American Masters

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Julia was teaching poetry at the Abbott Academy when she was invited to the prestigious Yaddo Institute writer summer retreat, where great American writers had practiced their craft.

- All during the day, you were not allowed to visit each other.

You were supposed to write away, write away.

Here I was in the tower room trying to write away, write away, and I would, drew a blank.

I didn't, I felt artificial.

I felt like I didn't know how to be this kind of a writer.

So all of a sudden, I heard the vacuum outside my door, and I thought, "Oh, there's somebody I can talk to."

I opened the door, it was one of the maids.

I started talking to her, she said, "Ssh, all the writers, "you can't disturb them.

Come on down."

I went down, down, down to the kitchen, where all the people that cleaned, the cook that was cooking, they were all sitting around, talking, talking, talking.

And I heard all their stories.

And all of a sudden, I remember my mother and the maids, and in the kitchen, talking about their cooking, talking about the housekeeping, talking about ironing, talking about washing.

And I went upstairs, and I started writing the "Housekeeping" poems.

(gentle music) I wanted to write about Mami, and I wanted to write about the tas, and I wanted to write about the nieras, and I wanted to write about the lore that comes when women are talking as they're doing their housework, which I thought you couldn't write about.

I thought important writers wrote about important things.

(gentle music) - I think, Julia probably would've found that if she did try to keep her voice in the same register as Yates and Milton, and the men who had been taught to her, I'm not sure she would've found an audience.

Where she is really, really successful is that she has a powerful ear for the interior lives of women that hears the longing and the hurts.

The lives that we're told are not worthy of literature.

(gentle music) - Gladys sang as she worked in her high, clear voice, mangulinas, merengues, salves, boleros, himnos.

"Why do you sing?"

I ask her, as she polished off a song with the twirl of a feather duster.

"Singing," she told me, "makes everything else possible."

(gentle music) (clapperboard clicks)