New York poet Molly Peacock reads on the issue of privacy.
Peacock is editing an anthology devoted to the subject. She's gathered thinkers from law, literature and medicine to explore what privacy means to them. Peacock says she got interested in the subject, because she didn't value privacy in her early life.
This segment was part of MPR’s The Surveillance Society series.
SPEAKER: I successfully graduated from a dysfunctional family by becoming a confessional poet. Which means I told everything, all about my dad's alcoholism and how my sister got into drugs. And my mom, well, my depressed mom never knew which of her personal possessions would show up in a poem, her Kotex box or her bedside stash of chocolate-covered cherries. After reading my first book of poems, my mother groaned. Oh, Molly, did you have to tell that? But she was glued to each successive volume. She wanted to understand our family secrets as much as I did.
In writing these poems, I was discovering the difference between secrecy and privacy. I found out that secrecy is almost the opposite of privacy. It's where you have to keep the facts of life jailed. Secrets almost always lead to lying. Back then, we had a nice suburban cover-up, clapboard house, maple trees, my sister's cheerleading uniform.
But what if we all caught the rot of secrecy behind those maples? I was going to save us by letting in mental light and blowing the lid off secrecy. The light got brighter with each of my four books of poetry. And I discovered a deep source of happiness. Truth.
After three tragedies happened, each member of my family died. I took those pieces of true light and made a memoir I called Paradise, Piece by Piece. It was in the memoir, the ultimate expose, that I learned about privacy. Suddenly, I needed to protect the paradise I'd built. You see, the happier I got, the more private I became.
Since the bad part of my life came first, now I had the good stuff, wonderful friends, a husband I love, two cats, a garden, even ginger carrot soup bubbling on the stove. So I had to begin a different kind of cover-up. I built a wall of disguise around each of the living people I loved. And I carefully didn't mention what didn't have to be mentioned.
Curiously enough, now that I have nothing dramatic to reveal, I require privacy. Not because my life is a secret, but just the opposite. It's blessedly ordinary, and it's mine, all mine. Expose led me to understanding. And understanding led me to love. And love led me to build a kind of mental garden wall to protect my happiness from the harsh winds of exposure. Secrecy requires those cleansing winds. But now that they've blown themselves out, privacy means I'm free to play, protected in my own back yard.
Digitization made possible by the National Historical Publications & Records Commission.
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