,
or did she run, hoping to slip, to jar me loose?
At fourteen, I found freckles, light and flat,
across the clavicle of a girl on the field
hockey team, constellations spilling across bare
shoulders while the trees pulsed green.