Poetry – Page 11 – Feminism and Religion

Biblical Poetry, 5th Installment

This is the 5^th in a series of work I have been doing to translate passages of the bible into poetry that strips out the patriarchal overlays. You can read the previous posts.

In this installment I am grouping together some passages that deal with vibrational energy and its role in creation. We humans often express sacred vibration as song or chant. When we get into the vibrational flow they are truly uplifting. In the translations below, I have kept two of the words in Hebrew because of their wonderful vibrational essences:

Perilous Passages by Sara Wright

Old Woman cackled on the wing
a pterodactyl with claws
crimson black and white
a great wind
was howling
and she was too.
Passages she screeched.
Her wrath undid me.

The Way was Narrow.
Cushions of moss
calmed wet cavern walls,
steep stones threatened
uncertain footsteps,
echoing my descent.
At the bottom
of the well
Silence rang out
like a bell.

Mother-Love: A Review of Rosemary Daniell’s THE MURDEROUS SKY: POEMS OF MADNESS AND MERCY by Joyce Zonana

She’s been called a “national treasure” by Bruce Feiler and lauded by Erica Jong as “one of the women by whom our age will be known in times to come” … And yet Rosemary Daniell is not as well-known as she deserves to be–perhaps because she is a fiercely feminist Southern woman.

joyce-zonana

She’s been called a “national treasure” by Bruce Feiler and lauded by Erica Jong as “one of the women by whom our age will be known in times to come.” The author of three books of poetry, a novel, several memoirs, and several books of nonfiction, she is the founder of the revolutionary “Zona Rosa” writing workshops and retreats that have helped hundreds of participants—mostly women—become published authors. For many years she led writing workshops in women’s prisons in Georgia and Wyoming, and served as program director for Georgia’s Poetry in the Schools. Her work has been featured in numerous magazines and newspapers. And yet Rosemary Daniell is not as well-known as she deserves to be—perhaps because she is a fiercely feminist Southern woman who unabashedly celebrates her own sexuality while also bringing her formidable intellect, wit, charm, and compassion to bear on her approach to writing.

Continue reading “Mother-Love: A Review of Rosemary Daniell’s THE MURDEROUS SKY: POEMS OF MADNESS AND MERCY by Joyce Zonana”

Blue Is My Favorite Color by Marie Cartier

You can’t have the ocean without blue.

I walk at night, that’s the time of year

the grunion run, a silver school teaching us that it’s

work to populate –the small shimmer of a female screwing herself into

the sand. I wish her blue. She wooshes three thousand eggs

into the hole she’s made, her birthing room. The males circle her, and fertilize the eggs with a hug. The males leave and the female is quiet.

Then she flips and flops herself back and forth and forth and back,

side flopping to the ocean.

I wish her blue. I wish her free. I bless the eggs.

Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power by Judy Grahn BOOK REVIEW by Carolyn Lee Boyd

Any new book by Judy Grahn is cause for celebration. For decades, Grahn has been a lyrical and passionate poet, author, mythographer, and cultural theorist whose work features both goddess wisdom and contemporary culture centering on women and queer people. Nightboat Books has just published her newest book, Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power, which offers ancient yet fresh world views with which to approach such issues as injustice, sexuality and gender, climate change, and more just when we need it most.

In Eruptions of Inanna, she brings what she calls her “poet’s eye” to eight stories featuring the Sumerian goddess Inanna as well as religious practices of those devoted to her. She explores how these have directly influenced our world and, in her words, can continue to “feed our needs and help us take better care of each other and our world.” According to Grahn, Inanna “is a combination of human, creature, erotic and other energetic forces, and civilization. She also inherited very old powers that grew out of women’s rituals” (55). Her essence engenders sovereignty and self-worth, especially in women and queer people. She is a goddess of love, espousing passion and the joy of eroticism as integral to both life and society. She practices an expansive justice that creates positive outcomes in response to horrific acts. She creates a civilization of the arts, beautiful and useful crafts, abundance, and a jubilant communal life. She demands respect for nature and ecological sustainability.

How I Learned to Make Maps by Marie Cartier

I went into the unknown world with glasses

that made everything so clear I could

move through this world into the next.

Before I got my glasses…I didn’t see the way I could step to the edge,

put out my hand, split the known world and

go through: into the unknown.

I became someone without history.

Those rooms with my father, those times, those days, then nights.

Those stories …

Incest really is not a word that describes anything.

It does not describe the way the body splinters and then the known world separates and

when the known world separates, when all you know is you splitting,

all you see is clouds.

So, I got glasses and I walked to the very edge of the flat world and stepped through.

Oh, I said, the world is round… is round is round. I started circling the round world

to find my hero, my Self.

I was alone, but my glasses were sparkling clean.

More Biblical Poetry by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

This is the 3^rd in a series of Biblical poetry where I am “translating” verses of the Bible. You can read the first two here: Biblical Poetry and Biblical Poetry, Part 2.

One of my primary purposes of doing this work is to strip away patriarchal veneers that have been layered upon original teachings. I reach into ancient pagan knowledge in order to reclaim what I believe to have been lost.

Below is each verse in 3 versions. First is the King James Version (KJV) for familiarity, the second is Jeff Benner’s Mechanical Translation (Benner) which uses a consistent translation for each word. I use his translations to get a better sense of how the words originally fit together.[i]

Biblical Poetry, Part 2 by Janet MaiKa’i Rudolph

Last month, I wrote about a new project I have been playing with which is to re-write biblical verses as spiritual poetry rather than follow along with stricter translations (although truth be told, my translations have never been strict). My main goal is to strip away the layers of patriarchy that grew up around universal, earth-based, mystical lessons. In my last blogpost I wrote about why I translate El (god in English versions) as All-Potential Powers. You can read it here: https://feminismandreligion.com/2021/04/15/biblical-poetry-by-janet-maikai-rudolph/

I have written before about my translation of YHVH as mother/father creator. You can read that here: https://feminismandreligion.com/2019/03/05/eve-by-any-other-name-by-janet-rudolph/

YHVH, the sacred 4 letter tetragrammaton, is always translated as LORD in the bible. It is truly a wondrous name with many layers of meaning which the English one-word term LORD doesn’t capture. I find that the English translations of these two words – LORD and god – are dull and without sacred energetic aspects. In ancient times, the words used to depict divinity in general, and YHVH specifically, were meant to be intoned and chanted.

How I Learned to Grow Wings by Marie Cartier

April 2021, Poem

Visibility is

this body opening against itself over and over… an existence moving through fibers was

the one thing I had. When was the time…breathe in? Breathe out.

My existence to myself was the most political act. You can’t erase me. I exist for myself.

I am thirteen. I stand next to my father and say, “Don’t you touch me. Don’t you ever touch me again.” My mother stands by the sink, her hand reaches out and clutches its edge. My father sits and looks up

at me. He opens his mouth and closes it. I turn away, expecting his hand to land across my back.

I imagine me falling. But that doesn’t happen. Not that day.

That day I stood up. Said no, turned my back and walked away. I am a political act.

I am a body with a voice and I heard myself speaking for myself when no one else would, I said no.

No is the most beautiful word in the English language for a woman who learns its power.

The spell of no. I cast it when I was thirteen.

The gaze is

when they saw me. I started to erase myself, I was without fingers first. They kept finding me, so

I erased my hands. They kept seeing me, so I erased my arms. They kept locating me, so I erased my feet and my legs. But they kept finding me. I erased my secret places between my legs—what they most wanted. I erased my belly so I wouldn’t be seen eating, and my breasts so I would not be noticed as

a girl. But they found me anyway. I erased my neck and my head disappeared.

All that was left was my shoulders. I felt the weight of their gaze, and everything they wanted and took. And so, I lifted my shoulders, and I found my wings.

And I flew, and in flight, I let all of my parts come home.

A woman flying was the one thing they never thought to look for. But I found her. And she was me.

Wood Frog Mother by Sara Wright

Dead Cedar
Week after week
heat, wind, sun,
shrinks vernal pools.
Ditches are dry.
Denizens
of wet forest,
masked gold leaves,
seek shallow depressions
fed by Spring.

One night the
heat wave breaks
I smell rain,
hear hoarse croaks.
I stand there
swallowing sound
inhaling fragrant air
Lamenting absence –
so many voices stolen
by drought.