In the seventh week of Iranian protests in the wake of Mahsa Amini’s suspicious death for not wearing her hijab to government standards, change is happening in Iran as dissent and unrest spreads to more prosperous areas of Tehran and younger members of society shed their hijabs in solidarity. As Azadeh Moaveni observes at the London Review of Books, the movement is gaining momentum.
In Tehran, the nightly confrontations have spread into the squares and boulevards of northern areas, a sign that a less economically battered class is now also participating. In girls’ schools, the courage to scrawl a slogan on the blackboard is spreading to younger groups.
As dissent winds its way through different age groups and neighbourhoods, the movement has remained remarkably steady: it hasn’t become destructive or violent, lost public sympathy or its radical feminist spirit. Previous protests in Iran have swiftly descended into destructive rioting, been viciously crushed or have petered out, driven by too narrow a grievance.
“I now see how much more powerful stamina can be than talent,” writes poet Carl Phillips, “or to say it another way, how powerless talent is, on its own, without stamina—rather like what is said about the body once the soul has left it, though I don’t believe in the soul. I do believe in stamina.” In “Stamina,” a piece in The Sewanee Review‘s fall 2022 issue, Phillips reflects on writing over time, imposter syndrome, urgency, perspective, and transformation.
I stopped writing for myself some years ago, not because I chose to, but because I stopped feeling that deep urge to write. I spent my 20s obsessively thinking and writing about a part of my life, but after a certain point, I kept repeating the same things. Gradually, that redundancy not only dulled my prose, but my mind. Since then, there’s nothing new I’ve wanted to explore. So I was drawn to many lines in Phillips’ piece, in which he examines that necessary, automatic, can’t-do-anything-else act of writing, and the type of stamina that’s required to keep going.
Which is to say, stamina is not just persistence; stamina, in the way that I’m thinking of it, always includes perspective, the means by which we can contextualize doubt and, in giving it context, displace it somewhat, thereby clearing room again for shaken faith. Maybe the best way to think of stamina is as a fusion of perspective and will.
Phillips describes a prolific period of urgent writing, when he was exploring his own sexuality and writing poems that would eventually form his first book. I love what he says about the “urgency of youth itself” — the window deep within us that’s wide open when we’re younger, actively exploring who we are as adults and trying to understand our world.
[W]e have a lot to say, all of it still new, and we have the energy to say it. I remember feeling, at the time, that I couldn’t write fast enough to get all of my thoughts down.
Phillips goes on to say how a “crisis of identity” was the “catalyst for a productivity” he’s not experienced since — which very much reminds me of my own journey — and that as we go, we cannot rely on crisis alone to fuel us. How do we keep writing and interrogating while continually saying something new? How, over the decades, do we become a solid critic of our own work?
At the same time, it’s encouraging to know that, with age, in tandem with experience, our sensibilities deepen, which means that we don’t have to work at constantly changing how we see the world—that changes anyway, as does the world itself. A certain amount of the work of avoiding redundancy is just part of being alive.
👻 Happy Halloween! 📷 Advertisement of the Woodward & Lothrop Department Store, October 1929. General photograph collection, CHS 15366. https://t.co/t0ovfZbGS8 👻 Happy Halloween! 📷 Advertisement of the Woodward & Lothrop Department Store, October 1929. General photograph co…
Hirshhorn museum plans major renovation once sculpture garden reopens https://t.co/o82Df3QclG Hirshhorn museum plans major renovation once sculpture garden reopens https://t.co/o82Df3QclG — Streets of Washington (@StreetsOfDC) Oct 31, 2022
This colorful map of Ireland from 1797 is full of religious information. A legend on the left side of the map denotes the location of churches as well as the homes of local clergy leaders. See for yourself: https://t.co/52b2GcAiZ0 https://t.co/fLIZXOXjpC This colorful map of …
The Main Reading Room of the Library of Congress Jefferson Building, from a circa 1924 stereoview. A reckless proposal has been made to rip out the grand mahogany central distribution desk that has stood in the middle of the room since the building was finished in 1897. …
Anyone dressing up as a witch today? Take some inspiration from Rebecca Fowler, Maryland’s oldest local witch! 🧙♀️ #MarylandHistory https://t.co/LQNQ1EjLCL Anyone dressing up as a witch today? Take some inspiration from Rebecca Fowler, Maryland’s oldest local witch! 🧙♀️ #M…
