Grace Paley, 1922-2007

I am so sad that Grace Paley has died. She was a great writer --every word as pungent as pumpernickel-- with a great subject, the daily lives of women in jewish-immigrant-bohemian-left New York. In her short stories yiddishkeit meets radicalism meets Greenwich Village meets Malamud/Roth/ Leonard Michaels/ maybe even the Isaac Bashevis Singer of "A Friend of Kafka" --except that none of those writers, Singer every once in a while excepted, was particularly interested in what was going on with women.

I knew Grace a bit and surely there was never a kinder, more self-effacing writer of her stature in the history of the world. Sometimes she reminded me of James Merrill's remark that Elizabeth Bishop engaged in an "instinctive, modest, life-long impersonation of an ordinary woman." In the early l990s Grace put me up in her house in Vermont when I was snowed in after giving a talk at Dartmouth. We sat at her dining table and talked about children -- my daughter, her grandson, the inner-city kids who'd spent summers at the house decades before. We also talked, rather improbably, about agriculture -- her husband, Bob Nichols, had taken up the cause of local dairy farmers who were being squeezed by big producers. For all her warmth and unpretension, Grace had her share of reserve, or perhaps I was too shy. And so I did not ask any of the questions that flitted through my mind-- about writing, politics, the left, feminism, her life, life. I spent my one evening in her house talking about children and cows.

Grace was a tireless activist. Sometimes, I thought, too tireless. I used to see her at small demonstrations around town in the l980s, and wish someone would chain her to her desk -- lots of people can march, I would think to myself ( not that lots of people were doing so) but only Grace can write like Grace. She would have been horrified by such an elitist thought, I know--to her, the movement was life. She often said she liked to be out in the streets. And maybe her writing was as original, compressed, fresh and energetic as it was because it had to fight for attention with stopping the war(s), liberating women, bringing creative writing into the public schools, working for that elusive future where it's the defense department, and not the daycare center, that has to hold a bake sale.

How far away that world seems now -- her Greenwich Village, a warren of walkups inhabited by troublemakers, poets and single mothers (sometimes all three in one person) has become a millionaire's paradise cum NYU dorm. The aunts and uncles who quarreled over Stalin and Trotsky are dead. As for politics, Nation asssociate editor Richard Kim reminded me that Grace signed a group letter attacking an article I wrote for the magazine way back in 1993, in which I challenged her friend Sara Ruddick's influential book, "Maternal Thinking," which argued that bringing up children , by its very nature, connected mothers with peace and progressive politics. I guess I won that argument. But if I'd lost it, we'd be living in a better world. My books are all boxed up at the moment, so I can't quote from her wonderful stories. But here's a poem I've had up for years on my bulletin board:

The Poet's Occasional Alternative

I was going to write a poem 

I made a pie instead     it took

about the same amount of time 

of course the pie was a final

draft     a poem would have had some

distance to go     days and weeks and

much crumpled paper

the pie already had a talking

tumbling audience among small

trucks and a fire engine on 

the kitchen floor 

everybody will like this pie

it will have apples and cranberries

dried apricots in it     many friends

will say     why in the world did you 

make only one

this does not happen with poems

because of unreportable

sadness I decided to

settle this morning for a re-

sponsive eatership     I do not

want to wait a week     a year     a

generation for the right

consumer to come along

***

Under the wit and humor and brio, the "unreportable sadness." Isn't that always the way?

Comments (26)

1. The Poet's Occasional Alternative

   beautiful poem -- way better than the "rhubarb pie" people like to gobble up

   as a musician, i know the feeling well!

   Posted by frosty zoom at 08/26/2007 @ 3:41pm

2. I spent a great deal of time talking with Grace Paley in Stockholm over some days in the autumn of 1968. She was not only a very good writer, but an extremely good person. The two don't necessarily go together. She cared far beyond herself, and she listened. Really listened. This to no small extent contributed to the quality of her writing. She was never selfish. She was never a fool. She displayed not a trace of self-importance. She will indeed be missed in the world of letters.

   Posted by sloper at 08/26/2007 @ 4:55pm

3. Well, Ms Paley, in addition to being an anti-war activist, was a noted feminist, so....

   we won't see "V" here celebrating her life and if "ZERO" shows up he'll have something negative to say about her!

   Posted by Mask at 08/26/2007 @ 7:23pm

4. Sorry Katha, but who was this person?

   Posted by ACook at 08/26/2007 @ 9:50pm

5. Sorry Katha, but who was this person?

   Posted by ACOOK 08/26/2007 @ 9:50pm |

   i love the 21st century [en.wikipedia.org]

   Posted by frosty zoom at 08/27/2007 @ 12:44am

6. i love the 21st century---Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 08/27/2007 @ 12:44am

   Yeah, but where are the flying cars, food in pill form, and Pan-Am flights to the Space Hotel and Moon Base?

   BTW, Gonzales resigning, should have a thread on that soon!

   Posted by Mask at 08/27/2007 @ 09:00am

7. Posted by HMAN23 08/27/2007 @ 09:55am

   Separate the wheat from the chaff on the posts today....the ones whooping it up, saying "YES! We got Gonzo, Cheney & Bush are next" (i.e. HSUBFOOLS), and not realizing that when Rumsfeld resigned...

   we STILL got "The Surge" and Democrats voting to support the Iraq supplemental spending bill....

   will tell you who is and isn't a bit naive!

   Posted by Mask at 08/27/2007 @ 10:00am

8. Posted by MASK 08/27/2007 @ 10:00am

   Mask, I'm not saying Bush and Cheney are next, but Gonzales leaving is a good thing. And may I remind you, something YOU were pretty convinced would not occur (no "downside" for Bush, etc., etc., etc.).

   hehe

   Posted by Hman23 at 08/27/2007 @ 10:19am

9. Posted by HMAN23 08/27/2007 @ 10:19am

   Answered on Mr Nichols' new thread.

   Posted by Mask at 08/27/2007 @ 10:42am

10. Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 08/27/2007 @ 11:38am

    Well, hey, no offense, buddy, but the closest you Canadians get to space travel is ROBOT ARM on OUR Space Shuttle.

    heheh

    (oh, okay, eh...and Capt. Marc Garneau!)

    Posted by Mask at 08/27/2007 @ 12:05pm

11. Posted by MASK 08/27/2007 @ 12:05pm

    so........................

    it's got a great big canada sticker on it!

    BTW miss pollitt, please excuse the frivolity. keep shining that light on such wonderful (from what i can see) people as ms. paley. thank you, very much.

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/27/2007 @ 2:00pm

12. Well, at least they got all that 9-11 stuff right.

    Posted by MALCONTENT 08/27/2007 @ 2:38pm

    triple ouch

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/27/2007 @ 2:45pm

13. Posted by MALCONTENT 08/27/2007 @ 2:38pm

    No, of course not, Eric. As RESE has explained Jesuit-funded Mossad kamikaze guys took over those flights under Saudi names, after planting the camoflauged thermite in Building 7, and then rammed the towers while simultaneously detonating small tactical nukes built with Vatican gold given to them by the Nazis to buy their silence on the Holocaust, which didn't really involve any Jews, but was just a trick to get the naive United Nations the power to form Israel, which no has Hitler's Brain in a computer built by Halliburton running the Council on Foreign Relations, in whose basement Jack Kennedy, Bobby, Martin, Marilyn Monroe, and John Lennon all reside in suspended animation!

    Duh!

    Posted by Mask at 08/27/2007 @ 2:53pm

14. Posted by MASK 08/27/2007 @ 2:53pm

    octuple ouch!!!!!!!!

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/27/2007 @ 2:57pm

15. What a lovely post, an interesting woman, and a beautiful poem. I had never heard of Grace Paley, but you make me want to read her. Thank you.

    Posted by cbangasser at 08/27/2007 @ 4:32pm

16. Posted by CBANGASSER 08/27/2007 @ 4:32pm

    my local library shows 4 Paley books in their collection

    plus, there free

    (i knew there was a reason i paid taxes)

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/27/2007 @ 5:41pm

17. I'm not exactly a poetry fan, Katha. Nevertheless, I'm glad that you have a literary streak. Amy Goodman has had Maya Angelou and Alice Walker on Democracy Now several times in the last year.

    Posted by Rapaport at 08/27/2007 @ 6:00pm

18. Posted by MASK 08/27/2007 @ 2:53pm

    Or there were more coincidences on one day, than ever before. And the government would release the evidence it does have, that everything is, as they say it is.

    More likely, the truth is lost, amongst the paraniod conspiracy theories and the propoganda.

    Eric

    Posted by Malcontent at 08/27/2007 @ 7:53pm

19. Thanks for the poem - I hadn't ever read it, and that's a great gift of a poem. thanks. I'm 35 - and there is something that I don't know what to say about having the generation that inspires me leave the world

    -therese

    Posted by therese at 08/27/2007 @ 9:38pm

20. Obviously nothing but praise for the surreal and morally reprehensible lifestyle will be tolerated here as all other posts are deleted!

    Posted by RIO BRAVO 08/27/2007 @ 11:45pm

    i'm baffled

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/27/2007 @ 11:53pm

21. Posted by MALCONTENT 08/27/2007 @ 7:53pm

    Bush is incompetent and didn't do enough on the August Presidential Briefing....

    but that's not ENOUGH for the conspiracy guys. It HAS to be "thermite in Building 7" and "hologram jets hitting the Towers which were blown up by Israeli nukes".

    Posted by Mask at 08/28/2007 @ 09:31am

22. Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 08/27/2007 @ 11:53pm

    Yeah, me too....what the hell is RIO babbling about?!?!?

    And what "morally reprehensible lifestyle" is he talking about?!?!?

    Posted by Mask at 08/28/2007 @ 09:32am

23. And what "morally reprehensible lifestyle" is he talking about?!?!?

    Posted by MASK 08/28/2007 @ 09:32am

    yours. (just kidding)

    his. (probably)

    mine. (eek! where are the cameras)

    grace paley's. (poetry and dairy farming--scandalous--these cows might have eaten "leaves of grass")

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/28/2007 @ 1:14pm

24. Posted by FROSTY ZOOM 08/28/2007 @ 1:14pm

    Well, I WOULD say that RIO might be referring to Paley being a divorcee'...but then again RIO will likely be voting for THRICE-divorced Rudy Giuliani....

    or he might be referring to the fact she gave up being a housewife to work....but then, he'd have to explain why he supports Condi Rice, Jeanne Kirkpatrick, and Kay Bailey Hutchinson!

    heheh

    Posted by Mask at 08/28/2007 @ 3:58pm

25. Posted by bwyskida at 08/29/2007 @ 01:03am

26. Posted by BWYSKIDA 08/29/2007 @ 01:03am

    i can see you're into minimalist poetry. very moving.

    ‡+]

    Posted by frosty zoom at 08/29/2007 @ 02:35am