Call for Work -- Unlikely Stories

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Date Posted: 17:05:22 07/23/03 Wed
Author: amy king
Subject: Call for Work

dear writers,

there is a new gay-lesbian-queer department in the muse apprentice guild edited by amy king

please share a good thing and notify your colleagues about this new department

here is amy's excellent introductory statement entitled "After the sum of scars..."
_____________________________________________

After the sum of scars �

Trying to articulate our individual realities, we often fall prey to traditional discourses that speak in umbrella-like terms meant to clarify what is �gay�, �Buddhist�, �female�, �elderly�, etc. However, the very plurality of everyone�s experiences fails these pigeonholes; the complexities of personhood spill from, stutter in, evade, fracture, blur and erode tidy definitions�and so, daily life inherently resists the narratives that group together, normalize and homogenize our lives, that attempt fairytale-transparent access to our lives.

Lesbians, gays, transgendered and queers have historically pursued common civil rights causes and have been rendered one of society�s primary sexual deviant groups, and so consequentially, each participant is read accordingly. The stranger on the street �knows� me because within my hand is another woman�s. But how do I know myself? The story I have inherited of two women holding hands does not encompass or explain my experiences nor does it provide tools to examine them with. A poetics that resists the pressures of assimilation and works against the bindings of certain knowledge, a poetics that plunges into, multiplies and celebrates our �deviant� label is in order.

The m.a.g. offers a place to recognize, note and use the scars identity marks us with while locating new methods to expose those limitations, examine the mechanisms of identification, and moreover, provides the exploratory space in which we can create and share new identifying gestures.

�And if, on laying Stein�s book aside, we feel that it is still impossible to accomplish the impossible, we are also left with the conviction that it is the only thing worth trying.�

�John Ashbery

sincerely,
august highland

muse apprentice guild
--"expanding the canon into the 21st century"
www.muse-apprentice-guild.com

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