Look Again: Rachel Carson and Roberta Cowell
Look Again: Portraits of Daring Women by Julie Lapping Rivera is an homage to exceptional, pioneering women working across centuries. In a series of hand-carved, woodcut and collage prints, Leverett-based artist Julie Rivera (American, b. 1956) highlights the lives and achievements of women who defied the status quo. Each print is accompanied by a poem, written specifically for the series, by local and international women poets.
Look Again is sponsored by the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts
In 1962, the publication of Rachel Carson’s (1907 – 1964) book, Silent Spring, launched a national ecological movement. Carson’s ability to transform scientific facts into persuasive prose detailing the environmental destruction reaped by pesticides attracted worldwide attention. “We still talk in terms of conquest,” Carson said. “We still haven’t become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe.” After earning a master’s degree in zoology in 1932, Carson studied genetics and marine biology. Today, she is regarded as a founder of ecological activism in the United States.
Thank You for Your Labors, Pioneer, Undertaken Often at Night
by Rebecca Hart Olander
It is soothing, scientist, to think of the sand fleas,
and the ghost crabs that devour them, and the sea bass
that eat them, then the shark school circling,
and the remains of the fish tossed back in the jetsam
to the beach where the fleas flock to their food.
We can be comforted, deft lyricist, by your description
of moon-bewildered squid, how the swath of light
from the fullness finds them dashed upon the shore
in their panicked retreat, where the following morning
they serve as feast for scavenging gulls.
When we remember, beloved daughter, our own gone,
or you, by cancer, at 56, your mother might come to mind—
she typed your first manuscript to arrive famously without error
to its publisher—and we will know some things
can be managed by love and attention, and some can’t.
With your ode to ecology, Under the Sea-Wind, you urge us
to abandon human yardsticks, while the book itself survived
time’s ravages. You salvaged the original moldering illustrations,
forgotten in a warehouse in the midst of world war, to reprint
your masterpiece of sea, wind, migration, and change.
Rachel, you might be glancing backward at us
in our beautiful hell, driven not by fear, like Orpheus,
but by knowing we have not followed you into the sky or sea.
You could be draped in plumage splashed with cinnamon
and rust, like older sanderlings on their return flight.
You dwell in the shifting places, the microscopic,
the abyss. You knew it was our own folly, not any god,
that would trap us in the dark. Your eye, sharp
as a sandpiper rooting out a fiddler, took note. So many
tiny black journals. So many hours in the field.
You are in the tide pools. You are urchin, anemone,
sea star, mollusk, limpet, barnacle. You are algae, mussel,
and sponge, soaking in the beauty and wonder
and sharing it with us. The waters rise, and you cling
to the granite, to our conscience, our regret.
And despite altered terrain, the silenced season, it lulls us
to read what you left in your wake, protector of prairie
and ocean edge. How small a part we are in what there is.
How we should discriminate when we blanket earth and sea
with ourselves. To think it could still be as you say, the chain.
Roberta Cowell (1918 – 2011) was a World War II fighter pilot, racing car driver, and writer. She was also known, at the height of her celebrity status, for being the first trans woman in Great Britain to undergo gender-affirming surgery. Cowell’s interest in hormone therapy began after the war, prompting her to contact a medical student in 1950 whose research intrigued her. The operation, conducted in secret, challenged conservative ideas about gender and identity in British society. In 1954, Cowell became the cover star of the popular Picture Post magazine, attracting national scrutiny and praise. She lived the rest of her life in obscurity.
I Get You, Betty
by joj
Convinced of our magnificence even in the silence.
When they played, “not you,”
we
sang “watch me.”
Even with yolk in our lashes.
Pieces of work ever lacking.
We wear the woven as a door but ache to trade
for a suit of skin.
Born in prison, we wouldn’t be caged.
Won’t be caught.
We’re determined
dynamic stubborn queer
biting brilliant
precocious
strange
unstable
uncertain
Lost
we yearn for personal truth connection clarity love peace exhilaration power strength speed
We tasted the crumbs
wanted the bite.
The nostalgia of
white knuckles on a wheel,
leaning into a curve,
controlling the machine.
Dominion over a landscape.
But we’re so shy scared tired safer
Alone.
About the Artist
Julie Rivera is inspired by the meditative practice of woodcut printmaking. She began her career in New York, working as a teaching artist with the Studio in a School Association, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Lincoln Center Institute. Rivera earned her MFA in Painting from Pratt Institute and her BFA in Printmaking from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship recipient in Drawing and received grants from the New York Foundation of the Arts, the National Endowment of the Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Rivera is a Leverett-based artist. She teaches printmaking at Smith College and at Zea Mays Printmaking in Florence, MA.
About the Poet
Rebecca Hart Olander is a poet, teacher, and editor based in Western Massachusetts. She is the editor and director of Perugia Press and has published collections of poems including Uncertain Acrobats (CavanKerry Press, 2021).
About the Poet
joj grew up nomadic in the high south and southeastern United States convinced by movies, TV shows and glossy perfume ads that France and the French language held magical, transformative powers. They write memoir, flash, poetry and essay. Their work has appeared in Yes!, Parents, Insider, and Matador Network. A collector of unused graduate degrees and crippling student loans, they live with their partner and four children in southern France.
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