by Karin B. Miller

If the ladies would only realize that they are the torch-bearers of civilization, which, as the great philosopher Confucius has said, is the art of being civil, the world would be a more pleasant place to live in. (Book of Etiquette, 1923)

I can’t remember which volume in my large collection of turn-of-the-century etiquette guides first got me hooked. I only know that its unintended humor—not to mention sexism and classism—compelled me to search for more.

One hundred years ago, etiquette books proliferated—most filled with words of wisdom for young women. Subjects included what to wear (“Dress for comfort, not fashion”), what to say (“Never take a man to task about anything”), how to act (“Never laugh or talk loudly in public”), where to go (“Never visit unfavorable cabarets”), and much more.

Here’s a great definition from the Book of Etiquette (1923): “Etiquette will make you dignified. It will make your actions and speech refined, polished, impressive. It will make you a leader instead of a follower, a participant instead of a looker-on. It will open the doors of the highest society to you, make you immune to all embarrassment, enable you to conduct yourself with ease and confidence at all times, under all circumstances.” Phew. What young woman wouldn’t want to master etiquette?

Above all, the guides taught conformity, propriety, and rules for living—how to write letters, properly visit neighbors, and leave calling cards (the number of rules regarding calling cards alone is mind-boggling); which books to read (and to avoid); which household skills to learn; how to make conversation, behave at a dance, and meet, date, and wed young men. It was enough to make a girl’s head spin. 

A few bold voices of the era stood out, aiming not to keep women in their place but to help them recognize their own smarts and savvy. Take this example: “As a rule, women are better conversationalists than men, being endowed with a readier talent for repartee, a quicker wit, and a keener intuition of the fitness of things.” That’s a quote from 1891 in the Jenness Miller Monthly, a popular women’s magazine.

And this one from Tokology (1897) by Alice Bunker Stockham, a Chicago obstetrician and gynecologist: “The nation not only needs strong men but strong women, strong in physical as well as mental development. This strength is required for prosecuting a persistent warfare against prevailing and existing wrongs, as well as for transmitting health and vigor to the coming generation.”

But these writers were rare. Most etiquette books held up an idealized young woman—sweet, quiet, content, hardworking, and virtuous. And some etiquette books—like Beautiful Girlhood, published by the Gospel Trumpet Company, and The Mirror of True Womanhood by the Rt. Rev. Monsignor Bernard O’Reilly—were girded by religiosity. O’Reilly was a rare male etiquette writer; and no wonder: while men were required to know how to bow properly and ask a woman to dance, it was women who had thousands of such rules to live by.

Today, a good deal of the advice in these books would be considered dated and often offensive. But most books offered some advice that still holds true. For his part, O’Reilly warned mothers of both daughters and sons against “giving their boys . . . so large a place in the house that their daughters either seem in the way or are obliged to devote themselves to the pleasure and caprice of their brothers.” Unfortunately, it was also O’Reilly who advised mothers to “impart to every one of your girls a deep horror of the licentious and romantic literature of the day” and “to turn [your daughter’s] eyes and her whole mind away from an indecent engraving or painting or sculpture, as she would withdraw her hand or arm from the contact of red-hot iron.”

Into this mix of myriad etiquette guides came Etiquette in Society, in Business, in Politics and at Home (1922) by Emily Post, a journalist, fiction writer, and high-society gal—really a society insider who was willing to share the secrets of etiquette with everyone. She was also a divorcée—not that that hurt her sales: in 1923 her book topped Publishers Weekly’s sales list for nonfiction.

Unlike other etiquette books’ often-uninspired content, covering such scintillating topics as shaking hands and using a napkin, Post infused her copy with lively characters and gave them tongue-in-cheek names such as the Richan Vulgars, the Toploftys, and the Kindharts.

In addition, Post suggested in her introduction that anyone could be a gentleman or a lady simply by following proper etiquette: “Best Society is not a fellowship of the wealthy, nor does it seek to exclude those who are not of exalted birth; but it is an association of gentle-folk, of which good form in speech, charm of manner, knowledge of the social amenities, and instinctive consideration for the feelings of others, are the credentials by which society the world over recognizes its chosen members.” What welcome words these must have been for newly arrived immigrants, society’s up-and-comers, the increasing numbers of young people moving to cities, and many more.

Still, rules were rules, and as I continued to find more etiquette volumes, I wanted to know how people, especially women, followed them back in the day. I started delving into turn-of-the-century newspapers to learn more about the time, and what I found were stories not about etiquette- and law-abiding girls and women but about the rule breakers.

One hundred years ago, women made headlines when they did the unexpected: suffragists led New York City police on a chase, working women protested unsafe working conditions, a teenage debutante worked to improve the lives of poor immigrants, female entrepreneurs built million-dollar businesses, and so forth.

I found the juxtaposition of what was expected of girls and women and how they actually acted in their everyday lives fascinating. That’s when I knew I had to start writing about all of this—both the rules and rule breakers of the day. 

A year ago, I launched a blog titled AttaGirl, circa 1900, with the tagline: “Not a good-old-day salute, AttaGirl, circa 1900, is more of a cheer for how far we’ve come.” Since then, I’ve written roughly 30 main entries—covering topics from turn-of-the-century interracial dating to corset controversies, plus lots of brief items, like recipes for homemade beauty concoctions, fashions of the day (i.e., shorter skirts to accommodate bicycle-riding girls), and quizzes to see if a modern understanding of etiquette would suffice back in 1900.

Over the year, the blog has experienced more than 8,000 page views, belying my small but loyal group of followers. Of course, you have to ignore a few hundred of those views as a whole bunch of Russian men (blogspot keeps track of reader geography) seemed to gravitate to my entry titled “Swimsuits and high heels.” It was not at all what they thought they’d find.

Americans still seek etiquette advice. The Emily Post Institute has obliged by publishing the 18th edition of Emily’s guide in October 2011, blogging, tweeting, and more. And just as at the turn of the century, the advice reflects the times. These days, however, the content offers not so much a listing of rules as “courteous behaviors and gracious actions.” Something that’s good for everyone.

You can find AttaGirl, circa 1900 at attagirl1900.blogspot.com. Karin B. Miller is also the editor of The Cancer Poetry Project, a Minnesota Book Award winner for best anthology. She is currently accepting submissions through December 31, 2011, for the second volume at www.cancerpoetryproject.com.

by William Reichard

When I was 17 years old I discovered the film Cabaret while flipping through channels on late-night TV. Seven years after its premiere, I hadn’t heard of the movie.  Something about the film’s style and mood drew me in and held me. Although I usually didn’t enjoy musicals, I kept watching. Michael York’s character seemed so familiar, but I couldn’t articulate why, at first. A gay teenager in rural Minnesota in 1980, I was as clueless as Sally Bowles, and lacked her bravado. As the film came to the scene where Michael York’s and Liza Minnelli’s characters discover they’ve been sleeping with the same man, I experienced the revelation just as Sally did, in real time, and I was just as shocked. For me, however, the experience was also one of unmitigated joy, as this was the first time I’d seen a gay man portrayed on television, in the movies, anywhere. For a closeted and fearful teenager, the experience was profound. I’d never seen myself reflected in anything I’d watched or read before, and I was a voracious reader, an avid watcher. Or if I had, I wasn’t ready until that moment to recognize it. I was hungry for any kind of affirmation, any sense that I wasn’t alone in the world, and there was Cabaret, broadcast right into my living room by ABC late on a Friday night.

by Wang Ping

The first time I applied for a literary grant was an accident. That morning in 1992, Lewis Warsh, a New York school poet, said he was going to the post office to mail the NEA application. “What’s that?” I asked. He was amazed I’d never heard of it.

“Come on, Lewis,” I laughed. “I’m new in America, and new to the poetry world.”

Lewis explained that NEA stood for National Endowment for the Arts, that every year it gave $20,000 to artists, musicians, poets, and writers.

“That’s a humongous amount of money. What do you do with it?”

He laughed. “Well, you can stop working yourself to the bone for a year or two and concentrate on your writing.”

My eyes opened wide. I had come to America with $26 in my pocket, and I’d been working several jobs at the same time, but my income had never surpassed $10,000. I wouldn’t even know what to do with the money if I got it. But of course I wouldn’t get it, even if I had the nerve to apply.

by Paul Zerby

 “There is an old style of teaching where the teacher has gold bricks of knowledge, reaches back,” said Father Jogues, reaching back over his shoulder, “and hands them out to the students,” miming distribution. “We believe in the pizza style, where each of us puts an ingredient on the pizza, and the facilitator,” he looked at me, “is the crust.” We were beginning the second of a four-session workshop called “Writing Fiction from Life” I’d been engaged to teach the Storyweavers, a group of seniors who had been meeting weekly over the past year to work on their writing, on their own, thank you. Father Jogues looked at me and waited. 

by Wendy Brown-Báez

June Jordan, born in Harlem in 1936, poet, activist, and teacher, was a prolific, passionate, and influential voice for liberation. She said that poetry “produces a dialogue among people that guards all of us against manipulation by our so-called leaders.”

Recently I was astonished by this e-mail from a friend and woman poet: “I had sent a distressed female friend in Afghanistan one of the early poems of William Butler Yeats, ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree.’ Even when I was young, that poem gave me solace. I was quite shocked when the poem was cut from her e-mail and sent back to me with the message: “Unfit material for military personnel.” . . . My friend was dying of curiosity to know what had been censored, and, she, too, was amazed. I decided that the poem was perhaps cut—though I don’t know for certain—because it speaks of peace, or makes one long for peace.”

Such is the power of poetry.

by Bill Meissner

—After hearing that if a literary agent didn’t recognize your name in her e-mail inbox, she would “delete your query unread.”

Once upon an ancient time, I was in love with paper. I was in love with words, with the way they pressed themselves, just so, like close friends, on the page. Words mattered, once upon a very different time.

Once I was in love with trees. The years of my life equaled the rings on a medium-sized oak tree—each ring another imprint of a dry year, or a rainy year, or something in between—and I wrote about each one. I used to slide my arms around trees and whisper to them, knowing someday they would cradle my words in their pulpy palms.

by Michael Fedo

Fifty years ago, as a college sophomore, I enrolled in a short story writing course taught by Harry Collins (not his real name). It was the only creative writing class I ever took and I got a C in it. According to Dr. Collins, my stories lacked verisimilitude and were weak in character development. Heedless of my instructor, over the subsequent decades I’ve published eight books—including one novel—and scores of articles, essays, short stories, and poems, each one a refutation of Prof. Collins’s discouraging words. I may have become a writer to dispel his perception that I wasn’t one.

Some Thoughts on Access by Twin Cities Writers

by Marion Gomez

John Lee Clark, Raymond Luczak, Tara Arlene Innmon, and Lynne Nerenberg took some time to relate their insights on access, inclusion, and the local literary scene. They will be featured at The Same Difference: Writers with Disabilities Reading happening at the Loft on June 3.

When asked what access means to him, poet and editor of the anthology Deaf American Poetry, John Lee Clark, responded, “Access has to do with opening doors that could be closed. If there isn’t even a door there, you don’t say that the wall is a barrier. It is just a wall, to anyone. But when there is a door, the dynamic is different. It could be open or closed to you. Gaining access may require payment, or that you are an employee and have a key. That’s fine. But when the reason you are not gaining access is your disability, that’s a problem. You may have the ticket or the key, yet the door is a barrier. That’s not fine.”

Sham-e-Ali Nayeem will appear with Tomás Riley for Equilibrium: Spoken Word at the Loft on April 16, 2011. She is kind to share some of her work prior to the event.

Expert

(Previously published in Mizna Journal, used by permission)

dusty desire

to suspend her in

a make-believe past.

traditional

customary

time warp.

instruct her

on her plight

you,

ventriloquist voyeur

telepathic authority

who climbs the bones of her spine

to get a better view.

expert of delusions

speaking of silhouette apparitions

draped in black,

non-entities restricted

to fantasy private spaces.

ponder, over this “kind” of woman.

grade A specimen B

displayed in glass case #5

scurrying about natural habitat

imaginary woman

indiscernible invisible kind of woman

distorted contorted

shadow woman.

but despite desperate wishes

you can’t claim her blood

healed wounds, heart

can’t explain what you don’t know

indispensable life-force

gut essence, dignity

unable to contain

nucleus incandescent spirit

substance, survival

who exists

in this modern present,

living       being.

Seeing Ourselves

No matter,

that I was told to

devalue

her,

Resilient with

kaleidoscopic

beauty

flourishing

even without

nourishment.

Told to

embrace

apologies for oppression

or pull the frayed edges

of fabric we have woven

holding our tale

in our words.

How do I see you through the

tangled caricature?

Us?

sharing story

over dinner as we

carefully weave

soul strands together

or the serenity of your smile,

as you wish me peace

on the subway platform.

Place of Birth

I write

my place of birth

with attention

to longitude and latitude

planetary alignment

when the earth on its

axis tipped

just so

as the sun set orange

on rocky Hyderbadi soil.

See the moon rise and new stars

arrange themselves

painstakingly in preparation

to guide me in dreams

to this place

long after,

lodging themselves

in my deepest memory

burrowed in the folds

and wisdom of infancy

their light

clinging to mild wind.

So what?

That I never lived

here more than a month

emerged from womb

to this small spot

a space forever

rewriting itself

in my heart

shape shifting

and transforming

as the skies

in earth’s cycles

the smoky smell of this air

have I imagined it?

I taste the air’s dryness here first.

This can never be taken from me

when the longing returns

my eyes reveal visions

from those first days

when the light reflected

only that way.

by Sarah Tieck

The tiny snowflakes falling in golden light remind me of a snow globe. Waves of ice cascade over the roof’s edge, curling like an ocean stingray. Even as I notice the beauty and whimsy, this winter seems endless—especially as I stare at a particularly ironic yard sign that presides over an icy snowbank, screaming Grow!