Page Four THE MICHIGAN DAILY Sunday, Rpri3 Page Four THE MICHIGAN t~A1LY Sunday, April ~, ~7~7~' SYSTEM SALE WHY SETTLE FOR 2ND BEST? WHEN YOU CAN HAVE ALL NAME BRAND BOOKS 1 On rape: What's the Sexton's poems: A last cry of anguish COMPONENTS AND TOO. SAVE MONEY right way to say no? AU 101 AMPLIFIER MODEL LINEAR SPEAKERS SONY HOW TO SAY NO TO A RAPIST AND SURVIVE By Frederic Storaska. New York: Random House, 1975, $9.95. By BETSY AMSTER FREDERICK STORASKA IS the founder and Executive Director of the National Organ- ization for the Prevention of Rape and Assault (NOPRA). The dust jacket of his book, How to Say No to a Rapist - and Survive, bills him as "one of the nation's leading experts on rape prevention." Yet any woman serious about protecting herself against rape is advised to boycott Storaska's book and pay a visit to her local Crisis Center instead. How to Say No to a Rapist is paternalistic, vague, and dangerously misin- formed. According to Storaska, the "single most important state- ment" in his book is that "the rapist is a human being, a per- son, someone you could relate to under other circumstances. He is someone you can commu- nicate with like any person in any circumstance - including rape." Storaska theorizes that most rapists suffer from low self-esteem, and the way to wriggle out of any rape is to use your feminine wiles to en- hance your assaulter's ego. If you flatter him and don't an- tagonize him, Storaska reasons, he won't rape you. One sure-fire way to provoke a potential rapist, to Storaska's mind, is to scream, struggle, or use self-defense. Should you ac- cidentally try any of these tech- niques to scare away an at- tacker, Storaska actually advo- cates that you apologize to him for your rashness. "Further- more," he adds, "if you show him you're afraid, you're tell- ing him he is powerful and strong. And if you tell him clearly enough, he won't have to There IS a -; Sdifference!!!: " PREARE FOR: oiATover 35 years " : Mof experience e e and success e :BAT "A Small casses LSAT Voluminous home : CIAT apacltefr PATM lesons frue ! " T: F sNd mateEals Sconssaty aed les " ~ AT'LME BS S RAISEDTTHEIR SCORES * r wofe or cala * (313) 354-0085 e 21711W.TenMileRd. SSouthfiefd, Mi. 48015 * -00 EDUCATIONAL CENTER '" RIE TEIREP C O E * S3P T 4SNC 8 ' LSs ! show it to you." Presumably the rapist will realize you're human too, and walk away. THE AWFUL ROWING TO-I WARD GOD by Anne Sexton., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 86 pp., $5.95.; QTORASKA RESOLUTELY ig- By TOM DUVAL nores the fact that, accord- ing to the Freedom from Rape A NNE SEXTON, LIKE John pamphlet distributed by Ann Ar- Berryman and Sylvia Plath, bor's Women's Crisis Center, was a poet who lived out her "the majority of women who passionate obsession with death successfully ward off attackers through poetry of tortured per- have used noise exclusively." sonal analysis. Her work was al- This pamphlet, and most other most terrorizing in its explicit, publications on rape written by is Storaska's willingness to ac- description of the suicidal im- women, suggests that all women cept the status quo. His refrain pulse. enroll in self-defense classes to throughout the book when he Since her death last fall, this learn to protect themselves, describes the outrages society posthumously published volume Storaska, on the other hand, has perpetrates on women is, "that of her last poetry has been thor- the gall to delegate this respon- isn't the way it should be, but oughly analyzed in a number of sibility to your "date". "Anoth- that's the way it is." He applies recent publications. Joyce Carol er way to protect yourself," he this catch-phrase to everything Oates writing in The New York says, "is to choose your date from sexism in general to most Times Review of Books, claims with some care . . . It wouldn't women's ignorance about self- that a reader "should not sup- hurt, for your sake and his, if defense to unfair legal attitudes pose that the book will be eager- he had some knowledge of self- toward rape. But change is not ly read for the excellence of its defense." impossible. Michigan now has craft" and then goes on to de- No woman, no matter how the nation's model rape law be vote her discussion to Sexton's competent, should ever take the cause of the tireless efforts of themes and attitudes. risk of physically defending her- Crisis Centers and other wo- But despite Oates' offhand dis- helf; after all, Storaska warns, men's organizations across the missal of Sexton's technical your attacker "could be a third- state, and more women every merits, a poem must stand on degree black belt in karate day are learning td defend craftsmanship as well as con- while you're only a first." In themselves in classes offered by tent and this review will discuss making illogical and far-fetched these same organizations. Stor- the poet's strengths and weak- speculations like this one, Stor- aska, meanwhile, makes no nesses in this respect. aska induces undue paranoia in mention in his book of any sig- . women about their own capabil- nificant reforms either he or his T'HlE MOST STRIKING stylis- ities and blatantly tries to keep organization NOPRA, located in tic device, used in most of4 them in their place by encour- New York, have implemented in Sexton's poems, is the repeti- aging passivity and dependence. that state. tion of statement form: "They The women who wrote Free- NOT ALL OF How To Say No are .l . they are . . . they dom from Rape maintain that\ToaLLa sworssN are . . or, like . . . kesa women who can defend them- the book does include two inter- sense of urgency for a while, range from piercing scream to esting chapters on how to deal but often the list runs too long,, rang inapaciting karem kik with a gang of rapists and how becoming weaker in effect, sel-I have the advantage of surprise to handle a situation in which a dom adding new information in over their attackers, who rarely child is molested. Storaska also successive statements. The ex- expect women to be prepared to surveys some helpful ways of pression of a mood manifests defend themselves in anypfash- keeping rapists out of your itself as an obsession for theI ion. Storaska has a different home and your car. But this poet and tedium for the reader.- conception of the role of sur same information-and more- In "The Room of My Life" she prise in avoiding assaults: "in can be found in the Crisis Cen- catalogues thirteen items, trans- another case," he writes, "when ter's Freedom from Rape (50c) forming each to some sort of a man leaped at a woman and or the more extensive Rape: animate existence. It comes began tearing at her blouse, she The First Sourcebook for Wo- across as little more than a quickly unbuttoned and thrust men, by New York Radical tour-de-force of a nimble im- her breastsuttn andi. he'd Feminists (New American Li- agination. hturned the breasts outat him, Shed brary, $3.95). Instead of spend- Such unusual descriptions leada ing him the victim of surprise ing $7.95 on Storaska's over- to many things that are physi- rather than accepting this sta- priced and often erroneous ad- cally impossible, having only a tus herself." But what woman vice, buy one of these two books metaphysical functionig. 3 in her right mind would use on rape and put the rest of the . . . and the woman Storaska's technique in an as- money into a class in self-de- climbs into a flower sault situation instead of the and swallows its stem ... self-defense advocated by the fense. Crisis Center? or, The most frightening aspect (Be/sy Anister is a senior 'Mal- picking the scabs off your heart, of How To Say No To a Rapist oring in English. then wringing it out like a sock. 1 --.-- - - These, and many others, sound quite sensual and full-of-mean- ing, but how often do such im- ages make their impact simply because they are ridiculous, perhaps even absurd? To the poet they may be exact render- ings of a feeling. But she can- not expect a reader to share .7, that feeling,, or even to under- stand it clearly, by means of images that fall outside the pos- sibilities of experience. She is trying to express something in- draic changing rhythm tense within herself, but ob- armatically hagin ga r e scures it by giving it a sem- and meter to point up a charge blance of tangibility instead of from external to internal fo- actual tangibility. Compare cs. Different rhythms, how- these to another image she uses ever, are needed in different successfully: speaking of the situations, and the author too suland the body: often fails to change. This skull aweakness in turn results in Maybe I have plugged up my many lines sounding deflated sockets to keep the gods in? and weak themselves-the sec- This is also metaphysical, but and of the problems, which strongly physical as well be- might be helped by a choice of cause the "sockets," be they more energetic words. Revision eyes, ears, or anus, can be is needed to give strength be- stoppered. yond only the meaning and the sounds of the syllables. There QEXTON SEEMS TO have are other aspects of rhythm, been working toward a fair- one being the length and break- ly simple, conversational style off points of individual lines. of grammar to accompany her Sexton displays her best control often disturbing imagery. Some- here. Although many lines are times it is convincing, as in the self-contained, ending because first two stanzas of "The Poet one particular thing has been of Ignorance," culminating in: dealt with in the line, many It is written on the tablet of follow on another in a syner- destiny gistic progression - the unre- that I am stuck here in this solved nature of a non-self-con- human form. tained line adding to the effect That being the case of the complete sentence, draw- I would like to call attention ing the reader on, creating tem- to my problem. porary ambiguities: Unfortunately this tendency has caused two related problems. The first is with rhythm. Al- though anything can be broadly defined as rhythmic, this device ought to serve as an integral part in a poem. Sexton's verses seem to lack, many times, a definite supportive rhythmic base for what the words are creating. She has shown a capa- bility to produce satisfactory and subtle rhythms, particularly when read aloud and slowly, for instance in the nine "Psalms" in her previous book The Death Notebooks, and at times in the present volume. One of the fin- est examples occurs in "Fren- Zy "> objects that tell me the sea is not dying, objects that tell me the dirt has a life-wish, that the Christ who walked for me, walked on true ground, after this lap of childhood I will never go forth into the big people's world as an alien ... or, Once broken they are im- possible things to repair. FOR READERS INTEREST- ED mainly in what a poet 4 has to say, a reasonable amount of emotion and personal under- * standing, even wisdom (mixed admittedly, with a great deal of triteness), is easily acces- sible in these poems, over and over again. Other readers, who delight more, or equally, in a poet's craft, might be advised to . seek elsewhere for greater rewards. Tom DuVal is an editor of. Genert-aion PS 1100 TURNTABLE [ ALL OF THE ABOVE SAl PRICE 335 ANN ARBOR MUSIC MART 336 S. STATE-ON CAMPUS S769-4980 10til 7 Mon. thru Sat. END THE REPUBLICAN REIGN of ERROR' REPUBLICAN MAYOR STEPHENSON FOUGHT AGAINST STUDENT VOTER REGISTRATION, CANCELLED DOOR- TO-DOOR REGISTRATION AND BLOCKED VOTER REG- ISTRATION DRIVES IN STUDENT AREAS. Humanities Lecture Series VOTE DEMOCRATIC SECOND LECTURE: Tues., April 8 4 P.M., EAST LECTURE HALL (3rd Floor Rackham) GUEST LECTURjR: Prof. Marvin Felheim lecturinq on "THE POLITIC BIRD" DR. FELHEIM is a Professor of English at the University of Michigan and a recipient of the William Award for Teach- ing in Humanities and the Distinguished Faculty Achieve- ment Award. He. has been with the University for over twenty years, and has been a lecturer at the University of Athens (Greece) and the University of Pau (France). He is the author of COMEDY: THEORY, PRACTICE, PLAYc. and THE LIVING ARISTOPHANES, and is preparing twc books, FILN AS GENRE and THE AMERICAN NOVELLA. Professor Felheim oarticipated in the lecture series in co- ordination with the University T h e a t r e Production of PERICLES. 8 0 U COLLEGE STUDENTS Su Er JOBS MONDAY, APRIL 7th Pd Pol. Adv. This $15 haircut may not be what you had in mind...f dh? 4 e THIRD LECTURE: Tues., April 15 4 P.M., EAST CONFERENCE (4th Floor Rackham) GUEST LECTURER: Prof. Gerald F. Else lecturinq on "SOME BIRD NOTES FROM ATHENS" The Humanities Lecture Series is offered in coordination with the University of Michiaan Theatre Proarom Guest Artist production of THE BIRDS, which is a MUSICAL, COMEDY, SPECTACLE ADAPTATION BY LAWRENCE RAAB AND JONATHAN SIMON, featuring quest director, JOSEPH NASSIF from the Pittsburgh Playhouse and the Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre and quest designer, HENRY HEYMANN, also from the Pittsburgh Playhouse. 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