I've been planning on writing about this since I first heard the story on NPR while I was back in the states. I'm obviously plugged into any kind of large writing prize for writers under 30 (though time is running out for me to qualify for that!) and the Dylan Thomas Prize from the University of Wales is the biggest.
I was struck by this NPR feature about Elyse Fenton and her prize-winning collection, Clamor
-- I was actually angry. Here is a woman who wins the largest writing prize you can win-- she's the first poet and the first woman ever to win it---- and her husband is worried about how it will reflect on him?! Talk about missing the boat. Perhaps it's just the spin that NPR is putting on the thing, but I can't express to you my degree of deep deep frustration with a husband who would diminish his wife's extraordinary achievement, as well as her very real experience of being a war wife, by fretting over what his war buddies or anyone else might think of him.
Just listen. What do you think?
precisely why I don't like Franzen
ReplyDeletehttp://thisrecording.com/today/2010/5/31/in-which-we-really-feel-for-jonathan-franzen.html
there is no envy or jealousy or anything like that or what this war guy is feeling about what his buddies think in real love, selfless love, unconditional love
Jeez!!!! assholes
right, but that's about Kathy being jealous of Jonathan. I think he comes off rather well in Kathy's piece (not that he always does...hahaha)
ReplyDeleteI just sort of think he should be like, good job, honey. Not "oh no, what will people think of me?"
xo
you're right on Franzen, sorry, I should have re-read...going from memory that's not too good anymore!
ReplyDeleteGreat honor for her (Fenton)...he should have been soooo proud and realized the poetry was from her perspective..not his!
From the Philly Inquirer (http://articles.philly.com/2010-12-04/news/25292134_1_iraq-poetry-finalists):
ReplyDeleteShah said the poems shouldn't be seen as being "about" him. Poems don't work like that. "I don't really feel I have a story worth telling," he said. "I was in the Green Zone and was relatively safe. So many people think it's a story about me. And the poems may be rooted in the fact of my being in Iraq, but they're filtered through Elyse's poetry. She's working with language, with her perspective, being honest to her experience as the one left behind."
This 4 minute radio piece is likely more a reflection of the radio journalist's agenda than it is an honest reprsentation of this couple's relationship with each other and with these poems.
By most accounts, this couple's experience and love is beyond most people's imagination.
Oooh, I hadn't seen the Philly Inquirer article... thanks! I had a feeling there was some "Story-making" in the NPR thing and was hoping to get a discussion going about the whole thing. Love Elyse's poetry!
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