Every Day is an Act of Resistance is the title of Carol Tarlen's new book of selected poems, edited by her husband, David Joseph, and their friend and colleague Julia Stein. As many books of poems are, it's slim and full of angry beautiful ways of expressing things. It's about being at work; being on welfare; being a kid, a teenager, a parent, a grandparent, a secretary, an anarchist and activist; being next to other people. She doesn't say a thing about being a poet.
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| Front cover of Tarlen's book |
There was a group reading and book launch for Every Day is An Act of Resistance at City Lights Books a few months ago, and the room upstairs was stuffed with people who love and miss her since her death in 2004. David Joseph signed my copy of her book: "Enjoy Carol's working class poetry," and I do. I enjoy it not just from reading the book, but from processing the archival collection of their papers that he donated to the San Francisco History Center.
The Carol Tarlen / David Joseph Papers (SFH 73) are a great example of how archives and manuscripts complement books--within the same public library--to present a bigger contextual picture. Not just volumetrically (the book of poems is 63 pages and the Papers are four cartons and three boxes), but in the way that they demonstrate-- through all the various drafts and typescripts-- how unfixed writing really is.
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| Mill Hunk Herald, Working Classics, Talkin' Union |
For instance, Tarlen's poem "White Trash: An Autobiography," which opens the book and was also published in Calling Home: Working-class Women's Writings: An Anthology, appears repeatedly in the Papers, as a chapbook (Trailer Trash), as typescripts ("Red Trash," "White Trash," "Trailer Trash") and in compilations that reflect either her and/or Joseph's editorial decisions, and even as both prose and poetry.
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| Broadside of poem by Tarlen for daughter Alicia |
The Papers also keep the poems next to the magazines and other small publications in which the pair was involved: poetry magazines in which Tarlen was published; Working Classics, which Joseph edited with Tarlen's help; labor newspapers they kept; as well as small amounts of their personal correspondence and files on other writers, such as Nellie Wong and Karen Brodine.
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| Publications containing Tarlen's poems. |
So, if you dip into the library copy of Every Day is an Act of Resistance and find yourself wanting to explore further, come up to the San Francisco History Center to look at the Carol Tarlen / David Joseph Papers. (You can find a guide to the collection here).These North Beach, San Francisco, working-class poets' papers are right where they belong, in their local public library, open to everyone.
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| Tarlen's copy of Edward Albee's The American Dream. |
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