Remembering Tangren

A small collection of memories of the Southern Oregon Woman Writer's Group, Gourmet Eating Society and Chorus

 

 

Tangren Alexander  1940-2021

"It's difficult to find the words to have a conversation with Death."-- Tangren, March 22, 2021.

Tangren Alexander was a beloved teacher, prolific writer, and imaginative photographer who studied the cosmos, created art and story with dolls, and was a mainstay of the vibrant lesbian feminist community of Southern Oregon. She was also a loving mother, sister, aunt, companion and friend, known for her generosity. Tangren left for the stars on March 26, 2021.

For the Woman Who Asked Why I Write Dirty Poems

Father! Make him stop this solitary vice.         

The boy is touching himself, 

spilling his seed, 

killing his babies,

self-abuse. 

He'll go blind. 

He'll go crazy. 

He'll die young. 

He's a pervert. 

Satan controls him.

Bind his hands. 

Beat him each night. 

Tie his wrists to the headboard 

so he can't reach his parts. 

Strap his feet to the bedpost 

so his thighs can't rub. 

Cover his genitals 

with a hard metal shield. 

An obstinate case? 

Attach a red hot wire to his penis.

Peaches and Cherries     

Each September

you bring me peaches

picked from the drooping branches

of your carefully tended trees.

You select the best, unblemished

caressing the velvet

of sun-touched fuzzy globes, 

rose-tinged gold.

blessing Brigid's waters

come …

ye young nymphs

and sage women too

come …

catch the mystery

of Brigid's sacred pool

Two Sides Of The Coin

It's as easy to fall in love with a rich man  

as a poor one. 

He won't buy the cow if he gets the milk for free. 

Marry a doctor.

Wait for your prince to come.

Maybe I'll meet a rich man.

Sex is my duty to my husband.

How much for a lifetime?

I can't afford to leave.

Reclaiming

Corona: 1. A rare and glorious sight during full eclipse of the sun, radiance made visible.
Corona: 2. In the night sky, a constellation, a circle of stars
Corona: 3. All outer events called to a halt, no going to gatherings. Performances and performings vanish alike.

At 7:30 this morning, I make a grocery run. The Coop so quiet, the surprisingly many shoppers not stopping to hug in the aisles. 
We quickly fill our carts. 
Back home, groceries unload in the still chilly day.

The Omniscient Voice

by Tangren Alexander

I am not only omniscient. I am omnipotent. 
I am benevolent, too. No matter what I do
to the characters. Killing off Beth, for instance,
from scarlet fever. Beth, who, like Peter Pan, wanted
to never grow up, never did.
To the end she was faithful to dolls. 
And Jo loved her, and poured out her heart in a poem
to the sister passing from her.
. . .Jo lived, to tell the story. Of life among women. 
Of love.

Jackie's Story

Jackie went looking for some poster paint in her office and as she was rifling through the drawer she thought it was in, she ran across a recent letter she’d written to her oldest friend. She sat down on the floor cross-legged and read it.

Hollywood or Bust

Hollywood or Bust or

Before we were Baby Boomers…

Adventures of two young women in Hollywood in the 60’s

Do you believe in Magic…?

I remember the day we drove away, backing out of the long driveway in Ellie’s green and white 1957 Ford Fairlane, waving “goodbye” to my mother, who had a big towel wrapped around her freshly washed hair--a few Auburn locks escaping the towel. Ellie was crying and we were tingling with excitement. Not that we weren’t sad too, but we were on our way to our new lives—via Highway 101 from Merced, California to Carmel and Monterey on our way down to L.A., then Hollywood. Of course, we loved Carmel and Monterey, stopping by Hearst Castle and Big Sur and eating too much of both brown and white chocolate from a candy store in Carmel. I’d never had white chocolate before, and I loved it.

A Mother's Gift (a memoir)

(c) Christine Menefee 2018

In the early 1970's, after escaping a foolhardy and damaging relationship, I found myself living again with my parents while I started over in the Washington, DC area. One day I heard a story on National Public Radio about the consequences of a nuclear bomb. This was not a new subject, since I'd grown up during the time when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a recent memory and above ground nuclear testing was constant, but to be honest, I'd forgotten about the horrors of nuclear weapons in the face of my own coming-of-age war, the one in Vietnam, as both it and my life went from bad to worse.

tenderly-deborah-kerr

 

Click on the image to go to Tangren's book in progress

Sheʼs often evoked through opposites.

The story of her “being discovered” is of

a Gabriel whose annunciation came in

these words: “Sweet virgin, are you an

actress?”

Open Letter to my Sangha

Open Letter to My Sangha:
Beginning the New Year as a Community of Writers

H. Ní Aódagaín

Like many folk, I spent the New Year's weekend among friends, raising toasts and stating resolutions. As I listened to the writers in the crowd, a common theme emerged: we each, in our own way, were setting new goals concerning our writing and making a renewed commitment to the writing life. These conversations led me to compare the community of writers I belong to with another community, which exists in the Buddhist tradition, the sangha.

Temple Poem

by Bethroot Gwynn

It is not just that I love one woman

Invite her into the hushed temple of my most sacred self

Travel with her into the far corners

of her most private being.

It is not just that I am coupled;

I have coupled with her, and with her, and with her.

I am tripled, and quadrupled.

I am a throng of worshippers

reverent before our own images

jubilant to invent our own litanies.

Wednesday morn

Blood tears from a still chill sky ooze down
settling round my feet
shriveling in the grim morning sun
aching for a reprieve

the willow
bereft of even a scant scarf for her frozen limbs
holds her head high
and cries

collaboration / transport - ing

In the distance a train. Why do I not feel forlorn by the whistle here in Oregon?  I consider the trainyards of California, urban or not, shudder at memories: loss, loneliness, punctuated by the long moan of freight trains...  did these sounds trouble my childhood?  Possibly later, in those years of uncongenial youth spent with relatives, the sense of loss having stiffened. Deeper aversion to train noises, especially at night, must have arisen later, connected with Santa Barbara by a palimpsest of one loneliness upon another.

Greece. Olga Broumas. Intimations of Sappho in summer 1993, West Hollywood: hearing Olga and T. Begley read collaboratively what they have written collaboratively, sheets of powerful words, loose-leaf orange swirling from one writer’s hands to the stage

Escape into November

I counsel others to make the time
for art and self; this phase of solitude
I too need vigilance
not only to sort, organize, discard,
but to rest;

not just to complete task after task,
but to play;

And Yet the Moon

by helen laurence

following national election, November 14, 2016: ‘supermoon’
(closest since January 26,1948)

We wander half-jangled:
upheaval, avenues of gloom
after hopes of tipping into lamplit ease...shock
insistent on rising like the rows of spikes
in a parking lot, warning “Do Not Back Up,”
but now furtively switched,

Our Traditionally Exceptionally Agreeable Group

[Editor's note:  This is a 50 year old piece written by one of the true matriarchs of Women's Lands and Women's Writings in Oregon.  When Jean read it to Writer's Group recently, we all giggled our way through it.  We hope you enjoy it too.]

by Jean Mountaingrove, Rootworks, Oregon

When the Southern Oregon Women Writers Group, Gourmet Eating Society and Chorus meets, we observe these traditions:

We start promptly at eleven a.m., except when we're expecting someone who is going to be late.

A quartet of strange and wonderful sounds from long ago and far away

by Christine Menefee

Lately I've come across some European sounds from long ago. They charm, and they awaken in me a feeling of almost-remembered times and places. Their appeal is not just in the romanticism of the "long ago and far away;" they leave me with a mind refreshed and a spirit lighter, and with that somehow comforting awareness of the vast spaces all around and within us.

Adagio ma non troppo
The Lost Songs of St Kilda
This music comes to us down a chain of connections so delicate and tenuous that it seems unlikely they found each other at all, and if those connections hadn't materialized we'd never have had a hint