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What Kind of Country This Was: On Jennifer Martelli’s “Dear_________,”

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

In preparation for tomorrow’s Notebooks Collective reading, I’ve been spending time with Jennifer Martelli’s work, specifically “Dear_________,”. Read on for some thoughts on this poem.

Content note: This post discusses a poem containing references to abortion, bodily distress, and patriarchal violence.

“Dear_________,” by Jennifer Martelli

*

Today, to ease my anxiety, I thought of the scariest scene in The Shining—

remember we saw it at the movies our last spring together, just after my abortion,

and the hostage crisis only six months old. It wasn’t the sister ghosts or

the ghost in the green bathtub. It was the opening scene. It was the vastness

of America and those mountains as the little Volkswagen crossed the divide

into a place so big, so deep, only a helicopter or bald bird of prey

could follow the road and understand what kind of country this was.

And then, at the movie’s very end, that old photograph hanging on the wall

of the haunted hotel: Jack Nicholson in the foreground, July 4, 1921. His eyes

the eyes of a raptor. He’d always been there, celebrating America’s birthday.

I see you in many men: angry men, bloated, omnipresent, powerful, afraid

of their own impossible hungers. I was so hungry after not eating for six weeks.

Do you remember the Fatted Calf down the street from the clinic? That rare burger

in the plastic basket filled with thick fries? Finally, I could keep something down.

originally published in Action, Spectacle

Jennifer Martelli’s “Dear_________,” begins with a paradox: “Today, to ease my anxiety, I thought of the scariest scene in The Shining—” The speaker then takes us into the opening sequence, in which a small Volkswagen travels through a mountain landscape while the camera follows from high above. What frightens the speaker is the scale of the view: “the vastness / of America,” the mountains, the road crossing into a place so immense that “only a helicopter or bald bird of prey” could follow it and comprehend “what kind of country this was.”

That gaze reappears at the end of The Shining, in the old photograph hanging in the haunted hotel. Jack Nicholson’s character stands in the foreground at a July Fourth celebration in 1921, though the film has taken place decades later. “He’d always been there,” Martelli writes, “celebrating America’s birthday.”

This move underscores the horror of realizing that the film’s violent man is part of the hotel’s past and, additionally troubling, how he may never have been separate from that past. Patriarchal violence is not an interruption of the national story. It is already inside the photograph, the celebration, and the country’s account of itself.

From there, the poem turns toward its unnamed recipient: “I see you in many men.” The blank in the title permits the addressee to remain particular while also becoming representative. One man proliferates into “angry men, bloated, omnipresent, powerful,” men frightened by “their own impossible hungers.”

That word, hungers, carries the poem into its final intimate turn, when the speaker remembers the Fatted Calf restaurant down the street. After six weeks of being unable to eat, she orders a rare burger and thick fries. “Finally,” the poem ends, “I could keep something down.”

The difference between the men’s hunger and the speaker’s hunger is crucial. Their “impossible hungers” appear boundless: appetites for power, control, possession, and permanence. The speaker’s hunger is physical and finite. Her body needs food. The ability to receive it, to eat and keep it down, is ordinary, but the poem makes that ordinariness profound.

The poem’s movement is almost cinematic in reverse. It begins with a camera hovering above an enormous country, then moves into a hotel, an old photograph, a man’s predatory eyes, a clinic, and finally a basket of food. Its field of vision continually narrows. Against the fantasy of the omnipresent man who has “always been there,” the poem offers the specificity of a body returning to itself.

This is part of what makes “Dear_________,” especially resonant for a reading supporting abortion access. The poem does not reduce abortion to an abstract argument, but neither does it pretend that bodily experience exists outside politics. The private memory and the national history cannot be cleanly separated. The country enters the body through anxiety, illness, appetite, danger, and relief.

Martelli leaves us with difficult questions about hunger. Whose appetites are treated as limitless? Whose body is made into contested territory? What does it mean for a country to be split between vulnerability and violence? And what might it mean, after all that vastness and predation, for the last word to belong to a person who can finally eat and move forward?

You can learn more about the reading here:
https://thenotebookscollective.com/event/a-notebooks-reading-for-abortion-access/

reading afterthoughts & intro

José Angel Araguz 1 Comment
A photograph of a stack of copies of Ruin & Want at Porter Square Bookstore.
Ruin & Want out in the wild (of Porter Square Bookstore).

Just a quick post to share some thoughts and pics after last night’s reading. I had a great time sharing the stage with Jason Prokowiew, Maxine West, Leticia Priebe Rocha, and Thuy Phan. Thank you to everyone at Tell-All Boston and Porter Square Bookstore who made last night’s reading possible! Special thanks to everyone who attended in person and virtually!

Below as well is the introduction that I wrote for the event. In this intro, I spend some time musing on the theme of last night’s reading, “Life on the Margins” as well as setting up some context before reading from Ruin & Want.

Consider it like DVD extras (‘member those, haha). Enjoy!

I’d like to now say a few words about tonight’s theme of “Life on the Margins” as well as set up the excerpts from my memoir I’ll be reading.

A photograph of last night's readers.
Reader pic! From left: me, Leticia, Jason, Thuy, Maxine, and Ethan Gilsdorf (emcee). Photo credit: Jason Prokowiew.

When I discuss marginalization with my students, I often hold up the clipboard I have in my hand while lecturing. I hold it up and point to the margins on the page, how the mainstream is what’s centered, is what and who’s allowed space in the world. I tell them that the margins are what is not centered, and thus are forced to a space that is literally uncomfortable to write in.

Seriously: If you’ve ever had to make use of a page’s margins, then you’re familiar with the squeezing in of as many words as you can because you must, your hand cramped around a fleeting expression, an expression that takes you away from the center, an expression that cannot happen there, an expression that can only happen in this other space. And this other space is shrinking. Each year there are less and less safe spaces to write and be a writer in.

Now, the fragmentary journey that is my memoir, Ruin & Want, is a challenge but one I hope people will take on. Which is to say: if I could have written this in a straight line, I would have, but please know care and heart went into this just like anything else I create.

A photo of a black cat sitting before a laptop on whose screen a writer reads.
Semilla, my cat, watching me read via livestream. Photo credit: Ani Araguz.

Some content notices and context: I would like to make note that the subjects of sexual content, sexual assault, and eating disorders are brought up in what I’m reading.

Back to the word fragmentary: what does it mean for us tonight? Tonight, it means y’all just need to sit back and cruise with me. Know that the core of the memoir centers on what it was like to be a high school student from Matamoros MX preyed upon by their high school English teacher in Corpus Christi, TX. Know that there will be references to works by James Joyce but don’t worry, you won’t be quizzed on them. Know that, toward the end of the excerpt, I engage with the e.e. cummings poem “May I feel said he.” Know we’ll be dipping in and out of memory and different times in my life as well as speaking across moments with a sense of urgency, intimacy, and human pulse. This is the kind of prose I dreamt of for this manuscript.

I remember describing the project early on as a book where each page creaked like loose floorboards late at night when you’re simultaneously hoping to not be heard while also hearing everything around you acutely.

Come walk with me.

Abrazos,

= José =