Art After Trump: Turning to Women Authors

Editor’s note: Last week, Hyperallergic co-presented Art After Trump, a night of two-minute creative responses to the election at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe. This week, we’re publishing a few of those pieces.

Days after the election, I searched for books that would speak to the fear and despair I was feeling. I went to my shelf and grabbed a set of books — some prose, some essays, some poems. I’d read one passage intensely for a little bit and then move on to the next, underlining as I went, as though I were on some kind of search.

I decided to revisit those texts and make a poem, or conversation, out of some of the things I underlined. I have quoted Elizabeth Bishop, Maira Kalman, Maggie Nelson, Alejandra Pizarnik, Simone Weil, and Ellen Willis. All women.

Forgive me if it’s scattered, but I think it speaks to the fragmented spirit of the moment.

* * *

sexism combined with anger was always potentially fascistic

she is afraid of not knowing how to name
what doesn’t exist

if feminism had taught me anything, it was that the liberated woman
was a myth

But why bother with diagnoses at all,
if a diagnosis is but a restatement of the problem?

it is the longing for happiness that is potentially radical

How are we all so brave as to take step after step?

When I say “hope,” I don’t mean hope for anything in particular.

every party is totalitarian — potentially, and by aspiration

I guess I just mean thinking that it’s worth it to keep one’s eyes open.

Women in a patriarchy have every reason to
distrust male sexuality and fear their own.