Date: Wednesday, 11/5/69

I went to the poetry reading with Lauren. Charles went with Tony to hear Chomsky. I’m glad I heard a woman read her own work. It was so rich—hah, hah.

It also ended my exhaustion. Running didn’t help me and sleep didn’t help me but hearing Adrienne Rich read her poems, that cured me.

Listening to Rich read wasn’t the same as hearing Lowell read. The power of a woman’s voice reading her own work affected me in such a different way.

It was comparable to the part of “A Room of One’s Own” when Woolf writes about that one sentence that made her start up and realize something revolutionary had occurred. It was the sentence that must seem to women now so commonplace, but here it is:

“Chloe liked Olivia.”

When I read that sentence I didn’t sit up and realize what had just occurred. However with the insight Woolf provided, it became to me too a touchstone of what has changed and in not that long a period of time.

So, tonight, sitting in that small lecture hall listening to Adrienne Rich read, was to me another one of those miracles, or revolutionary moments. In my life, I haven’t ever heard a woman read her own poetry. I haven’t ever studied women poets, except for a passing reference to Emily Dickinson who was represented as both an anomaly and a nut case. Her virginity being of more interest than her poetry.

Woolf shows the impact of that sentence in an historical way. I don’t know enough about women’s poetry or even Rich’s poems to think this through that way. I wish I could. Instead, I have this observation: It’s difficult to comprehend how radically changed women’s lives are now. And how fast that transformation has come about.

Lauren and I had a long talk about the reading. It was through our talk that I could verbalize these new insights. It’s as if this knowledge has been growing inside me like mushrooms under dead leaves. When I brushed the leaves aside, I discovered these incredible mushrooms that had grown in the dark soil inside me.

Now I see what Tony means when he calls certain awakenings radical conversions, meaning that someone goes through drastic changes at a phenomenal speed. This bubble-enclosed girl from Skokie becoming more engaged by and involved in the world. It has happened so quickly and yet, I don’t think I know now any other way to live.

When Lauren and I talked after the reading, I recalled in explicit detail the way in which everyone in the room held her breath. As Rich read, no one uttered a word, cleared her throat or even breathed. The sense of anticipation for the words to come at us was so high that no one dared make a sound.

Woolf was blown away by Mary Carmichael writing that simple sentence: “Chloe liked Olivia.”

I’m blown away by Rich reading these lines:

The refrigerator falls silent.

Then other things are audible;

There must be stages of involvement in a reading. As a group, we came together rather quickly. I can’t recall the precise moment when I realized how attentive we were but I do know that the collaborative experience of listening to her words sent me into such an excited place that I think I finally understood what poetry is about.

The refrigerator falls silent.

Then other things are audible;

Now I understand as Woolf had—poetry isn’t only written by men about things defined by men’s lives.

I liked this line in the poem too:

this dull, sheet-metal mind rattling like stage thunder.

This image made me feel just like I do when I listen to a solo piano piece, the way the notes go over my eardrums, as if I were the water skipping over stones in a river and enjoying that feeling so much that it is all I care about.

Lauren and I left the theater when the reading was over and ironically walked towards the orchard. I didn’t want to talk about what had happened on Halloween with anyone but realized, if there was one person I could trust to tell the story to, it was Lauren.

The nights are now cold and as we walked we left our breaths on the air. We turned back, to sit in her car and warm up.

We can be quiet or talk, it isn’t important. I like how we each dove into our responses to the reading without demanding anything of the other. I don’t know how long we sat in her car, but when I got out, a bubble rose above my head with the words, “This is the friend I have looked for all my life.”

Mistakenly, I had thought Eileen would be that friend. Now I know it is Lauren.

How ironic that I learned tonight that Lauren is a singer and songwriter—like Eileen.

Lauren’s self-taught. She told me a bit about her life. She’s from the Town and has lived here almost all her life.

I asked her why she didn’t want to leave and do what she was doing some place else.

She looked at me as if she asked herself that question all the time. You know, how a person laughs at the question before answering it?

“I left and came back. I wasn’t meant to be anywhere else but here. I couldn’t think straight when I was away from home. I couldn’t sing the songs that make me happy when I was away. Some people are never meant to leave where they are from.”

She looked sadly at me and then said she had to get home to let her dog out.

I told her that I was leaving soon for Washington, DC. That I was going on a march against the war and would miss a couple of days with Jason because of that. She just whispered to give her the dates before I left.

I got out of her car and watched as she drove down the long driveway hill and as her red backlights disappeared into the darkness. I walked back to the dorm feeling that I had said something wrong. I’d hurt her but I don’t know how. I thought I could be wrong and if she is hurt, I know she will tell me straight out. That’s another thing I like about Lauren—how direct she can be.

By the time I returned to the dorm room, the tiredness had completely disappeared. I don’t know how it could have evaporated like that, but I am not complaining.

My equilibrium has returned. It was a wise decision not to mention to Charles what had happened with Philip. Now Eileen and Philip have decided not to go with us to DC. Charles dislikes the two of them so this won’t be upsetting to him. I’m relieved.

Oh God, I haven’t felt this good before going to bed in too long a time.