Saratoga News

Inspired by Barbie: Denise Duhamel.

Pop culture is our mythology, says the poet Denise Duhamel

She'll read Thursday at Blue Rock Shoot

By Jeff Kearns

Poet Denise Duhamel keeps a 4-inch thick file on Barbie. Her new book, Kinky, pays a sort of homage to the doll in all her guises, with poems like "Bisexual Barbie," "Hippie Barbie," "Antichrist Barbie," and "Math Class Is Tough."

One short poem from the book is "Codependent Relationship":

Barbie says to Ken:
You know what chlorine does to my hair.
But if you insist we go swimming
at least have the courtesy
to help me take off my head first.

"I started to think of her as a metaphor for feminism," Duhamel says. She acknowledges the doll's chronic lack of stature as a feminist icon, but says, if you look closer, there's a bit of a feminist side to her, too. "She's the main person, but Ken's just an accessory," she says.

Duhamel remembers one of the first incarnations of Barbie, as a baby-sitter. "She came with a scale permanently set at 105 and had a book that opened up to say: 'Don't eat.' " She says. "It's really scary to give that to kids, and I love exploring that politically."

To hear Duhamel talk about it, as she enumerates the ways the little plastic doll has anchored herself into the psychic landscape of America, the shapely little toy has never seemed more beautifully absurd.

"If Barbie were to turn into a real woman, she wouldn't have enough room in her body for her vital organs, and her breasts would be so big she wouldn't be able to stand up straight."

The poet also professes an interest in Xena: Warrior Princess. "She's really subversive, as a strong woman who sidekicks the guys. It's really interesting because there are no other shows on TV like it."

Duhamel, who lives in New York, is in Saratoga for a six-week artist's residency at Villa Montalvo, where she will be teaching a weekly course called Mythmaking. She will also be reading from her work at the Blue Rock Shoot on Big Basin Way this Thursday at 8 p.m.

Duhamel's Barbie fetish is part of a larger fascination with American pop culture in general.

"Pop culture is our mythology," she says.

Her other recent book of poems, Exquisite Politics, is a collaboration with her best friend, Maureen Seaton. The book tackles gender politics from a unique perspective: a surrealist game called Exquisite Corpse. The game--which, in keeping with the tradition of surrealism, isn't really a game at all--is a collaboration between writers in which one writer writes two lines, then covers the first line and passes the paper to the other, who takes the line and writes two more.

Because Seaton is a lesbian, Duhamel says, the two poets came up with ideas on gender identity and sexuality that they never could have outside of the game's unique format.

Duhamel also writes essays and short fiction. Her poems have appeared in hundreds of journals. She makes a living at freelance writing and teaching poetry workshops and classes.

She first started writing at age 10, when she penned short stories, stapled the papers together and dropped them in the magazine racks at the supermarket while her mom's back was turned.

Duhamel hated poetry as a girl--until she started reading Sharon Olds in high school. "I thought, This is poetry?" But she kept writing fiction and keeping journals even in college and was set on a career as a journalist or novelist.

At Emerson College in Boston, Duhamel started working more seriously on her poetry, and went on to get an M.F.A. at "another flaky, love-festy school," Sarah Lawrence.

After that, she spent three years on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Even though she was robbed five times and lived in a rat-infested apartment, she says, "There was no way I was going to give up and go home. I would have been too ashamed."

Duhamel, 36, now lives in the Little Italy section of Manhattan with her husband, poet Nick Carbo. Kinky is her fifth book of poems.

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