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Born in England, raised in Rochester, New York, Karen Alkalay-Gut has been living in Israel since 1972. She teaches at Tel Aviv University and writes obsessively. Her latest book, The Love of Clothes and Nakedness, was published in Israel in March of 1999. Women Writers is pleased to present a selection of poems from that latest book, which is available in both English and Hebrew versions. More of Karen's work can be found at Zygzag.com. Click for the press release. Also, see Karen's article on the book party for this book.
FAT CLOTHES, THIN CLOTHES
and in the morning
GRANDMOTHER RECONSIDERS HER KNITTING
Protecting a child's name
And why red?
And why is she known only
It was a mistake
You must admit
Perfect size was always the first rule of beauty.
CONSIDER THE RED CLOAK
We must consider, as a red cloak suits a young man, what suits an old one; for the same garment is not suitable for both.
Aristotle and I go shopping at Bloomingdales.
So we come home, totally blown,
Aristotle wants to try it all on at once-
Stay out of this sister, he explodes.
Remember the lady in the red dress
This is the plot
In the mirror is an ordinary body,
Let us separate
trying to decide what to wear
I will not speak
Even the boy smashing top speed
It is the stones, it is the stones,
can sit for a ride with a group of women
The Love of Clothes and Nakedness is a series of poems reflecting on the significance of clothes, the body, and identity, and the relationship between these three factors, The poems deal with poetry, politics, sexuality, reflected self-image, and society as well. Following an introduction concerning the necessity and the power for renewal, the manuscript begins with a series of poems charting a 'disrobing' from coat to dresses and suits to underwear - both dirty and clean linen, evolves to reflections on the naked self, and then concludes with a gradual re-clothing of the self by choice, a reconstitution of identity as well as an establishment of a poetic voice and philosophy.
Some of the poems are direct 'comments' on well-known works
dealing with the same theme, such as "The Exhibitionist
in Her Boudoir," which feminizes and modernizes William
Carlos Williams' "Danse Russe." Others are analyses
of the unacknowledged symbolic significance of clothing and history
direct descriptions of iconic clothing, such as a poem about
Joan of Arc and the necessity for convention. Still others are
concerned with individual and personal clothing, such as "Why
I Wear Black," or "Red Sequined Dress," illustrating
the fact that there are basic and profound choices made about
the self almost every morning and evening. Woven into the poetry
are dialogues with Shakespeare, Blake, and Yeats, whose use of
clothing as metaphors for poetry, identity, and social imperatives
are ubiquitous and basic to their work and their conceptions
of the social and poetic self.