Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

Transcription

1 Woman as Creator/Destroyer in Three Poems of Lorna Goodison Author(s): Mary L. Alexander Source: Caribbean Studies, Vol. 27, No. 3/4, Extended Boundaries: 13th Conference on West Indian Literature (Jul. - Dec., 1994), pp Published by: Institute of Caribbean Studies, UPR, Rio Piedras Campus Stable URL: Accessed: :40 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at Institute of Caribbean Studies, UPR, Rio Piedras Campus is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Caribbean Studies

2 Caribbean Studies Woman as Creator/Destroyer in Three Poems of Lorna Goodison Mary L. Alexander University of the Virgin Islands-St. Thomas The Jamaican writer and artist, Lorna Goodison has been described as a poet whose work has been?shaped by a literary tradition that reflects certain customary European roles and representations...but [which] also reflects some central aspects of the experience of West Indian women* (Chamberlain 194). Indeed, an examination of her poetry reveals an elegant interweaving of standard English and Jamaican vernacular using universal images including those that arise from a solely West Indian experience. It is also readily apparent that much of Goodison's poetry is concerned with the experience of womanhood:?woman as daughter, as sister, as mother, as matriarch, as leader, as fighter, as sustainer, as lover, as sufferer, as victim of male abuse* (Baugh 88). In three of her poems, which explore specific aspects of the feminine condition,?farewell Wild Woman (I)?, -Farewell Wild Woman (II)?, and?on Becoming a Tiger,* Goodison has employed particular images and symbols invoking a mythic quality from an otherwise intense, personal voice. In these poems, the mythical archetype of the creator/destroyer force in the feminine experience is juxtaposed with the personal and social concerns of being a woman. Images of repression and taming of the instinctive and natural wild woman have appeared in several of Goodison's poems. In -Guinea Woman* the native, feminine power of Goodison's African great grandmother is subdued and civilized by her European captors. In a patriarchal society, the wild nature of woman, particularly her sexuality, has always been a threat to those in power. [...] Hence it has been deemed necessary to curb and repress this wild and unmanageable aspect of Woman's nature. Goodison's wild woman can be seen as a metaphor for the instinctual nature that is an intrinsic part of every woman's physiology and psyche. In -Farewell Wild Woman (I)*, the wild woman has been judged morally and socially improper by the powers that be and it seems prudent to avoid her company: 440

3 Extended Summaries I seem to have put distance between me and the wild woman she being certified bad company. (115) Although, it appears that one has to be on guard constantly against the alluring enticements the wild woman offers: Always inviting me to drink bloody wine from clay cups and succumb to the false promise in the yes of slim dark men. (115) Chamberlain has suggested that often times the men that appear in Goodison's poetry are indicative of her own particular image of a muse: Goodison's muse is not some woman of shadowy power and intermittent presence, as a tradition dominated by men would have it, but is instead the figure of a man, overwhelming and unreliable at times (as muses tend to be), and created as a woman's image of inspiration. She writes about her muse in all the ways that are familiar to readers of European literature... except that her muse is different, inspiring her desires and dreams? and occasionally prompting her dismay? as a woman as well as a poet. (207) Goodison's?slim dark men? have certainly offered not only poetic inspiration and hope, as well as sexual excitement, but it is also clear that they are all too capable of?false promise.* Turning one's back on one's muse or on a provocative?yes? to live a conventionally proper life is easier said than done. The wild woman always seems to be lurking just out of sight beckoning with a promise of adventure: Sometimes though when I'm closing the house down early and feeling virtuous for living one more day without falling too low I think I see her behind the hibiscus in dresses competing with their red, and she's spinning a key hung on a cat's eye ring and inviting me to go low riding. (115) The wild woman has apparently exerted a powerful influence on the poet, for she has felt compelled to dedicate a second poem of farewell 441

4 Caribbean Studies to her. In -Farewell Wild Woman (II),* the wild woman seems to have disappeared. What has happened to her is open to conjecture: Rumor spreads a story that bad love killed her kinder ones swear that just like that, she dreamed herself off precipices sheer as her dresses. (116) However, the poet, as a woman and as a sensitive artist, instinctually realizes that the wild woman has not been destroyed and is only lying low, biding her time. In fact, for all she knows, the poet may have unconsciously hidden the wild woman herself. Only I think I know where she went, (I might even have hidden her myself) in a priest's hole at the side of this house and feed her occasionally with unscorched bits of memory. (116) The innate relationship between the erotic and the spiritual, the sacred and the profane, is often looked upon with suspicion in Western thought and thus, must be discretely dealt with. Furthermore, the homology of body as house as cosmos is an ancient concept central to the idea of human spirituality. Thus, what better place for the wild woman to find sanctuary than?in a priest's hole/at the side of this house* (Goodison, 116)? Goodison's double-voiced muse of literature and love materializes again in the poem On Becoming a Tiger.* The tiger is not only a reflection of Goodison's muse, but it can be seen to symbolize for Goodison the maternal instinct. Her use of the animal as a symbol and metaphor for this primal, womanly instinct is apt for the?huge and fierce cat of Asia/ with the stunning golden quartz eyes* (134) was identified by the Chinese with the yin principal, that is all which is shadowy, cool, dark and feminine. Goodison's woman discovers her tiger essence by staring 442

5 Extended Summaries for seven consecutive days into a tall mirror that she had turned on its side. (134) Having divested herself of external distractions, the woman/tiger can focus her gaze inward to rediscover poetic inspiration and her instinctual womanly nature: and a red glowing landscape of memory and poems, a heart within her heart and lying there big, bright, and golden was the tiger, wildly darkly striped The mother-daughter relationship is of prime importance for passing on womanly traditions. Generations of mothers have bestowed on generations of daughters wisdom and feminine instinct that constitute a feminine collective unconscious. It is her mother reaching out in a dream who reveals the woman's tiger nature hidden under a conventional facade. In conclusion, in these three poems Lorna Goodison successfully explores the personal and social significance of the instinctual and the artistic woman. In addition, through a use of striking mythic images, she has succeeded in illustrating the archetype of woman as the creator and destroyer of life?an archetype arising initially through the biological processes of ovulation and menstruation but which encompasses a complete feminine mystique that defines the inner as well as the outer woman. WORKS CITED Baugh, Edward.?Goodison on the Road to Heartease:.? in West Indian Poetry. Proceedings of the Fifth Annual Conference on West Indian Literature, eds. Jennifer Jackson and Jeannette Allis. St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands: College of the Virgin Islands, Chamberlain, J. Edward. Come Back to Me My Language. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, Goodison, Lorna. Selected Poems. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,