“A woman is born a mermaid so she can picket / for the rights of both women and fish” – Cynthia MacDonald, “Burying the Babies”

What does the famous story of “The Little Mermaid” really have to do with water, besides the whole gill situation? What captivates me about this story, every time I encounter it, is that it’s a story of loss of voice, and of transfiguration between one world and another…not a clean separation but one that’s fraught with grief, and the kind of pain that only comes from a rite of passage, that excruciating birth out of childhood and into adulthood.

Many of the poems in Imagine a Woman are stories I’ve rewritten in poetic form, to express a secret truth that the original story revealed to me over time. “The History of the Siren” (published in 2021 in an anthology of the body by Juventud Press) takes a central theme from the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale: desire, and explores it from the perspective of the siren, which I like to think of as an ancient ancestor of the modern mermaid - her precursor, her archetype, her mother figure.

“The maternal significance of water (The Fountain of Life) is one of the clearest interpretations of symbols in the whole field of mythology…Mithras…is represented as having been born beside a river…” - Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation (Vol. 5)

There is a young girl in the poem, attempting to understand secrets, unspoken things that only women know. There is a rupture - a movement from one home to another - and a loom that doesn’t make it in the transition.

I don’t remember when the image of the loom came to mind for me exactly, but in my notes for “The History of the Siren,” I found the etymology of the word ‘siren’ could include the meaning of ‘rope, cord’ and ‘to tie, join, fasten’, which in turn results in the meaning of ‘binder, entangler.’

I think it’s meaningful that weaving fabric - binding, entangling - has been considered a sacred power for women since well before the advent of monotheism. In some stories, such as the greek myth of Philomela, weaving has to do with speaking, and the ability to transmit messages. Hence, the act of weaving, like so many acts of creativity, enters the spiritual realm.

“Those who would develop consciousness pursue all that stands behind the readily observable…the ability to stand what one sees enables a woman to return to her deep nature, there to be sustained in all thoughts, feelings, and actions.” – Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves

Although the desire, or longing, present in the central character of “The Little Mermaid” is relatable to most adolescents - the yearning to leave home, experience something very different from what you know, and seek love beyond your family members - the moral to the Hans Christian Andersen tale feels more like something society should be grateful to transcend. When the little mermaid leaves her family behind, breaking her loyalty to them, she can only save herself from the trouble that results if she is willing to murder the man she loves. Having proved disloyal once, she refuses to do so again, and sacrifices herself rather than kill the prince - the strength of her love presumably all the more admirable given the fact that the guy already married someone else.

The patriarchal values of such morals, and how they have impacted women over time, is part of why I’ve been so driven to turn these pictures upside down, in this case to focus on the autonomy of female desire. When the narrator of “The History of the Siren” says, Some men / told that the women were lonely / because they were dangerous. / I was only jealous that when / a storm came up, they slipped / below the water and took / danger for their refuge…desire is retrieved from a dangerous justification for banishment, and restored to an element of femininity that is part of a woman’s power.

"...liberation is often mistaken for evil as it occurs.” – Jia Tolentino, “The Cult of the Difficult Woman”, Trick Mirror

So what about that second poem I promised? “All the Things They Say About Water” does feature a mermaid, but the meaning of this poem is more aligned with a parallel theme in Imagine a Woman - not the retelling of well-known stories, but the retelling of the little-known story between my mom and I.

The poem, which still lives at pioneertown, where it was first published in 2020, also has a young narrator who sounds like she is stumbling out of the fog of youthful ignorance, into a new understanding of the world around her, and the people who populate it. Her ignorance is both natural and imparted, exemplified by the word ‘conceals’ in the last line. In this case, the water in the poem is all-powerful, a symbol of both life and death, its beauty inseparable from its ability to do damage. It’s one of the earlier breakthroughs I made, on the page, out of denial and into the heartbeat of deep intimacy in my relationship with my mom.

“Those black waters of death are the water of life, for death with its cold embrace is the maternal womb, just as the sea devours the sun but brings it forth again.” - Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation (Vol. 5)

We’re coming back to the beginning now, back to the slow walk through the snow, and its lessons for me. I’ve gone through many transformations as my mother’s daughter. Because of the nature of her abuse, and the way it carried on right up until the end of her life, I’ve held my mom’s spirit at arm’s length. Even as I’ve made miraculous strides - I often say I have a better relationship with her in death than I ever did in life - I’m also conscious that the mistakes she made in life have justified my sense that she’s untrustworthy. In other words, I’ve allowed myself to keep dismissing her because of her flaws.

But one of the most important things I’ve learned about death, is that people are not the same in death as they are in life. And if I really believe that her spirit is filled with all the best parts of herself, then I have to understand that not only is she trustworthy, she’s also an expert on all those mistakes she made. And that means she has tremendous wisdom to offer me, if I’m willing to listen.

In relation to my mom - unlike anyone else on this earth - I am forever a child, her child, looking up at her where she sits at the loom in the house where she gave birth to me. The pain of our closeness is an epic journey I never stop retracing the steps of.

“…archetypes are the forms or river-beds along which the current of psychic life has always flowed.” - Carl Jung, Symbols of Transformation (Vol. 5)

I’m so thrilled to share that poems from my manuscript-in-progress are forthcoming from both On the Seawall and Poetry Northwest. I can’t wait to share them with you.

March starts our 3 - 2 - 1 countdown to publication day on June 9 (otherwise known as ‘Pub Day’ IN THE BIZ - DON’T HATE ME FOR KNOWING THE LINGO!!!). As we get closer and closer, I’ll start to share some fun details, such as how many poems are in the book, how it’s organized, maybe some table of contents previews coming your way...

We’ll also be talking about “Beauty and the Beast” next month, a story with themes of transformation that pervade across time and culture. Let’s turn into animals together.

Thank you for reading,

D.

archive

January 9: Seven Stories: Thumbelina (sort of)

December 9: Seven Stories: The Sleeping Beauty

November 9: Seven Stories: Snow White

October 9: Frankenstein Edition

September 9: On Longing

August 9: Productivity and Process

July 9: On Wolves and Women

June 9: Book Announcement

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