Paglia, Camille.

Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-three of the Worlds Best
Poems. New York: Pantheone Books, 2007.

Chapter 40

ROCHELLE KRAUT

My Makeup

On my cheeks I wear
the flush of two beers
on my eyes I use
the dark circles of sleepless nights
to great advantage
for lipstick
I wear my lips

The voice of modern woman: tough, blunt, pragmatic. The feminine veils of modesty, delicacy,
and sentiment have been stripped away. Rochelle Krauts short, robust poem can be read as a
sardonic variation on Shakespeares Sonnet 130, which celebrates a dusky-skinned mistress
whose earthy appeal doesnt conform to the alabaster-and-rose idealizations of Petrarchan
tradition. Krauts inventory of cheeks, eyes, lips recalls the Petrarchan blazona pining
lovers itemization of his distant ladys glorified attributes. But poet and lady have now merged,
and she speaks for herself. We are no longer in the exquisite court world but in a rough-and-
tumble cityscape of dark bars and mean streets.

The title cuts two ways: My Makeup refers to ones constitution or psychology as well as to
cosmetics what used to be called paint, a female art. Hence the title puns on soul versus
surface, substance versus style. The poet rejects alternate or rusing personae: in life or art, she
claims, she has no masks; she is simply herself. Yet the denial of fiction is itself a fictive act. As
Oscar Wilde said, To be natural is such a very difficult pose to keep up. Krauts impudent
naturalism has a bohemian decadence. As a writer, she spurns bourgeois gentility and
academicism; as a woman, she trades sheltered innocence for bruising experience, with its
loneliness and ennui.

The poem has an open form with irregular, improvised stanzas (of two and three lines, then two
again). There is no punctuation or capitalization except for the all-important I, pugnaciously
asserting the poets self-reliance and search for authenticity. Theres no primping or prettifying
of text or person: her only rouge is from the flush of two beers (12). The glowing charm of
bashful belles of old has yielded to mannish truculence, a boastful wallowing in the moment.
Until fairly recently, beer drinking was not entirely respectable for American women past
college, and even today, despite the microbrew trend, mixed drinks are still thought classier,
more ladylike. Krauts point is: Im no snob; I take life as it comes and can fend for myself. Is
her flush from booze, rage, sex or all three? Her brusqueness proclaims she needs no gallant
protectors in the urban jungle.
For eyeliner and mascara she uses the dark circles of sleepless nights (34). She flaunts her
bags and shadows as trophies of womens hard-won freedom to roam and loiter, once possible
only for social outcasts like beggars and whores. (Compare the tired streetwalkers dourly sipping
mugs of beer in Parisian cafs in late-nineteenth-century paintings.) Better harridan than
hothouse flower, Kraut seems to say. She is sleepless because her eyes are open; she cant be
fooled. Is her insomnia the burden of modernist anxiety, or is she trapped in the infernal dark
circles of private miseries and compulsive thoughts? She cant affect history; she is merely a
haggard witness. And who gains great advantage from those haunted eyes (5)? Is it she
brushing away illusions or power-tripping her way through erotic encounters or is it we, the
readers, beneficiaries of a poets flashes of perception?

Her lipstick is simply her lips, which (like the liquored-up flush) she wear[s] like
clothing (67). But she is also wearing out her lips. She wont be shut up, and she accepts fading
age. Lips, as poetrys oral instrument, represent her most essential self. Unlike so many female
icons (from Marilyn Monroe to Betty Crocker), she offers no deferential or reassuring smiles.
There is flirtation these lips may be for kissing but not submission. Krauts lipstick is
brandished like a club the tubelike column of the poem itself.

In My Makeup, the poet confronts her readers head-on while also gazing into the mirror of her
own consciousness. She is not defined by others. The dark circles of her eyes have a witchy,
moonlike remoteness. The poem is like a key light falling starkly on her face: it shows a woman
boldly taking stage, appropriating space, and declaring she has no responsibility beyond herself
and her voice. <>