Sinister Wisdom 100: Anniversary

By Sinister Wisdom

Sinister Wisdom 100: Anniversary celebrates the fortieth anniversary of Sinister Wisdom in 2016. When Meg Christian and Cris Williamson sang “Anniversary” at Carnegie Hall on November 26, 1982, they were celebrating the tenth anniversary of Olivia Records—and the launch of the womyn’s music movement. Then, Olivia and the womyn’s music movement had flowered beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Williamson said about the concert, “History was made that night in that legendary hall filling up and spilling over with an audience—mostly women—from all over the world.” On that night in 1982, who would have imagined Sinister Wisdom, then seven years old, would still be publishing the best in lesbian literature, art, and culture over thirty years later?
Sinister Wisdom is one element of a long history of lesbian culture—and a bold reach to the future with each issue published. I am pleased to be the steward of Sinister Wisdom during this auspicious year. Sinister Wisdom 100: Anniversary has many voices—old and new—singing in harmony. Enjoy this concert of our anniversary and our one hundredth issue. Join the celebration of the Sinister Wisdom fortieth anniversary! Together we can imagine another forty years of sinister lesbian imagination.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sinister Wisdom
• Release date: Sep 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781944981259

Sinister Wisdom

Sinister Wisdom is a multicultural lesbian literary & art journal that publishes four issues each year. Publishing since 1976, Sinister Wisdom works to create a multicultural, multi-class lesbian space. Sinister Wisdom seeks to open, consider and advance the exploration of lesbian community issues. Sinister Wisdom recognizes the power of language to reflect our diverse experiences and to enhance our ability to develop critical judgment as lesbians evaluating our community and our world.

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Table of Contents

Notes for a Magazine

Sinister Wisdom Fall Fundraising Campaign Acknowledgments

Letter to the Editor

Sarah Hahn Campbell

Curve

Giedrė Kazlauskaitė, translated by Rimas Uzgiris

Wedding Dress

[The army that I must muster]

Vanda

Juliana

Véronique Béquin

Cup

Tonight I Fly

Sarah Rauch

Addition

Chua Yini

The Moonlight Represents My Heart

Andrena Zawinski

After My Mother’s Death,

When Paris Was a Woman

After

Suzana Tratnik, translated by Kelly Lenox and Hana Kovač

The Good Jeans

Alexis Cribbs

The Negatives

Jewelle Gomez

Lesbian Poem

More Than One

Lynda Koolish

Photograph Series

Artist Statement

Diane Furtney

What to Wear

Jessica McKenna

Portrait of an Artist

Aleph Altman-Mills

Disgaybled, In Five Parts

Tímea Gulisio

The Donkey

Louise Moore

Escape

Lynette Yetter

WomanWorks at BK and Mary’s

Adela Zamudio, translated by Lynette Yetter

End of the Century (1907)

Clara Chow

Gelato

Jenny Kurzweil

Crossing the Line

Janet Mason

Conception

Joan Cofrancesco

Poems

Barbara Haas

Winter Harvest

J.M. Latham

Outer Banks

Pegasus

Jean Taylor

Standing Up to Be Counted

Lynda Koolish

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Bolinas

Amoja Three Rivers Remembered

Book Review

Contributors

Credits

Advertisements

Back Issues

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Back Cover

Notes for a Magazine

While working on this issue of Sinister Wisdom —and thinking about the fortieth anniversary of Sinister Wisdom in 2016, the song Anniversary has been playing in my mind. When Meg Christian and Cris Williamson sang Anniversary at Carnegie Hall on November 26, 1982, they were celebrating the tenth anniversary of Olivia Records—and the launch of the womyn’s music movement. Then, Olivia and the womyn’s music movement had flowered beyond anyone’s wildest expectations.

In the song, Christian and Williamson open with this verse:

I know, you know

just how happy we ought to be

the mother of invention

has lead us here tonight

step into the light

get the spirit

you can hear it

in the land

They continue with the chorus:

anniversary

anniversary

anniversary

ten years we are changers

in the making we are changed

face the music

it’s a night dream

turning it over turning it over again

Williamson said about the concert, History was made that night in that legendary hall filling up and spilling over with an audience—mostly women—from all over the world. On that night in 1982, who would have imagined Sinister Wisdom, then seven years old, would still be publishing the best in lesbian literature, art, and culture over thirty years later?

Even without imagining this future, Sinister Wisdom continues to thrive. Sinister Wisdom is one element of a long history of lesbian culture—and a bold reach to the future with each issue published. I am pleased to be the steward of Sinister Wisdom during this auspicious year. Sinister Wisdom 100: Anniversary, the issue you hold in your hand, has many voices—old and new—singing in harmony. Enjoy this concert of our anniversary and our one hundredth issue.

As Sinister Wisdom 100: Anniversary goes to press, I am grateful for the support of many donors and readers. Some of you know that the past months have been difficult for me personally; in addition, I have taken on the administrative work of the journal, including managing the subscription database and the accounting. The kindness of readers, subscribers, and lesbian supporters has made this transition much easier. I am especially grateful to Elana Dykewomon for her assistance and general good cheer, to Megan Springate for keeping the mail arriving to me no matter where I am and for her friendship and support of me and my work, and to the board of Sinister Wisdom for their assistance and commitment to the journal. Thank you all!

Now, join me in continuing the celebration of the Sinister Wisdom Fortieth Anniversary! Together we can imagine another forty years of sinister lesbian imagination.

Julie R. Enszer, PhD

Spring 2016

Sinister Wisdom Fall Fundrising Campaign Acknowledgments

Thank you to all of the supporters of the Sinister Wisdom fall fundraising campaign! We raised over $4,900 to support Sinister Wisdom during 2016.

Sinister Wisdom 100: Anniversary Donor List

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Error in listing? Name missing? I apologize for any errors. Please bring it to my attention at [e-mail] so that I can correct it immediately.

If you missed the Sinister Wisdom fall fundraising campaign, make a gift online at www.SinisterWisdom.org.

Letter to the Editor

Dear Julie,

Looking at the new issue, I can’t help wondering why Sinister Wisdom is so focused on the past, and on a very particular past: 1970s USA lesbian-feminism with a separatist tinge, which was inadvertently USA-separatist as well as gender separatist. Of course it is interesting to revisit these documents, but there are other things that would interest me as a reader a lot more, at least alongside the blasts from the past: a debate about pinkwashing, (with an essay by Sarah Schulman!), a discussion of lesbian/gay/queer political investment in the marriage issue, and what that means, articles about lesbian or indeed women’s movements in the Middle East, Russia or Latin America, something about women’s presses today in the US, UK and Canada at least.

Right now some of the most interesting American poets are lesbians: Suzanne Gardinier, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Linda Bierds, Natalie Diaz, Kay Ryan, Naomi Replansky, Eileen Myles, Yvette Christiansë (who is South African, & black, but lives in the US)... among others … all ages, colors, shapes and sizes, and mostly politically committed, whether as leftists or ecologists. One of the most prominent poets in Francophone Canada is Nicole Brossard, a lesbian and a feminist—and her work has been widely translated. The Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom is a lesbian—Carol Ann Duffy. I realize Sinister Wisdom isn’t focused on poetry, but when it’s included, I (again, maybe an atypical reader) would like to see work by or about writers like these, as well as the emerging voices that hold to that first thought best thought aesthetic. Also, for some of the abovementioned; Replansky—who is 95 now, Gardinier, Pratt, who has always been deeply involved with the lesbian/gay and feminist .... a bit of critical attention and some new readers for their work would hardly be amiss. The new generation of African American poets, many of whom have been mentored by the Cave Canem workshops, includes lesbian and gay poets whose primary public identification may not be that, even though it is a driving force, and source of subject matter, in their work... and that too would be a subject for critical discussion

I hope this doesn’t offend, and/but I know the journal has welcomed reader feedback under various editors, and knowing you, I am sure it’s the case with you as well.

Very best,

Marilyn Hacker

Editor Note: I always appreciate feedback! These comments shaped this issue—and future ones.

Curve

Sarah Hahn Campbell

One night, after love-making in the amber light of the street lamp outside our window, the rain sound gentle in my ears, Lia murmurs, You know, I don’t really think I’m lesbian . I’m not attracted to other women. Just to you. If you died, I’d probably date a man again. My throat tightens. Half-asleep, her soft arms around my naked body, her warm lips against my collar bone. I think: when I realized I loved her, years before this moment, when we were both married to men, the earth cracked open beneath me. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to be different. I was a farm girl from Iowa; I wanted a cozy house and a family. But my heart had insisted, nagging me; I had never felt love like this; I had never known I possessed such desire. All this when she and I had only grazed fingertips, stood too close at a party, locked eyes for too long in the midst of conversation.

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The word lesbian is first recorded in the 1590s, in reference to the ancient island of Lesbos, a Greek island in the northeastern Aegean Sea where Sappho, the great lyric poet, lived. Sappho wrote erotic poetry about both women and men, but in 1590, lesbian’ only referred to a type of mason’s lead rule used on Lesbos: this rule could be bent to fit the curves of a molding and measure it. For the next three hundred years, the term was only used in that way. Finally, in 1890, the same time women had begun to lobby for suffrage across western Europe and North America, the term lesbianism appeared as a reference to homosexual relations between women. The noun lesbian" was first recorded in 1925.

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Even after Lia and I spent a week in the Yukon kissing and caressing each other in the secrecy of a tent, then pretending to be merely best friends by day – I never thought the word lesbian. We never mentioned it. We both believed we had discovered some rare beautiful way of being with another person, something that could potentially supplement our marriages. But then I got home and my husband Dave wrapped me in his arms and kissed me and I disliked the bristle of his beard and his angular body, the awkward rhythm in our bed later. The next morning, when he had left for work, I called my friend Sarah in New York City and told her the entire story. Have you considered that you might be–lesbian? she asked gently. I remember the way my breath stopped. No. Me? I have long hair!

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In 1852, the poet Emily Dickinson conducted an intense, passionate correspondence with her sister-in-law, Susan Gilbert. I have but one thought, Susie, this afternoon of June, and that of you, and I have one prayer, only; dear Susie, that is for you. . . I need you more and more, and the great world grows wider, and dear ones fewer and fewer, every day that you stay away. . .My heart is full of you, none other than you is in my thoughts, yet when I seek to say to you something not for the world, words fail me. . . Scholars cannot agree whether Dickinson was a lesbian or bisexual or simply a straight woman writing in nineteenth century loving language to a dear friend.

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When was I sure? I told Dave I was lesbian before I had actually slept with a woman. He wanted to know, Are you sure? I was. In my dreams, I traced her jawline and kissed every inch of her, and I had never dreamed of any man like that. Awake, my thoughts contained only her. Dave and I read a book called Living Two Lives: In Love with a Woman, Married to a Man, which contained case study after case study of women who had discovered what I had. It made us both sad, and it convinced us to separate. Then? Lia was absent; she had chosen her marriage and shut me out; I fled to New York and haunted bookstores, where I discovered Sarah Waters, Adrienne Rich. Back in Alaska, I tried and failed in that pre-Netflix world to find lesbian movies. Then October happened. The Forest Service cabin – Lia and I met there because her husband had told her she should try it all before she made her egregious decision – we made love all night.

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No one doubts that Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West were lovers, but no scholar calls them lesbians. In 1922, when Virginia met Vita at a dinner party, Vita and her husband were publicly bi-sexual, their marriage publicly open. By 1926, Virginia and Vita had begun an affair, which Leonard Woolf apparently tolerated because he so desperately wished Virginia to be happy. But Virginia couldn’t be happy. She wrote to Vita, Look here Vita – throw over your man, and we’ll go to Hampton Court and dine on the river together and walk in the garden in the moonlight and come home late and have a bottle of wine and get tipsy, and I’ll tell you all the things I have in my head, millions, myriads – They won’t stir by day, only by dark on the river. Think of that. Throw over your man, I say, and come. But Vita had other lovers, other lives to live. Virginia wasn’t all.

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I loved only Lia; I desired her; I wanted to grow old with her. I wanted to lose myself in her, and then I almost did. When she died, I wanted to die, too. What was I without her? I’m skipping the eight beautiful years we shared, but it’s the pain that vibrates within me now. Now: exactly two years since she died. Two and a half years since we last touched. A few months after Lia died—suddenly, for no apparent reason, after a brief and inexplicable descent into insanity—my friend Ben detoured from a road trip across the country to stop at my house in Colorado, to check on me. All I wanted our entire conversation in my living room was to ask him to