I believe that each of us is given one sentence at birth, and we spend the rest of our life trying to read that sentence and make sense of it.
—
Li Young Lee
Tell Our Daughters by Besmilr Brigham
- Frances McDormand by Willem Dafoe
- A.M. Homes by Gregory Crewdson
- Jafar Panahi by Liza Béar
- Padgett Powell by V. Hunt
- Butch Morris by David Henderson
- William Pope.L by Martha Wilson
- John Elderfield by David Carrier
- Malcolm Morley by Richard Francis
Interviews
- Thomas Nozkowski by Saul Ostrow
Artists on Artists
- Sold Out by Vess Quinlan
- Dogleg by Janet Kieffer
- Two Poems by Jayne Cortez
- Shrinking Away by Jim Northrup
- A Fling with a Demon Lover by Kelvin Christopher James
- Six Works by Alexis Rockman
- Solitude Ain’t Loneliness by Michelle T. Clinton
- Appointment in Wipe-ola by Archie Rand
- Considering the Void by President Jimmy Carter
- Hey, Joe by Ben Neihart
- From a Sealed Room by Rachel Kadish
- Tell Our Daughters by Besmilr Brigham
- Untitled by Sawyer Shefts
- The United States of Poetry by Bob Holman
- Two Poems by Susan Wheeler
- My Best Friend by Dirk Standen
First Proof
each is beautiful
a woman’s life
makes it (that awareness)
through her touch
descendants
of strict age
set against vanity
not secure in loveliness
a girl is born
like a little bird opening its wing
she lifts her face
in a down of feathers
a rose,
opens its leaves
with such a natural care
that we give words for
petal deep
in the imagination
a word becomes
a bitter thing
or a word is
an imagination
tell our daughters they are
fragile as a bird
strong as the rose
deep as a word
and let them make
their own growing time
big with tenderness
From “Tell Our Daughters,’’ Magdalene Syndrome Gazette; 31 New American Poets; I Hear My Sisters Saying.
Related
Scientists, motherhood, and other probings of the female body.
Cameron Shaw draws from examples in explaining her own connection to Lisa Pearson’s collection of work by female visual artists and writers.
Who gets written into history? Who is forgotten? What are the conditions under which eradication can occur?
Originally published in
BOMB 55,
Spring 1996
Featuring interviews with Frances McDormand, A.M. Homes, Padgett Powell, Tina Girouard, William Pope. L, Butch Morris, Malcolm Morley, Jafar Panahi, and John Elderfield.
