Because I bought -- AND READ -- the wrong book...

So, I bought the wrong book... mine was Object Lessons by Anna Quindlen. It's really good; I'd recommend it. Unfortunately, it is not the book we were assigned... So, because there is no way I can get a copy of the book and read it by tomorrow, I've been allowed instead to take a look at some of Eavan Boland's poetry... so here goes. I do hope you enjoy what follows.

The Pomegranate
by Eavan Boland

The only legend I have ever loved is
the story of a daughter lost in hell.
And found and rescued there.
Love and blackmail are the gist of it.
Ceres and Persephone the names.
And the best thing about the legend is
I can enter it anywhere. And have.
As a child in exile in
a city of fogs and strange consonants,
I read it first and at first I was
an exiled child in the crackling dusk of
the underworld, the stars blighted. Later
I walked out in a summer twilight
searching for my daughter at bed-time.
When she came running I was ready
to make any bargain to keep her.
I carried her back past whitebeams
and wasps and honey-scented buddleias.
But I was Ceres then and I knew
winter was in store for every leaf
on every tree on that road.
Was inescapable for each one we passed.
And for me.
It is winter
and the stars are hidden.
I climb the stairs and stand where I can see
my child asleep beside her teen magazines,
her can of Coke, her plate of uncut fruit.
The pomegranate! How did I forget it?
She could have come home and been safe
and ended the story and all
our heart-broken searching but she reached
out a hand and plucked a pomegranate.
She put out her hand and pulled down
the French sound for apple and
the noise of stone and the proof
that even in the place of death,
at the heart of legend, in the midst
of rocks full of unshed tears
ready to be diamonds by the time
the story was told, a child can be
hungry. I could warn her. There is still a chance.
The rain is cold. The road is flint-coloured.
The suburb has cars and cable television.
The veiled stars are above ground.
It is another world. But what else
can a mother give her daughter but such
beautiful rifts in time?
If I defer the grief I will diminish the gift.
The legend will be hers as well as mine.
She will enter it. As I have.
She will wake up. She will hold
the papery flushed skin in her hand.
And to her lips. I will say nothing.

Clearly, this poem references the myth of Persephone, who is abducted by ... I thought it was Hades, but apparently not ... Ceres and taken to the underworld to live with him FOREVER. But, Persephone's mom, Demeter (goddess of the seasons!!), is not okay with this situation. She cancels all the good seasons of the year and makes it winter all the time, insisting that she will only bring back warmth and plant life and so forth if Persephone is returned to her... I forget some details, but the upshot is that Hades says Persephone can go back, but silly Persephone eats a pomegranate while she's in the Underworld, so she is doomed to have to return for half the year, every year. Hence the seasons.

So, Boland is discussing her relationship to this myth and how it has played a role in her life at various points. First, she tells us about her own childhood, when she imagined that the city she didn't like was really the Underworld, thus making herself Persephone.
Then, Boland tells us of a time when she was afraid her daughter was missing and felt the despair that Demeter must have felt. In this instance, her role becomes more that of Demeter, although she states that she has become Ceres. This is, perhaps, because she wants to take her daughter back with her and keep her, so as not to risk losing her again... so by removing her daughter from the world she is sort of Demeter and Ceres at once.

Boland then moves on to discuss the role of the pomegranate in the myth, and how it is the key to Persephone's ultimate fate. Boland says she could warn her daughter about the pomegranate, that she should not eat it, but she understands the hunger which Persephone must have felt, and she decides that it is best to let her daughter make her own mistakes, or so it seems to me.

So, I think that both the myth and this poem, in some ways, are stories of losing innocence. Perhaps the pomegranate symbolizes this most clearly, much the same way as the apple symbolizes falling from grace in the story of Adam and Eve (which I'm sure I don't need to outline for you...). Boland gives us three examples of losing some sort of innocence or falling from grace: her own, as a child, discovering the wide city around her is really a cage, a trap, a prison for her to live out her exile; her second loss of grace when she becomes a jealous figure bent on keeping her daughter to herself; and a third instance, of her daughter's eventual, future loss of innocence when she succumbs to some sort of temptation which binds her to a mortal life (or perhaps just binds her to a "normal" life that is within the bounds of "ordinary" rather than "extraordinary").



Aaaaand, number two:

Atlantis—A Lost Sonnet
by Eavan Boland

How on earth did it happen, I used to wonder
that a whole city—arches, pillars, colonnades,
not to mention vehicles and animals—had all
one fine day gone under?
I mean, I said to myself, the world was small then.
Surely a great city must have been missed?
I miss our old city —
white pepper, white pudding, you and I meeting
under fanlights and low skies to go home in it. Maybe
what really happened is
this: the old fable-makers searched hard for a word
to convey that what is gone is gone forever and
never found it. And so, in the best traditions of
where we come from, they gave their sorrow a name
and drowned it.

So, I felt drawn to this poem in part because the myth of Atlantis has stymied (really?) me for as long as I recall knowing it. I too have wondered how the heck a city could disappear without a trace.
Clearly, there is more to this poem than just a contemplation of a missing, ancient, perhaps made-up city. Boland relates Atlantis to a general sense of loss, both her own sense of losing a particular city and a less particular sense of loss in general. Boland suggests that perhaps the story of Atlantis is not based in any reality of a lost city of the ancient world, but perhaps that Atlantis just served as a symbol of loss to those who created it. Isn't that sort of what all myths are about? Not loss in particular, but aren't all myths symbols for something more?

Does anyone else notice that both of these poems revolve around ancient myths?? Tricky. Perhaps Boland is pointing to the fact that ancient myths serve a very real purpose even in the modern world; they provide answers, allegorical models, explanations, excuses, and perhaps even plots for our very own lives.