Clothing & Nakedness

Image by Willi Heidelbach

1st Mentor Poem

On Clothes
KHALIL GIBRAN

And the weaver said, "Speak to us of Clothes."
And he answered:
Your clothes conceal much of your beauty, yet they hide not the unbeautiful.
And though you seek in garments the freedom of privacy you may find in them a harness and a chain.
Would that you could meet the sun and the wind with more of your skin and less of your raiment,
For the breath of life is in the sunlight and the hand of life is in the wind.
Some of you say, "It is the north wind who has woven the clothes to wear."
But shame was his loom, and the softening of the sinews was his thread.
And when his work was done he laughed in the forest.
Forget not that modesty is for a shield against the eye of the unclean.
And when the unclean shall be no more, what were modesty but a fetter and a fouling of the mind?
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.

​Source: Best Poems Encyclopedia

Writing Prompts #1

• Write about any of your clothing that is a “harness and a chain”
  
• Write about why and how you wear your clothes.  
  
• Write about when you went naked.
  
• Write about shame or modesty or how the earth delights to feel your bareness
  
• Write about when your clothes were a big deal . . . for some reason​
  

2nd Mentor Poem

Ode to a Dressmaker's Dummy
DONALD JUSTICE

Papier-mache body; blue-and-black cotton jersey cover.
Metal stand. Instructions included.   --Sears, Roebuck Catalogue

          O my coy darling, still
          You wear for me the scent
     Of those long afternoons we spent,
          The two of us together,
Safe in the attic from the jealous eyes
          Of household spies
And the remote buffooneries of the weather;
         So high,
Our sole remaining neighbor was the sky,
          Which, often enough, at dusk,
     Leaning its cloudy shoulders on the sill,
Used to regard us with a bored and cynical eye.

          How like the terrified,
          Shy figure of a bride
     You stood there then, without your clothes,
          Drawn up into
     So classic and so strict a pose
     Almost, it seemed, our little attic grew
Dark with the first charmed night of the honeymoon.
     Or was it only some obscure
     Shape of my mother's youth I saw in you,
There where the rude shadows of the afternoon
     Crept up your ankles and you stood
     Hiding your sex as best you could?--
     Prim ghost the evening light shone through.

Source: https://poets.org/poem/ode-dressmakers-dummy

Writing Prompts #2

• Write an ode to an article of clothing, accessory, your sewing table, your mannequins, your dummies or buffoons.
  
• Make a list of clothing you own and compare each piece to something else (writing metaphors and similes)
  

For Discussion

​“What Do Women Want?” 
KIM ADDONIZIO

I want a red dress.
I want it flimsy and cheap,
I want it too tight, I want to wear it
until someone tears it off me.
I want it sleeveless and backless,
this dress, so no one has to guess
what’s underneath. I want to walk down
the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store
with all those keys glittering in the window,
past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old
donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers
slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,
hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.
I want to walk like I’m the only
woman on earth and I can have my pick.
I want that red dress bad.
I want it to confirm
your worst fears about me,
to show you how little I care about you
or anything except what
I want. When I find it, I’ll pull that garment
from its hanger like I’m choosing a body
to carry me into this world, through
the birth-cries and the love-cries too,
and I’ll wear it like bones, like skin,
it’ll be the goddamned
dress they bury me in.

Source: Poetry Foundation