ELIZABETH STARCEVIC ORAL HISTORY

CHRISTA WHITNEY: This is Christa Whitney and today is March 9th, 2016. I am here in New York with Elizabeth Starcevic? Is that --

ELIZABETH STARCEVIC: Starcevic.

CW:-- Starcevic, and we're going to record an interview as part of the Yiddish Book Center's Wexler Oral History Project. Do I have your permission to record?

ES:Yes, you do.

CW:Great. Well, so today we're mostly going to be talking about your grandmother. Could you introduce her?

ES:Well, that's an interesting way to go ahead and start. My grandmother was a -- came from Russia. She had been writing poetry. She was already working in a gymnasium and she came to the United States and -- I mean, this is very 1:00telescoped, but she came to the United States and became part of a group of poets here that -- men, really only men, and -- but she knew many, many women poets here and was good friends with them. And it's interesting to me, because when my aunts and my mother would talk about it, they would always talk about these sort of internal fights between the poets: who was good, who wasn't good, who was on the forefront, who had gotten enough publicity, who didn't get enough publicity. And so, it was always a kind of a -- Oh, did they like each other? Did they not like each other? What was the real atmosphere? But it was, of 2:00course, an atmosphere of a lot of intellectual ferment. And that's a great thing to think about. And so --

CW:Can you just telescope even farther out and say her name and what --

ES:My grandmother's name -- Celia Dropkin. She was married to Samuel Dropkin. And they were married in Russia. And he was affected by many political situations in Russia. And so, they eventually came to the United States. And she, as I say, she had been writing before. She was already a poet. And apparently, in the United States, changed some of her focus here, but also -- of 3:00course, she had five children, and actually she had six and one died. But having all those children was also a challenge as to, when are you going to write, how are you going to write? And they also moved a lot throughout the United States, mostly on the East Coast. But to the South. And the family was affected by the anti-Semitic climate in the South. My youngest aunt, Ebie, Eva, came home one day and -- crying, and this is family lore, I wasn't there. "When did I kill Christ?" So, the Jews in the United States at that early period of the century, clearly were suffering a lot of anti-Semitism in -- not in every part of the 4:00country, but certainly in the South. Even though we have people like -- what's his name? "Jews Without Money," Gold, Mike Gold, who write about a very much more positive vision of life for a Jew in the South. Of course, he writes about anti-Semitism, but he also writes about wonderful times there. So, that's a beautiful book. Have you read that one?

CW:No.

ES:No? That's a beautiful book, really, "Jews Without Money." So, it's funny, I mean, I say personally the things that are coming up as I think about the books that I was influenced by, and why now they come up? There's also a book that has nothing to do with my grandmother but has to do with the idea of people being 5:00able to live together. And, of course, that topic is the topic that affects Jews everywhere. So, there's a book called "The Bridge on the Drina" by Adamic -- Adamich [sic], we would say, and that talks about Yugoslavia in the time when there were many different kinds of people there and they all lived together very peacefully, whether they were Christians or Jews or Muslims, just like, as we know, the history of Spain. So, there are -- it is possible. When we say another world is possible, it's possible. So, my grandparents came. I did not know my grandfather. He died early. And I think only -- which two? Perhaps the two oldest grandchildren got to know him. I certainly have a picture of him with my 6:00older cousin, Francis, who lives in Paris. But I don't recall him at all. And they had, as I say, this life which was tied to a working-class and garment-centered activity, but also the fact that my grandmother was, yes, still writing in this new world for her. And she changed to write in Yiddish. She had been writing in Russian, she changed to write in Yiddish. And, of course, it wouldn't have made any difference to me, but to people in New York, that was -- for many people in New York, that was an accessible language. And so --

CW:Do you know anything about her life in -- before coming to the US?

ES:No, I don't really know about that, except that I know that she was in school, in gymnasium, and that wasn't so typical. What I do know is her relationship with her mother was difficult and challenging. And there are poems that talk about that, and there are -- there's family lore that talks about her in a not positive way. I mean, I won't -- not that I don't think it's possible to talk about that, but I don't know that it's -- except to say that, yes, there were differences. And that some -- I probably, if we look at the poetry, we can say, some of this is a reaction, strong reaction to the way her mother treated 8:00her or behaved -- not just treated her, but behaved as an adult in Russia. I mean, I'm repeating family lore, and one wants family lore and at the same time, what do I know? So, it's a challenge for people who work in literature, because what do you say or what do you not say? I can tell you, oh, this one, oh, they complained and she was a kvetch and she was a princess and et cetera. But that's only a piece of an image, right? But it's a strong image. My family used to sit around in this room at a table and talk about it and disagree and say all kinds of things. And, of course, once again, also as a large family -- meaning the 9:00five of them, "Oh, no, she did this to me and" -- my grandmother. "Oh, no, she did this to me and she did this." "No, she didn't do that to you, you" -- so, all of those things that we like to have in an interview are always filtered, as you know, by our own sort of remembrances and, as well -- the remembrances of the individuals that were saying them. I'm hearing that secondhand. Did I see it? Some of it, I did see. My youngest, this youngest aunt and her husband taught in Amherst. My uncle Al. And one time, I went up there on the train, in the winter, and it was horrible. But my grandmother was there, helping my aunt. But I could see in a minute that it was a very difficult situation. My grandmother wasn't a super help -- is partly the family lore. And that's one of 10:00the reasons -- and this is, once again, jumping -- one of the reasons she came to live here. She lived here with us. My mother always said, Well, she came to live here, or I brought her here because things were getting very difficult for her. When she came here, she went to the Art Students League. She became a Grandma Moses of sorts. She was friends with all of the big artists of the time and certainly in the Jewish community, as they said, with Moses Soyer or others. And so, what's the description really mean, right?

CW:Right.

ES:But they would say, Oh, she's so messy. Well -- or, yeah, artist and et cetera. So -- but she did come here and one of the things that -- I mean, and 11:00these are these disparate memories that come up. For me, when she would visit here before she came permanently, she used to go to Florida. And she would send us fruit from Florida. The grandma, right? And we never had, as most people in United States did not have fruit out of season -- now you can have fruit any time of the year, right? But we didn't have fruit out of season. And it would be winter, she'd be in Florida, and she'd send these packages of oranges, these big navel oranges, which we never saw in the wintertime. And it was like, Oh, what a luxury. Or she -- I think that was when she was living here, she was always on these bizarre diets. So, she had a bizarre diet which included lamb chops for breakfast. I love that she had that diet, 'cause she always gave me a teeny 12:00little piece of lamb chop. And, oh, and it has such a memory for me of eating lamb chops in the morning, 'cause nobody I ever heard of, or my family, ever had anything to do with lamb chops in the morning. So, (laughs) it was really -- her persona was a different model, if you will. And when she came to live with us, for me, that was a very challenging thing, because my parents were working all the time. That was partly, ostensibly to help my parents, but it really -- my mother tells it that her life was -- my grandmother's life was chaotic. And so, she brought her here to sort of organize things. But for me, that meant that I, who had basically been in charge of the house, was now being displaced somewhat.

CW:How old were you at that --

ES:I was in my -- probably early teens. Well, 'cause she died in fifty-something and I was thirteen or so. So, maybe eleven, twelve, or -- and I found it very, very challenging, and we -- I fought with her all the time. And at the same time, because she was already in this -- she'd begun painting and she was painting, it was quite marvelous experience because she wanted -- and I can show you that in -- from the box, she wanted my brother and I to pose for her all the time. So, there are all these pictures of us in her room or even in here that 14:00she painted. And we had a dog, Rusty, who was a rather difficult dog. And she was involved, in part, in feeding this dog who had been spoiled to only eat beef kidneys. And if you've ever smelled beef kidneys cooking, they are about the most horrific thing in the world. And this dog ate beef kidneys and she made them. Sometimes my mother would make -- but the dog -- so, the dog was a kind of a -- also a meeting point, but also a problem point. Because the dog liked me and the dog liked -- well, he loved her, but he also liked my -- well, he liked anybody who fed him, but he wasn't as friendly to my brother as he was to me. Cute. Cute dog. There's a picture of him, too. She painted him. So, there are 15:00all of these lovely aspects to her coming to live here. And also, poetry that she would say out loud, that she would read to you or say, "Oh, this is for your aunt Lilly and this is for you. This is for your mother." And some of that, I gave to YIVO. I don't know if you've had a chance to look at it or what -- how they've put it online or anything. But I had things that were handwritten and I gave a lot of that there.

CW:So, where in the space was she when she was living here?

ES:Physically?

CW:Yeah.

ES:Oh, she -- well, when you want to or if you can walk around, she had the last room on this side, on the left. And that whole room was hers. And that meant, also, yes, that my brother and I had to go share a room. And that was also 16:00challenging for both of us, and --

CW:So, what did the room look like when she was --

ES:Her room?

CW:Yeah.

ES:In -- towards the window, she had paint things. She had a bed next to the wall. When you come in the room, it was on the left. And my brother and I would often -- I certainly remember lying there and she would -- I mean, this is a memory that's very warm to me. She would trace my face with her finger and -- over and over and over again, as though she were learning it to paint it. But it was such an affectionate gesture and a continuous gesture. And I loved it, I mean -- and as you can see, it brings up a kind of a warm emotion for me. So, 17:00she had the painting, she -- area. She had the bed. And then, I can't exactly see what -- it's a big room. But out of the window, there was a man who used to come, Jack, very unpleasant guy who came with a big cart with a horse, selling fruit to the neighborhood. And he would park outside the street there. And there are many pictures that she painted of Jack and the fruit cart, just as there are pictures that she painted of the building right outside the window, across the street, and the sunset that you can see, 'cause that room faces west, south and west. Faces west. And they're beautiful testimonies to what this neighborhood 18:00was. Some of it still exists, and -- but, of course, it reminds me -- I mean, it brings to my generation, Oh, sure, I participated in going to buy things from Jack, and I loved seeing the horse, even though both Jack and the horse -- well, the horse was fairly calm. I mean, the horse didn't make trouble, but the fact that this guy was rather bad-tempered, and yet everybody was there. Everybody would just -- he'd come and everybody would come out of the building. It was quite wonderful. The neighborhood was, in terms of foods, the neighborhood was very full. Now it's a Dominican neighborhood. You can feel the impact of the Dominican food. But on the corner, the next corner, Broadway, there was a Jewish 19:00deli. And there, right around the corner from there, was a Jewish bakery. And we went every week to -- every day, almost, or every other day to buy a small rye bread with seeds, sliced, please. (laughter) And before that, before -- we were right next to the George Washington Bridge, but before they built this top level of the bridge, there was a different kind of an entrance. And there was a kind of covered open market, and so -- and we would go there, and every w-- so, they had pickles in barrels, et cetera, and every week, my father would go for schmalz herring. So, all of those things were here on 181st Street. We're on 177, 181st Street. There was another, Gruenebaum's, there was another bakery. And interestingly, though, it wasn't until the ex-flux of the Russian Jews that 20:00we had a bagel store where they did really -- bagels in process through water, et cetera. Most of the bagels that they make, that people have taken -- like Dunkin' Donuts aren't made in the traditional fashion. I mean, you can get a bagel, but it's not a real bagel in one's traditional view. So, this neighborhood had that feel of old Europe in many places and many -- and as I say, many of the -- particularly the women that worked in these stores had numbers from the concentration camp. And that was a climate in which we lived. It also -- well, my grandmother, at some time when she lived here or came to 21:00visit, she sometimes took us to schools, which means we were much younger. So, that wasn't the permanent time, but -- and my family, because my parents were communists, my family was often followed by the FBI. My father was brought up before McCarthy, et cetera, but my family was spied on by the FBI. And the FBI went through the building to ask about this family. And all they would say -- really, all the neighbors would say is, Oh, they're such a lovely family and their children are so polite. Because we were brought up to -- since this was a religious -- basically a religious community, we were brought up to be very 22:00respectful of the Sabbath and we had to -- even though we didn't go to synagogue, et cetera, we were -- we had to be neat, we had to be respectful, and that always meant, Okay, you hold the door, you say hello, it's -- well, that's one of the strategies to having people appreciate your presence. And that was also very helpful. But in the meantime -- so, right there at Fort Washington Avenue, which is right at the corner, the FBI stopped my grandmother, and my grandmother just chased them away, basically rejected any kind of interrogations that they thought they could make with these two kids standing right by her. And so, she was a feisty person. She was a kind of -- I would call her a driven person. But it's true that the impact of having a lot of kids and also the 23:00impact of my grandmother -- rather, my grandfather, and this, once again, is family story of my grandfather kind of being a hail-fellow-well-met. "Okay, this -- let's do this, let's do that." And that wasn't here. That was in Brooklyn, I think. But made her life somewhat challenging. And at the same time, she clearly took it on. I mean, she took on a life in this country with writing, initially, and all of these -- she was, as the stories go, she was in love with Nesin, this one poet, and he -- it goes back and forth, and each one of these books that I brought out here has a different version of what happened. "Oh, I'm sick and I'm leaving." "Oh, I don't want you and I'm leaving." Do we know? We don't know, 24:00right? I mean, which contemporary have you found that could tell us the real deal?

CW:Can you talk about her -- what you know about her politics?

ES:I don't know that I know about her politics. I would say -- no, I would say in the sense of politics that she was -- they were people who were liberal and political. As I say, all of the family has always been involved in union organizing and progressive politics. And my mother and all of her friends were involved in communist politics. And so, clearly, there was a space for that, 25:00whether she was marching, marching, I don't believe. But I don't know that, and so -- and, of course, you may not have enunciated politics. If you're writing the kind of erotic and strong poetry that she writes, wrote, your vision of the world is one that says, Ah, well, I want to tell people that women feel this way and I want to tell people that women can do this, and I want to paint women with a vision of strength as well as challenge. So, isn't that a politic, right, whether you choose a party or not? Your party is representing you in some way, 26:00but do you need that specific? She. Does one need that specific? So --

CW:Can you describe what she looked like?

ES:(laughs) She was short. She was somewhat stocky. She limped. She had, yeah, she always had this sort of semi-Dutch boy girl hair. She did smile a lot. And, yeah.

CW:How did she dress?

ES:That's interesting. I don't have a vision of how she dressed, but she -- my sense is that she dressed in somewhat comfortable clothes, but I don't really -- I don't see her. I see her as she moves, I -- this limp. I see her as 27:00comfortable and not comfortable in her motion, and I don't see the clothes, yeah. That's interesting, yeah.

CW:Did you ever see her write?

ES:Physically write?

CW:Yeah.

ES:Probably I did, because I had -- as I say, I have things that she wrote. And so, I probably did. But I don't have a vision of that, either. Can't call that up, a memory of that. I'm trying to think of her sitting. Mostly when I see that, I see her -- I see more her painting than writing, yeah.

CW:So, can you describe that image of her painting? Did she have certain times of day or habits of how she went about that?

ES:No, I wouldn't say that she had certain times of day. I would say that she 28:00did get, as I described before -- she got really fascinated with the surround. And so, in this neighborhood, the -- what was going on in terms of out the window in -- and each place that she was in, we have pictures that she did in Massachusetts, snow, et cetera. We have pictures that she did in -- some of them that are in Florida. There's pictures of Rockaway Beach, when she went to the beach and she stayed out at the beach. There's pictures of almost all of the nature surround. In the city, of course, it's the city, but what she was seeing around her. And as I say, here she is in the Art Students League in this painting, and she's painting what's around her, so that -- her very immediate 29:00environment was of great interest to her. And that's what you find in her work.

CW:Do you remember her friends coming to the house ever, or her going out to meet friends? Did you see that?

ES:No, I don't recall that very much. I know she did go to visit friends. And this sort of links with what I was saying earlier about family lore. "Oh, this poet, Anna Margolin, oh." So, I know that she visited with all of the people of her generation and that -- but I don't recall that. I mean, this is like an excavation for me, as well, of, Oh, do I remember that? No, I don't remember 30:00that. Although, as I say, I remember an enormous amount of talk about these friends in the family.

CW:So, if you were to describe to a friend or someone you don't know who -- what Celia's poetry was, how would you do that?

ES:I think I would say it was -- well, she's known, in terms of who studied her work and what have people found in it -- she's known as practically the first erotic woman writer. But there's also a lot of family things. There's also a lot of thinking, once again, about, what's the world like? And so, I would say that 31:00she's someone who was consistently aware of what were the relationships, interrelationships, men, women, women's status. You asked before about politics, but the awareness of the challenges of the status of women at her time -- and she was just, if you will, going to do it, whatever the "it" was. I mean, painting wasn't something she had ever done before. And yet, she went, in a very short time, from a novice to somebody who was extremely accomplished and also who was acknowledged by peers. So, that's a description of a determined 32:00individual, of a strong temperament. And I think the children talk about that, too. I suppose we, the grandchildren, could say, Yeah, maybe I got some of that, also. Actually, what somebody called my attention to was the fact that I was a professor, as I said to you, over forty-five years. Forty-two years in City College and before that I taught in high school, and I've taught in these alternate city programs. But in 1992, I learned how to weave. And I have been weaving, in Mexico, since 1992. I would go every intersession and every summer, and I've continued to do that even though it's the summertime. And somebody said to me, "Oh, that's like your grandmother. You changed your profession, your 33:00focus." But since I did them parallelly, I hadn't thought about that. And also, Oh, you mean I have some artistic side that I didn't recognize? And she had this side that came out later. Obviously, the poetry and the writing were already happening. The stories were happening before she came here and then after. But the painting was something that -- and there are some sketches -- was something that no one could have anticipated, and yet it sprung. And so, that's what was called to my attention. "Oh, look, you're like your grandmother." And I would have never said that. But, I mean, because I have always felt, well, it -- understandably, we had a loving and contentious moment when we were together. 34:00So, yeah, I did love her a lot, but -- and, as I said, I mean, that's unique: your grandmother gives you lamb chops for breakfast. I mean, it's like, oh, this is wild --

CW:Yeah.

ES:-- besides delicious, this is wild. Your mother doesn't give you lamb chops for breakfast 'cause that's not conventional, whatever the heck we ate for breakfast, so. (laughs) I mean, she was a -- so, if I have to tell somebody about her, I tell them that she was a very determined and strong and also overworked person, and -- but check out -- this is what's brought people to her, but -- and it's a very, very significant and important thing that she was 35:00writing about erotic topics when no woman was doing that. And yet, there was so much more to her. And this -- as I say, the art came later and fills out about a person. "Oh, how'd she do that?" And the fact that there's so much art, as well as, "Oh, she made" -- no, she made a lot. I mean, I have boxes and everybody we know has boxes, so -- or on the walls.

CW:Right. Did you know what her poetry was about when you were growing up?

ES:Not -- I only knew the ones -- she would say poetry to me over and over. Mostly, it was for my mother or for my aunts. And so, they were very -- to me, 36:00they were very emotionally and sentimentally important. I don't think I was aware of the significance -- she had another man that she really liked, this guy Adam. And I'm trying to remember whether I could have met him or not. But certainly the family later -- but these were situations where my mother could only report, "No, that didn't work," or, "This didn't work," or -- and I think, no, I don't know, I don't know. The poetry, I can tell you, my aunt -- oh, and the shawl, my -- there's the one about the shawl, and they would say it over and 37:00-- I mean, I loved it. I loved that she would say it in Yiddish, then they would say it to me in English. My mother would say them to me in English so that I would understand them. And some of them were really very moving. I mean, it's -- how it's cold and bring a shawl and, yeah, it's just been -- some of it is terrifically emotionally moving.

CW:And what language did you speak with her?

ES:Well, I could only speak to her in English. I mean, I didn't know Yiddish. I might have known -- I knew some words and from social context as well as -- my parents really didn't -- I mean, they certainly didn't speak Yiddish to me. My mother would have known some Yiddish. My father would have known Hebrew, so -- but, no, English. English. Whatever it was, it was English, yeah.

CW:And what was your attitude towards -- idea about Yiddish when you were 38:00growing up?

ES:Well, I can't explain, or I can't recover, my resistance to going to Yiddish school. My parents wanted me to, the people that I knew of my age in this neighborhood went. And I absolutely said no. And I cannot, I can't -- I have tried to go back and figure that out. And I cannot exactly figure it out. So, did I like to hear it? Sure, I liked to hear it. Was it then, as many children would report about any language -- it's both -- it's a warm thing, but it's also 39:00exclusionary, right, in the sense that people who know you don't know a language and use it in front of you obviously do not want you to know what's being said. So, it was a barrier. But I didn't want to learn it and I -- as I said to you before, my -- two of my cousins have learned it very well. I haven't chosen to -- every once in a while -- I had this -- at City College, there was this wonderful teacher, Uriel Wagreich [sic]. And I took some class with him. I didn't take Yiddish. I took a class with him and I thought, This is a marvelous teacher. And I thought about, Oh, I can take classes. And I didn't want to. And to this day, I can't explain why I refused to have that access. I mean, 'cause 40:00that keeps you away. As I said, her first book that was published by the family "In heysn vint [In the hot wind]," which is such a wonderful title -- I mean, "Hot Wind," yeah? Was eventually -- my cousin Francis, who lives in Paris, was able to find a group of translating students in the Sorbonne who were interested in taking this on. And they did, and they made a Yiddish-to-French version, and that was my first real access, since I knew French, to the poems in an extensive way. Maybe there was one or two, but the other piece of that access came through the feminists who were interested in finding -- You're saying there's only men 41:00who wrote? I mean, as I said before, the notion that Irving Howe can provide us with the entire gamut of poetry and doesn't. So, the feminists were looking and looking and then started to translate. And their contribution has been multiple and gave access, probably, to people like yourself to this wonderful poet, and gave it also -- but also gave it to me, so --

CW:So, what was it like when you first really read more of her work?

ES:Hm. Well, there are stories and I like the stories a lot. Oh, isn't she strong? Oh, isn't she tough, if you will? Isn't she -- boy, she's writing about 42:00topics that are very difficult. She's writing about suicide. She's writing about unfulfilled love. She's writing about rejection. And she's writing about her own -- whatever the character is, her own response to these major rejections in her life and doing it in a way that I would say we all could see ourselves as having experienced some of those situations that were so difficult for women and -- men and women, relationships, together. So, it was -- I think I've always been -- 43:00partly because I haven't taken the Yiddish to be mine, and partly thinking of it in a way as a should. Oh, I should this and I should that. So, I was long late in coming to -- not in appreciating her, because I think I always appreciated her, even not understanding the extensive impact that she had before she was discovered, because she was part of a generation of writers. And then, when she was discovered by all of the women that were more or less of my generation -- not even talking about my mother's generation. And my mother was a poet. And my mother was probably a poet partly because her mother was a poet. I think, Oh, 44:00each time I think, in a certain way, it's an exposure that feels new when I read it. And, Ah, is that what you thought? Or, Ah, look at that. But I think it's -- others of the family who have sort of taken her life up to be more visible than me. At least that's the way it seems to me, yeah.

CW:Did reading her work change the way you thought about her?

ES:Probably not. I think -- meaning for me, I think, it wasn't a confluence of 45:00analysis, of saying, Oh, that's my grandmother? I already had this very, very deeply imprinted reaction to and with my grandmother that, for me, persisted and has persisted. And so, as I hear myself here, I say, Oh, I probably have talked more about the painting, but it's also -- I was here. She was painting. It smelled, oil paints. It was messy, it was -- and it was those physical situations. Don't move, dear. Sit over -- put your knee here or just don't move, 46:00right? And that I relate to in a more -- it's almost, you could say, biological way than the one that would seem -- and it isn't that I haven't, because, of course, I am part of a generation that's very, very grateful to the women that got invol-- I would be of the generation that would say, Okay, I uncovered a whole lot of things, too, in Spanish. But the generation that uncovered my grandmother in English is something that I can't say is where I put mys-- I didn't uncover my grand-- my grandmother was always here, right? And would I have stood with a flag and said, "Oh, my grandmother was the first erotic poet?" It isn't something that I would have thought about, even though there were 47:00always discussions at the family table of her place, her work. But I don't think that that was something that I thought of as so stupendous until much later, because I just took it for granted that she was talented and that she was interesting and that she had difficult life and also a kind of exciting life, clearly, so --

CW:Is there anything that you want people to know about her?

ES:Well, I certainly want people to read her poetry. I certainly want people to 48:00read her stories. I think it would be nice -- I say that from the perspective of a literature person -- that they compare, if you will, some of the poetry to the stories. Some of them take the same theme and unwind it. And I think it would be very nice if there was more translation. And we're very grateful to the last group of young translators who got so engaged by her work that they put out the volume that they did. And they did that at the Book Center. I mean, they got engaged in the language, and then the poetry itself. So, I mean, that's fascinating to me in a very exciting way, since I used to teach translation, 49:00from Spanish to English and English to Spanish. And I know how challenging translation is. And so, each time there's a translation, it's like, Oh, that's wonderful. And could it be better? Could it be different? Could it be -- how does it seem? And, of course, it's not something I can take on, because Yiddish is not my language. So, I can opine on the English. Can I opine on how they've done it -- but now, we're starting to get poems that have been translated by three or four different people and that's a wonderful circumstance when you can start to engage the language with its counterpart, if you will. So, that's exciting. So, do I want people -- what do I want? I want people to know that she was a multifaceted person, that she was a strong person, that she was determined 50:00and artistically flourishing throughout her life, and that she brought up a wonderful family that continued to produce all kinds of art: writing, poetry, theater, whatever, that speaks both to who she was and who then the rest of us have become. We're taking her along with us, and she took us this far and it's a wonderful thing. So, I think it's a poetry that many people can appreciate. I mean, it's a poetry -- I was thinking about this just the other day, about -- this is something that would speak with Audre Lorde. This is a poetry that is thinking about where women are and what's happening to them and how are they 51:00treated and could they be treated? So, this poetry has a lot of our stories, has a lot of possibility. And then, yes, I think it would be wonderful for people to also know how this person who then really didn't write poetry, she wrote some poetry, but went on to be a whole new different human being in a sense, right, and made her poetry into a visual of the world. And that's also extraordinary. Oh, isn't that something? So, I'd like people to know all of that. (laughs) Yeah.

CW:Great. Well, I'd love to look at some of the paintings --

ES:Sure.

CW:-- but first, we'll just thank you for taking the time to do this all with us.

ES:Well, this is -- it's wonderful for me and I hope I've done her some justice. (laughs)

[END OF INTERVIEW]