[Bookwoman] Calyx

[Lee Anne Phillips]

The petals of a flower are contained within a 
structure called the calyx, the green leaves of
which surround the bud before it blooms. 
For thirty years, a magazine by the same name 
has served as a cradle of women's writing and 
art, even at the very beginning, when women's 
voices and creations were almost totally silenced 
in "mainstream" journals and galleries. 

In thirty years, sadly, not all that much has 
changed. Only a quarter of published work, 
perhaps less, either in art or literature, has 
been created by women, and most of that 
hasn't terribly well appreciate nor remunerative. 

The general attitude back in 1976 was that 
*serious* literature, *serious* art, required a 
"masculine vigor" and that the "feminine 
influence" on both was a pernicious one, an 
attitude one might suppose had died at the 
turn of the century, along with the "white 
man's burden," the efficacy of drinking radium 
water to cure gout and rheumatism, and other 
popular delusions.

But it hasn't, although those who believe this
have become slightly embarrassed by their
prejudices, much as racists have become less
noisy, but still blather on about "Willie 
Horton's" and the "security of our (southern)
borders."

Calyx Journal and Calyx Books were the first
to publish many female writers and artists, 
including Julia Alvarez,  Ellen Bass, Chitra 
Divakaruni, Molly Gloss, Linda Hogan, Natalie 
Goldberg, Barbara Kingsolver, Colleen McElroy, 
Sharon Olds, Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska
(the first English translations in the U.S.A.), and 
Eleanor Wilner, among many others. CALYX 
Journal was also the first U.S. publisher of color 
art reproductions of the work of Frida Kahlo.

All of these women are household names for many 
of us, but might well not have been if it had been
left to the "Old Boy's" network that nourishes many
male artists and writers.

Each and every issue has been a treat, offering
glimpses of women who might someday be famous,
most of whom ought to be famous today.

The current 30th anniversary issue contains 
nineteen poems, five short stories, sixteen b/w
art reproductions and photographs, and nine
book reviews by thirty-six women, including

     Today you told me you adored me --
         . . .
     All day, I got to walk around knowing I was
     adored.
     It felt like silk, slippery around me.
     It teased my tongue
     like champagne.
          . . . 
     I understood luxury --

       -- excerpted from Adored, 
           by Susan Bockhoff

and 

     Evangelina Diaz, age fifty-one, moved in with 
     her younger sister two weeks to the day after 
     her husband sat down in his brown recliner to 
     watch pay-per-view boxing and never got up 
     again. The husband, Jose Maria Diaz, had been
     an unmemorable and taciturn fellow of fifty-four 
     whose most impressive quality was an unusually 
     large and bulbous nose that hung on his face like 
     a shiny cocoon waiting to break free.
               -- excerpted from A Candle for Chema
                   by Andrea Saenz

and 

     Question: What is Beethoven doing now?

     Answer:   De-composing. 
    
    This was my favorite riddle as a child,
     long before I understood it.

     I imagined the great composer sitting up 
                     in his grave,
     gray hair waving in the oxygenless air
                     like sea anenomes.

          -- excerpted from Decomposing
              by Catherine Alber

Check them out, subscribe, or at least 
think good thoughts about one of the
few reliable sources of women's words
and art left in the USA.

     http://www.proaxis.com/~calyx/

Cheers,

Lee Anne