UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI Date:___________________ I, _________________________________________________________, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in: It is entitled: This work and its defense approved by: Chair: _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ _______________________________ To Happiness A dissertation submitted to the Division of Research and Advance Studies of the University of Cincinnati in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in the Department of English and Comparative Literatures of the College of Arts & Sciences 2008 by Martha Elizabeth Tilton B.S., Miami University, 1979 M.A., University of Cincinnati, 2002 Committee Chair: Don Bogen, PhD ABSTRACT This dissertation contains a manuscript of original poetry and a critical paper. The forty- nine poems divide into three parts—the sections differ in time, perspective, and tone and yet an energetic and hospitable voice knits them. The critical paper utilizes trauma and cartographic theories through which it argues that the repetitive gestures and the repetitive gaps in knowledge in Paula Gunn Allen’s poems and essays constitute evidence of Native American cultural trauma. iii for Debbie, who’s so happy with surprises iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Grateful acknowledgment is due to the following publications in which some of these poems previously appeared: JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association: “A Circle Portrait” New Orleans Review: “Switches from the Fig Tree” Schuylkill Valley Journal: “Old Maids” Southern Humanities Review: “Bulldogging, 1924” Southern Review: “When the Movers Took the Bed” Valparaiso Poetry Review: “Alto” Thanks to my family: Debbie Fritz; Bonnie and Lawrence Tilton; Cameron, Courtney, Grayson Tilton and Zane Wilson. Thanks to those who offered encouraging words in hallways, in emails, and in margins of poems and who may be surprised to find themselves listed here: Michael Dumanis, Julianna Gray, Ariana Sophia Kartsonis, Cate Marvin, Nicola Mason, Will Toedtman. Thanks to faculty at the University of Cincinnati’s English department, who may have to kick me out to make me leave: Michael Atkinson, Stan Corkin, John Drury, Russel Durst, Wayne Hall, Lee Person, Jim Schiff, Lucy Schultz. A very special thanks to Jon Kamholtz. Finally, thanks that cannot express enough gratitude to Don Bogen for goading the poet, the poems, and the book. v Contents I. Salt………………………………………………………………………………………...4 The Tail in My Pocket…………………………………………………………………….5 Hospitality…………………………………………………………………………………6 Clothes Moths……………………………………………………………………………..7 Some Questions about a Woman in her Garden…………………………………………..8 A Circle Portrait.…………………………………………………………………………..9 When the Movers Took the Bed…………………………………………………………10 Attack on the Weed………………………………………………………………………11 Helium……………………………………………………………………………………12 Ozarks……………………………………………………………………………………13 The Wash and Dry……………………………………………………………………….14 Sinkhole………………………………………………………………………………….15 We Are All Like Toadstools……………………………………………………………..16 The Bed We Make……………………………………………………………………….17 Sweet Tooth……………………………………………………………………….……..18 July…………………………………………………………………………….…………19 By Any Means Necessary………………………………………………………………..20 Winking Ann……………………………………………………………………………..21 II. Bulldogging, 1924……………………………………………………………………….22 1 Old Maids…………………………………………………………………………….….23 Case Knife…………………………………………………………………….…………24 That Bastard……………………………………………………………………….….…25 Watercress………………………………………………………………………….……26 Plowing…………………………………………………………………………….……27 The Storeroom…………………………………………………………………….…..…28 Worry Lines…………………………………………………………………………...…29 Notions…………………………………………………………………………….…….30 Boy………………………………………………………………………………………31 Down-Facing Dog…………………………………………………………………….…32 1969………………………………………………………………………………….…..33 1:30 Matinee……………………………………………………………………………..34 Switches from the Fig Tree………………………………………………….……….…..35 III. Alto……………………………………………………………………….……….…..…36 Heat Stroke………………………………………………………………….……...……37 Brush Me In……………………………………………………………….…………..…38 Coloring Our Orgasms……………………………………………………….……….….39 Dear Gertrude Stein……………………………………………………………………...40 Grizzly……………………………………………………………………………………41 My Procedure……………………………………………………………….……………42 From Alcatraz……………………………………………………………………………43 Night Ride………………………………………………………………………………..44 2 Playing Possum……………………………………………………………………….…45 A Riddle: No Telling………………………………………………………………….…46 At the Counter……………………………………………………………………………47 Twenty-Twenty………………………………………………………………………..…48 Some Trails Are Dustier than Others……………………………………………………49 Love in a Poem…………………………………………………………………………..50 When Our Boat Hit the Manatee…………………………………………………...……51 To Happiness…………………………………………………………….………………52 3 I. SALT I want a box with a hinged lid, a box I can fit my whole hand into. I want to feel my coarse temper filtered through finger tips. Sea. Table. Road. Rock. Kosher. I want to overdo, to pucker you, to make the juices rise from all over the stove, drawn to over-seasoned places. I will raise your blood pressure. I will carry remnants in my pockets, surprises from the twenty pounds I broadcast melting pockmarks across our icy driveway. I will follow you as I do the trucks, forgetting my way, drawn to the rhythm of the fanning crystals nicking my bumper, eating my paint. Take me home before we freeze. Once inside, I will taste invisible powder on my tongue and track your waffled patterns across our hardwood floors. 4 THE TAIL IN MY POCKET I wouldn’t have a bushy tail, not a fox’s tail, not the kind to brush before a party. When I picture my tail it’s hairless, waxed with jalapeño paste, chamois buffed, and if I didn’t keep it in my pocket, it would slice the air with all its swinging. No wallflower tail for me. Instead, my tail would tap a Whiskey River two-step inside my pocket, insisting that I let it loose, let it go; but if I did, I’d find it threaded through empty belt-loops or shimmying the mike stand. 5 HOSPITALITY I want no houseguests or in-laws living in my basement. No out-of-luck nephews sleeping in the spare room I use as an office. Visitors should leave our house before the local news comes on, even on New Year’s Eve when I might invite a few friends for dinner then shoo them on to someone else’s party. Old folks moving in and peeing in our beds— Not Allowed. No moaning Lord Lord or playing dominoes at our table or pushing doors open with their walkers, their rubber stoppers tapping all night down our hallways. Blind men with no sons and no daughters will not spit tobacco juice into coffee cans while rocking on our front porch; they will not splatter their dribble on our wooden floors or climb the slow stairs to our garage apartment. I don’t want them. I want it like this, with you and me, the dog, the cat all curling together in our quiet night. When the phone rings, we won’t answer it. When friends extend invitations, we’ll decline. No crowds at our funerals, no sympathy cards, no floods of casseroles left at our door. 6 CLOTHES MOTHS I couldn’t forget you, but after three months I had some luck with the moths. The ravaged wool sleeve urged me to make changes. I took up arms. I sanded cedar blocks, releasing the smell of wet woods in my sweater drawers, then hung a strip of pine air on hooks in my closet. Wouldn’t the altitude make you light-headed? I crushed juniper needles until I felt like pawing at the shavings and blowing smoke from my nostrils. Our vacation on high Glacier trails switchbacked from the sackcloth. I shook loose the dark folds. I opened doors and let the light in, our summer out. It got so cold I bought more wool, not merino from green New Zealand, but from New Mexico goats— those grazed on desert grasses. I wrapped myself in scratchy rashes and dared the invisible moths to chew their little holes. 7 SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT A WOMAN IN HER GARDEN Why would a woman take off her shoes and air her hot feet in the roses? What kind of a woman ignores her lover’s bright call from the house, pressing instead her cheek to the mulch, answering the smell of grasses going to seed? Are those clippers in her leather holster? When she strips the velvet from the sage and brushes her nose, her lip, her brow with its fuzz, does she smell the downy heads of babies? Whose urine does she spray on the Jupiter’s Beard? Does she love her dog, or does she love the lavender on his coat? Is that sweat on her lip, or mucus? Why would a woman lie like that— in her dark garden with her cat near the mint? Down there in all those stiffening stems, does she pull at the root vegetables— the parsnips, turnips, yams? And when she licks her rough fingers, can you see how she aches for beets bleeding in a bowl of Tasmanian honey? 8 A CIRCLE PORTRAIT Lose a string of jobs, or days, and wonder how the same amount of alcohol that made you clever turned your witty words thick and ugly. Nurse the hidden beer you stow beneath the seat and drive the weaving streets alone in the churning town. Press your brow against the steering wheel. Admit defeat, and pray the usual prayer: get me home, I’ll never drink again. Then, fumble with the swaying lock, the spinning room, and grope the floor, recover equilibrium. Tomorrow, pull into the pony keg, and slip another pint beneath the seat. Cruise the barrios, the littered streets, and roll your windows down to hear the swirl of families outside on rented steps. The children jumping rope on sidewalks thread a braid of jingles as they