Tuesday, 27 June 2006:

Poetry reader: Karen Gonzalez

Poem: Enid Dame, “On the Road to Damascus, Maryland,” UA 141

Enid Dame

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Enid Dame (born in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania - died December 25th, 2003) was an American poet, fiction writer, teacher, editor, and publisher. For many years she and her husband, poet Donald Lev, lived in Brooklyn and in High Falls, New York, where they edited and published the literary tabloid Home Planet News. She was on the faculty of the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, where she served as Associate Director of the Writing Program.

Enid Dame's poems explored themes of urban life, Jewish history and identity, and political activism. She examined contemporary women's lives in persona poems that take on the voice of Eve, Lilith, or other woman from Jewish tradition. These poems often locate a kernel of feminist rebellion in familiar Biblical stories.

Major works include these volumes of poetry:

• On the Road to Damascus, Maryland, 1980
• Lilith and Her Demons, 1986
• Anything You Don't See, 1992

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Dame"

Kimmelman, Burt "The Historical Imperative in Contemporary Jewish American Poetry: Enid Dame, Michael Heller, and Nikki Stiller"
Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies - Volume 21, Number 1, Fall 2002, pp. 103-110
Purdue University Press

Abstract

The basic situation of the post-World War Two American Jew is one conditioned by the Diaspora, the Shoah, and both a religious and otherwise a cultural tradition marked by letters. American Jewish poets who represent a third generation from the point of immigration, Enid Dame, Michael Heller, and Nikki Stiller take history as their backdrop and often as their subject in their poems, as a way in which to define themselves, to locate themselves within a heterogeneous society that both beckons to them and threatens to vitiate their traditional identities. Their voices, peculiarly American and then again peculiarly of New York City (the point of entry into the new world), are nonetheless Jewish for all their modernity, but Jewish in a way not seen before the present.

The Lilith Myth

Lilith is believed by some to have been the first wife of Adam. 

• see many myths about her by looking up Lilith on Google.

Dame’s work is reflected in the following objectives:

Objective 2 – To chart the dynamics, variations, and stages of the immigrant narrative.

Recurrent or narrative cultural themes:

·        A century ago Jews were the model minority as children of Jewish children became well-educated professionals.

Basic stages of the Immigrant Narrative

·        Rediscovery or reassertion of ethnic identity

Objective 5 – To observe and analyze the effects of immigration and assimilation on cultural units or identities.

·        Family

·        Gender

·        Community and laws

·        Religion

Special Literary Objective 9 – To distinguish fictional and non-fictional expressions of the immigrant and minority narratives.

Poem:

road to Damascus n. a religious conversion; a revelation, especially about one’s self; in other figurative uses, denoting a change in attitude, perspective, or belief. Also road to Damascus experience. English

The "Road to Damascus" is a Biblical reference to the conversion of a persecutor of Christians named Saul on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus in the Roman province of Syria in 36 C.E. According to the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus appeared to Saul and he immediately converted to Christianity and took the name Paul of Tarsus and became one of the main proselytisers of the new religion. The "Road to Damascus" is sometimes used outside of Christian contexts to refer to a conversion or change of heart.

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Background

Main article: Paul of Tarsus

In the account in the book of Acts, the Pharisee Saul Paulos of Tarsus is self-described as "a Hebrew of Hebrews", and as being "extremely zealous for the traditions of [his] countrymen, and of [his] ancestors". Saul had set out from Jerusalem for Syrian Damascus, in 36 A.D. with letters from the leaders of the Sanhedrin, giving Saul the authority to arrest those followers of Jesus of Nazareth whom he could find living in the city of Damascus. He was to bring them back to Jerusalem in chains for questioning and possible execution. Saul had to the best of his ability stamped out Christianity in the city of Jerusalem; where, according to his own words, he had "laid waste to the Church, arresting the followers of Jesus, having them thrown into prison, and trying to get them to blaspheme" the name of YHWH. Saul had also distinguished himself during the trial of Saint Stephen, the first of the official Christian martyrs, when Saul had "watched over the robes of those who were stoning Stephen".

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Paul's conversion

Paul's conversion from persecuter of Christians, at that time called the sect of the Nazarenes (Acts 24:5), to "Apostle to the Gentiles" (Rom 11:13,Gal 2:8), is recounted in three sections of Acts: 9:3-19a; 22:6-21; 26:12-23.

Wikipedia

The Road to Damascus, Maryland

On the road to Damascus, Maryland,

between the trailer camps and rosebushes

I had a vision

in the back seat

of my parent’s car.

Once again,

it was happening. 

I felt myself turning

into someone else.

I wasn’t sure who, yet.

My parents were worried.

Next week I’d be 35

and I still didn’t seem

to know who I was.

At other times

I’d already been:

a New York Jew,

a radical teacher,

an Ethical Culturist,

a barefoot breadbaker,

a nice girl

in knee socks

I was relieved

when they changed the subject

to where we’d eat lunch

in Damascus.

I sat in the back seat

dreamily

making a list

of new names.

Enid Dame

Question: 

Do you see any similarities between Dame’s narrative and the other immigrant narratives we have read?