Project 19

March 7

marilyn Chin

“First of all, I wanted to celebrate this historical anniversary with the upbeat rhythms of triumph and jubilation! I envision women of different generations, in unity, arm in arm, babies in tow, marching, dancing, protesting and yawping down Pennsylvania Avenue! In the second part, in the response coda, the poem gives a stern warning. I call out those corrupt male politicians who have worked maliciously to impede universal suffrage and equal rights and have oppressed us for too many decades. We will vote you out!”
—Marilyn Chin

Poetry & Protest, curated by Marilyn Chin

March 14

“Archived in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress is a collection of photographs from the Records of the National Women’s Party. Most are portraits of suffragists; some document scenes of protest or civil disobedience. The captions are alternately stirring, amusing, or discomfiting to a twentieth-first century viewer: ‘Inez Milholland Boissevain [on horseback] preparing to lead the March 3, 1913, suffrage parade in Washington, D.C.’; ‘Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk, Conn. Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”’; ‘Madame Alla Nazimova, the great Emotional actress, picks up the Purple White & Gold Banner of the National Woman’s Party in token of her Allegiance to Equality for men and women.’; ‘Justice. Miss Florence Hanlin as Justice in the Dance Drama presented at Seneca Falls, on July 20th in connection with the National Woman’s Party’s seventy-fifth anniversary celebration of Equal Rights.’; ‘Miss Beulah Amidon, “The Prettiest Picket.”’ Two of the photographs portray no people at all. The caption attached to the first is studiously noncommittal: ‘Interior dining room D.C. prison.’ The other tells us much about regimes of punishment, both then and now: ‘Negro women prostitutes were brought to this sleeping room and placed in beds alternating with suffrage prisoners, 1917.’ My poem is a double ekphrastic.”
—Linda Gregerson

Poetry & Protest, curated by Linda Gregerson

March 21

“I am in the business of writing about my mother’s story. I wrote a book about my parents falling in and out of love that was pulled from the ribs of stories and memories of my family members. So for the last couple of years, I’ve made it a point to talk to my mother about her own stories, her own memories. When I think about something as grand as the 19th Amendment, I always reach out to my mother and ask about how it affects her. She is usually unconcerned with the poem that erupts from our conversations, saying that telling the stories take her to a place she has long forgotten, and my poems put her back there, to that negative space. I tell her the best poems invite us to reflect on what we’ve endured and survived. People like my mother and I are not often celebrated in a poem, I want my mother to understand even her most mundane and forgotten moments are worthy of being written about, memorized and taught as American history. I am her living archive and this poem is a piece of the puzzle.”
—Mahogany L. Browne

Poetry & Protest, curated by Mahogany L. Browne

March 28

“Part of the San Andreas fault runs along the Mojave Desert. We see and feel the fault,—it has always been a part of Mojave stories and geography. We have always existed with it—in rift—part land. We are land’s action, maybe. I am always wondering and wandering around what it means to be part of this condition, in shift. What it means to embrace discontinuity, to need it and even to need to cause it in order to be—depression but also moving energy. The necessary fracturing of what is broken. The idea of being made anything or nothing in this country—’to be ruined before becoming’—the idea that this country tried to give us no space to exist, yet we made that space, and make it still—in stress, in friction, glide and flow, slip and heave. We are tectonic, and ready.

Natives weren’t granted citizenship until 1924—the 19th Amendment didn’t include them. Once granted ‘citizenship,’ many states still decided not to let Natives exercise their ‘right’ to vote—they often denied Black American ‘citizens’ this right. Utah refused to let Natives vote until 1962. As recently as 2018, North Dakota implemented a Voter ID Law that kept Natives with a P.O. Box number and no street address from voting, knowing that many reservations operate with P.O. Boxes. The 19th Amendment was important to many people, but it’s important to note who it was intended to advance, and to ask if those who were advanced have done enough or will do enough to advance all women, today, tomorrow.”
—Natalie Diaz

Poetry & Protest, curated by Natalie Diaz

Read the full booklet here.

In addition to the Academy of American Poets, the Philharmonic is partnering with Catalyst, The Juilliard School, Kaufman Music Center’s Special Music School High School (M. 859), League of Women Voters of the City of New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and New-York Historical Society to extend the reach of Project 19 and further conversations about representation in classical music and beyond. Learn more at the New York Philharmonic website.

Project 19

March 7

Poetry & Protest, curated by Marilyn Chin

March 14

Poetry & Protest, curated by Linda Gregerson

March 21

Poetry & Protest, curated by Mahogany L. Browne

March 28

Poetry & Protest, curated by Natalie Diaz

Features

Poems from the Women’s Suffrage Movement

I am deliberate / and afraid / of nothing

Women’s History Month

Women’s History Month: Poems for Kids

Lesson Plans for Women’s History Month

Project 19

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March 7

Poetry & Protest, curated by Marilyn Chin

March 14

Poetry & Protest, curated by Linda Gregerson

March 21

Poetry & Protest, curated by Mahogany L. Browne

March 28

Poetry & Protest, curated by Natalie Diaz

Features

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