Dear Marys, Dear Mother, Dear Daughter - Erica Jong
Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
Author of
A Vindication
Of the Rights of Woman:
Born 27 April, 1759:
Died 10 September, 1797
—MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT'S
GRAVESTONE, PLACED BY
WILLIAM GODWIN, 1798
I was lonesome as a Crusoe.
—MARY SHELLEY
It is all over, little one, the flipping
and overleaping, the watery
somersaulting alone in the oneness
under the hill, under
the old, lonely bellybutton . . .
—GALWAY KINNEL
What terrified me will terrify others . . .
—MARY SHELLEY
1 / NEEDLEPOINT
Mothers & daughters . . .
something sharp
catches in my throat
as I watch my mother
nervous before flight,
do needlepoint—
blue irises & yellow daffodils
against a stippled woolen sky.
She pushes the needle
in & out
as she once pushed me:
sharp needle to the canvas of her life—
embroidering her faults
in prose & poetry,
writing the fiction
of my bitterness,
the poems of my need.
"You hate me," she accuses,
needle poised,
"why not admit it?"
I shake my head.
The air is thick
with love gone bad,
the odor of old blood.
If I were small enough
I would suck your breast . . .
but say nothing,
big mouth,
filled with poems.
Whatever love is made of—
wool, blood, Sunday Lamb,
books of verse
with violets crushed
between the pages,
tea with herbs
lemon juice for hair,
portriats sketched of me asleep
at nine months old—
this twisted skein
of multicoloured wool,
this dappled canvas
or this page of print
joins us
like the twisted purple cord
through which we first pulsed poems.
Mother, what I feel for you
is more
& less
than love.
2 / MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN & MARY GODWIN SHELLEY
She was "lonesome
as a Crusoe,"
orphaned by childbirth,
orphaned being born,
killing her mother
with stubborn afterbirth—
the medium they'd shared . . .
Puppies were brought
to draw off Mary's milk
& baby Mary screamed.
She grew up
to marry Shelley
have four babes
(of whom three died)—
& one immortal monster.
Byron & Shelley
strutted near the lake
& wrote their poems
on purest alpine air.
The women had their pregnancies
& fears.
They bore the babies,
copied manuscripts,
& listened to the talk
that love was "free."
The brotherhood of man
did not apply:
all they contributed
to life
was life.
& Doctor Frankenstien
was punished
for his pride:
the hubris of a man
creating life.
He reared a wretched
animated corpse—
& Shelley praised the book
but missed the point.
Who were these gothic monsters?
Merely men.
Self-exiled Byron
with his Mistress Fame,
& Percy Shelley
with his brains aboil,
the seaman
who had never learned to swim.
Dear Mary's,
it was clear
that you were truer.
Daughters of daughters,
mothers of future mothers,
you sought to soar
beyond compliments
of woman's lot—
& died in childbirth
for the Rights of Man.
3 / EXILES
This was the sharpness
of my mother's lesson.
Being a woman
meant eternal strife.
No colored wool could stitch
the trouble up;
no needlepoint
could cover it with flowers.
When Byron played
the exiled wanderer,
he left his ladies
pregnant or in ruin.
He left his children
fatherless for fame,
then wrote great letters
theorizing pain.
He scarcely knew
his daughters any more
than Mary knew the Mary
who expired
giving her birth.
All that remained in him:
a hollow loneliness
about the heart,
the milkless tug of memory,
the singleness of creatures
who breathe air.
Birth is the start
of loneliness
& loneliness the start
of poetry:
that seems a crude
reduction of it all,
but truth
is often crude.
& so I dream
of daughters
as a man might dream
of giving birth,
& as my mother dreamed
of daughters
& had three—
none of them her dream.
& I reach out for love
to other women
while my real mother
pines for me
& I pine for her,
knowing I would have to be
smaller than a needle
pierced with wool
to pierce the canvas of her life
again.
4 / DEAR DAUGHTER
Will you change all this
by my having you,
& by your having everything—
Don Juan's exuberance,
Childe Harold's pilgrimage,
books & babies,
recipes & riots?
Probably not.
In making daughters
there is so much needlepoint,
so much doing & undoing,
so much yearning—
that the finished pattern cannot please.
My poems will have daughters
everywhere,
but my own daughter
will have to grow
into her energy.
I will not call her Mary
or Erica.
She will shape
a wholly separate name.
& if her finger falters
on the needle,
& if she ever needs to say
she hates me,
& if she loathes poetry
& loves to whistle,
& if she never
calls me Mother,
she will always be my daughter—
my filament of soul,
that flew,
& caught.
She will come
in a radiance of new-made skin,
in a room of dying men
and dying flowers,
in the shadow of her large mother,
with her books propped up
& her ink-stained fingers,
lying back on pillows
white as blank pages,
laughing:
"I did it without
words!"
Author of
A Vindication
Of the Rights of Woman:
Born 27 April, 1759:
Died 10 September, 1797
—MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT'S
GRAVESTONE, PLACED BY
WILLIAM GODWIN, 1798
I was lonesome as a Crusoe.
—MARY SHELLEY
It is all over, little one, the flipping
and overleaping, the watery
somersaulting alone in the oneness
under the hill, under
the old, lonely bellybutton . . .
—GALWAY KINNEL
What terrified me will terrify others . . .
—MARY SHELLEY
1 / NEEDLEPOINT
Mothers & daughters . . .
something sharp
catches in my throat
as I watch my mother
nervous before flight,
do needlepoint—
blue irises & yellow daffodils
against a stippled woolen sky.
She pushes the needle
in & out
as she once pushed me:
sharp needle to the canvas of her life—
embroidering her faults
in prose & poetry,
writing the fiction
of my bitterness,
the poems of my need.
"You hate me," she accuses,
needle poised,
"why not admit it?"
I shake my head.
The air is thick
with love gone bad,
the odor of old blood.
If I were small enough
I would suck your breast . . .
but say nothing,
big mouth,
filled with poems.
Whatever love is made of—
wool, blood, Sunday Lamb,
books of verse
with violets crushed
between the pages,
tea with herbs
lemon juice for hair,
portriats sketched of me asleep
at nine months old—
this twisted skein
of multicoloured wool,
this dappled canvas
or this page of print
joins us
like the twisted purple cord
through which we first pulsed poems.
Mother, what I feel for you
is more
& less
than love.
2 / MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT GODWIN & MARY GODWIN SHELLEY
She was "lonesome
as a Crusoe,"
orphaned by childbirth,
orphaned being born,
killing her mother
with stubborn afterbirth—
the medium they'd shared . . .
Puppies were brought
to draw off Mary's milk
& baby Mary screamed.
She grew up
to marry Shelley
have four babes
(of whom three died)—
& one immortal monster.
Byron & Shelley
strutted near the lake
& wrote their poems
on purest alpine air.
The women had their pregnancies
& fears.
They bore the babies,
copied manuscripts,
& listened to the talk
that love was "free."
The brotherhood of man
did not apply:
all they contributed
to life
was life.
& Doctor Frankenstien
was punished
for his pride:
the hubris of a man
creating life.
He reared a wretched
animated corpse—
& Shelley praised the book
but missed the point.
Who were these gothic monsters?
Merely men.
Self-exiled Byron
with his Mistress Fame,
& Percy Shelley
with his brains aboil,
the seaman
who had never learned to swim.
Dear Mary's,
it was clear
that you were truer.
Daughters of daughters,
mothers of future mothers,
you sought to soar
beyond compliments
of woman's lot—
& died in childbirth
for the Rights of Man.
3 / EXILES
This was the sharpness
of my mother's lesson.
Being a woman
meant eternal strife.
No colored wool could stitch
the trouble up;
no needlepoint
could cover it with flowers.
When Byron played
the exiled wanderer,
he left his ladies
pregnant or in ruin.
He left his children
fatherless for fame,
then wrote great letters
theorizing pain.
He scarcely knew
his daughters any more
than Mary knew the Mary
who expired
giving her birth.
All that remained in him:
a hollow loneliness
about the heart,
the milkless tug of memory,
the singleness of creatures
who breathe air.
Birth is the start
of loneliness
& loneliness the start
of poetry:
that seems a crude
reduction of it all,
but truth
is often crude.
& so I dream
of daughters
as a man might dream
of giving birth,
& as my mother dreamed
of daughters
& had three—
none of them her dream.
& I reach out for love
to other women
while my real mother
pines for me
& I pine for her,
knowing I would have to be
smaller than a needle
pierced with wool
to pierce the canvas of her life
again.
4 / DEAR DAUGHTER
Will you change all this
by my having you,
& by your having everything—
Don Juan's exuberance,
Childe Harold's pilgrimage,
books & babies,
recipes & riots?
Probably not.
In making daughters
there is so much needlepoint,
so much doing & undoing,
so much yearning—
that the finished pattern cannot please.
My poems will have daughters
everywhere,
but my own daughter
will have to grow
into her energy.
I will not call her Mary
or Erica.
She will shape
a wholly separate name.
& if her finger falters
on the needle,
& if she ever needs to say
she hates me,
& if she loathes poetry
& loves to whistle,
& if she never
calls me Mother,
she will always be my daughter—
my filament of soul,
that flew,
& caught.
She will come
in a radiance of new-made skin,
in a room of dying men
and dying flowers,
in the shadow of her large mother,
with her books propped up
& her ink-stained fingers,
lying back on pillows
white as blank pages,
laughing:
"I did it without
words!"
[From:
Jong, E. (1973) Fruits and Vegetables. London: Secker and Warburg. p14 - p21]
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