poem “Viewing the Woman in a 19th Century Photograph”, an editing of a 1991 poem “Photograph, 19th Century” about ho you cn interpret an older photo of an adorned woman as a method to keep womed in a subservient place, adapted for the June 42016 female show at the Bahai Center in Austin, By Chicago Poet Janet Kuypers

[the Writing of Kuypers] [JanetKuypers.com] [Bio] [Poems] [Prose]

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers in her 6/4/16 show “Obey” at Expressions 2016: June is a Woman! in Austin (Sony), first reading her haiku poems progress, extend, falling, civil, and greatest, then reading her poems Earth is a Topiary (her 1st of 2 poems where she used a voice modulator to reads parts of her poem in a male voice), On Becoming a Woman (an editing and expansion of her 1999 poem Becoming a Woman), Viewing the Woman in a 19th Century Photograph (an editing of her 1991 poem Photograph, Nineteenth Century and her 2nd of 2 poems where she used a voice modulator to reads parts of her poem in a male voice), Content With Inferior Men, portions of her poem In The Air with slightly altered wording, and Oh, She Was a Woman (an editing of her 1997 poem She Was a Woman).

See YouTube video of Janet Kuypers in her 6/4/16 show “Obey” at Expressions 2016: June is a Woman! in Austin (Cps), first reading her haiku poems progress, extend, falling, civil, and greatest, then reading her poems Earth is a Topiary (her 1st of 2 poems where she used a voice modulator to reads parts of her poem in a male voice), On Becoming a Woman (an editing and expansion of her 1999 poem Becoming a Woman), Viewing the Woman in a 19th Century Photograph (an editing of her 1991 poem Photograph, Nineteenth Century and her 2nd of 2 poems where she used a voice modulator to reads parts of her poem in a male voice), Content With Inferior Men, portions of her poem In The Air with slightly altered wording, and Oh, She Was a Woman (an editing of her 1997 poem She Was a Woman).

Download all of the show poems in the free chapbook
Obey
6/4/16 at Expressions 2016: June is a Woman! show in Austin

Viewing the Woman
in a 19th Century Photograph
Janet Kuypers
5/31/16 edit of the 1991 poem “Photograph, 19th Century”
I see the woman in the picture,
I see their depiction of beauty —
of something
that couldn’t work
that can’t work...
I see the sepia toning,
but I also see the dependency,
and I see the degradation.
My mind has been cluttered.
I can’t see the women,
I see the adornments of beauty
the preposterous impractical way
she has been made to be seen
and not heard.
She was forced with this image...
And it most be a shame
because now I’ve been tainted
with the knowledge of society,
with the knowledge of it’s motives.
And now I can’t even see the beauty.
I can only see the oppression.
“Oh, it’s not like that anymore” they say.
as I wipe the make-up off my eyelids
and wonder who I’m trying to impress.

my hand to an anim of jkchair