I’ve been wanting to, wanting to, wanting to, I’ve been wanting to ask you.

Would you accuse me of starting a riot if I was quiet?—MutaBaruka

WOULD YOU BY SUSAN WHITMORE 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 31

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I’ve been wanting to write you

I’ve been wanting to tell you

So often this is the way I close down, shut down

I’ve been wanting to phone you

I’ve been wanting to stop by for a visit

Do my little dance, sing my little song

Stand up on the table with the turkey at Thanksgiving

Let it land on your plate, I can just see your face

I’ve been wanting to write you

I’ve been wanting to ask you

Post it on a billboard, write it in the sky

Broadcast it over the radio

Sure Oprah would give me a spot

Make it a movie, make it a mini-series

A best-selling novel, a depiction of the grotesque

Sherwood Anderson, Flannery O’Connor would understand

So often this is the way

I’ve been wanting to, wanting to, wanting to

I’ve been wanting to ask you

Would you love me more if I didn’t have condoms in my purse?

Would you love me more if I didn’t despise the idea of Eve

And the virginal maternity of Mary?

Would you love me more if I didn’t yell and throw my teacup at you?

Would you love me more if my bed weren’t on the floor,

If my skirt was longer and I said I didn’t want to fuck him?

Would you love me more if I didn’t say fuck?

Does it bother you I am happy?

Would you love me more if I liked your mother,

If I reminded you of your mother, if I didn’t?

Would you love me more if I made you feel guilty?

Would you love me more if I sacrificed something for you?

Would you love me more if I said I couldn’t live without you?

Would you love me more if I didn’t fart?

Does my tattoo bother you?

Would you love me more if I agreed with you?

Would you love me more if I didn’t worship Artemis and the rutting of the she-bear?

Would you love me more if I stood up to pee?

What about respect?

Would you love me more if I had two breasts?

If I had your mother’s breasts?

Would you love me more if I liked the movie?

If I didn’t take the first section of the paper?

Would you love me more if my instep arched like Barbie’s?

If I was a baby machine?

If I bent down for you like a heifer?

Would you love me more if I curled my eyelashes and made pot roast on Sundays?

Would you love me more if I dyed my hair? If I didn’t?

If I shaved my pubic hairs, all of them?

Would you love me more if I wore one of those thong bathing suits?

If I got tinted contact lenses?

If I had incisions in my face and the skin pulled taut?

Would you love me more if the dog hadn’t pulled my tampon out of the bathroom trash and shredded it on the living room floor the night your boss came to dinner?

Does it bother you how much I talk?

Would you accuse me of starting a riot if I was quiet?

SUSAN WHITMORE

When I was a freshman at Vassar, I took a course called The Epic in the English Translation. The first book we read was Homer’s Odyssey. The professor, who was a Hellenist, kept saying, “If you could only read this in Greek! It’s so much more beautiful.” I loved the Odyssey and decided on the spot to learn Greek. I became a Greek major and spent the majority of my time at college studying, reading, and translating Greek poetry, drama, and history. The cadence and structure of the Greek language in general and Greek literature specifically are elements of craft that continue to infuse my work.

My first book of poems, The Sacrifices (Mellen Poetry Press 1990), was my MFA thesis and an attempt to combine my love of ancient Greek culture and art with my own poetry. The Sacrifices is a cycle of poems based on the religious calendar in Ancient Greece. The Greek pantheon clusters gods and goddesses representing different elements of self, and as a young writer, I wanted to celebrate in poetry the different elements of my own self—and the many other selves of many other people—so it was a good match. I believed (and still believe) that a poem can be transformative, just as a spirit-based ritual can be transformative.

Though my later work was never as highly structured as The Sacrifices, certain elements of Greek style and content have stayed with me. My work continues to explore different aspects of self, and form and cadence are still important components of my poetry.

What I like in poetry, and what I strive for in writing, is an idea, feeling, moment, or image stripped down to its essence. I like a poem that uses imagery and concrete things to convey meaning, as opposed to intellectual or philosophical ideas being spelled out with the words. I like images to be disparate but related, so the reader has to leap from one image to another. I like to take away any unnecessary words or tangents. I want metaphors to blend well. I want the sound of the word in the ear and the feeling of the word in the mouth to meet the poem’s meaning. I like a poem that gives me a sense of closure in its final line or stanza; but even more, I like a poem that blows itself wide open at the end.

Writing a poem is a transformative, spiritual experience for me and an exercise in arriving at something I did not know when I began to write it. Those poems are few and far between, but the pleasure of trying to get there is why I keep writing. My best work does not begin in an idea but in an image, moment or feeling. If I capture it correctly, the poem may bring the reader into the same image, moment or feeling directly.

I believe an artist is a conduit of something outside oneself—a transistor, transmitter, transformer. My only job, as a poet, is to keep the passageway clear so there is no interference. When my life is in balance, I can hear properly and I have a chance to write well.