Myth, text, and interpretation. When do our shared stories become our personal journeys? Can we honor oral histories in their chosen glories and traumas (@VamikVolkan) and understand these as our present and specific selves (@ClarissaPinkolaEstés)? As I watched The Odyssey last week frMyth, text, and interpretation. When do our shared stories become our personal journeys? Can we honor oral histories in their chosen glories and traumas (@VamikVolkan) and understand these as our present and specific selves (@ClarissaPinkolaEstés)? As I watched The Odyssey last week from a seat rippling in a theater’s barely attended darkness, I found myself reciting a series of poems from my first book, a counterpoint of perspective on Penelope and Ulysses.
This sequence forms part of a series of connected yet contained expressions of Greek and Roman goddesses, demi-goddesses, and human females that I wrote during a year of intense change. My former fiancé had suffered a severe stroke and spent months in a coma, in and out of hospitals and nursing homes. His family (and he) spoke only Dominican Spanish, and for me, the culture shock combined with the suddenness of ambiguous loss (@Pauline Boss) were seismic shifts in all I understood about myself and others.
For those who follow or connect with me, I trust that reading these poems will find their own moments of discovery about loss, confusion, betrayal, and reunions. As heart, speech, this (Atropos Press, 2009) is now out of print (although I hear Powell’s and other used bookstores sometimes have copies), I’ve taken the liberty of sharing “Counterpoint” in this new setting with additional notes here.
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