To me, one silly task is like another.
I bare the shambling tricks of lust and pride.
This flesh will never give a child its mother,—
Song, like a wing, tears through my breast, my side,
And madness chooses out my voice again,
Again. I am the chosen no hand saves:
The shrieking heaven lifted over men,
Not the dumb earth, wherein they set their graves.
- Louise Bogan
Such a simple poem, but its feelings are so intense! The anguish and the torment within oneself prove to be extremely difficult to bear that they threaten to rip from the inside out .
Bogan uses Cassandra, a Trojan prophetess, to illustrate the isolation and burdens felt by women. Cassandra is blessed with the gift of vision, but she is cursed so that no one will believe her words. She “bares the shambling tricks of lust and pride.” Despite the irony of her cursed blessing, there is a conflicted pride on having a power that everyone yearns after. Such is her burden to bear.
It is for the world to see, but the world will not listen to her. Hence, her gift cannot bear fruit. Her flesh “will never give a child its mother.” What can she claim to be her own when she cannot do anything with her powers? “Song, like a wing, tears through [her] breast, [her] side, and madness chooses out [her] voice again.” She wants to bold and different, yet she cannot be. The conflict tears her body and soul apart. She is mad, not only in the eyes of others, but also to herself.
For some reason, Louise Bogan’s poem “Cassandra” really spoke to me when I first came across it. The parallelism amazed me. I love her use of the character, Cassandra, to represent the female sex. Cassandra had such great powers, but no one recognizes or acknowledges her strengths. No one will listen to her. Females, much like Cassandra, hold much potential, but because it is foreign to our male dominated society; their strengths are overlooked and discarded. Again, similar to Cassandra, they wish to be bold and remain different, but no one will accept such distinctions.
By taking in the Louise Bogan and her identity into consideration, I believe that I felt an even greater connection to the contents and it gave me further passageway to the poem’s intended meaning. Cassandra is a parallel to Bogan’s life. She, much like the prophetess, holds a great deal of potential, but it is because of her identity, the foreignness of her work, and its difference compared to the rest of the world’s influence that she is pushed aside. She shares a voice with Cassandra’s isolation.
I really cannot place why I feel such a great connection to her poem. I do not think that I go through the same type of torment described. I doubt that I can correctly imagine what it would be like to be in either Cassandra’s or Bogan’s shoes. However, I assume that sense of disappointment and feeling of loneliness when one’s skill is disregarded resonates with many.
Who wants to be forgotten? Who wants their gifts to be ignored? Who wants to be cursed by loneliness, with no one to understand or willing to listen to your cries?
Do you share a voice with Cassandra?
Like you, I shared Cassandra’s voice but from a different perspective. I recognize the poem is dedicated to the trials and tribulations of a supremely gifted woman who struggles to be heard in a realm dominated by men, namely poetry, yet what resounded for me was the sense of hopelessness, of being trapped like a lost cog in a hellish machine.
ReplyDelete“And madness chooses out my voice again,
Again. I am the chosen no hand saves:”
As Cassandra builds her shrieking, violent song against her plight, we see both the ritual of her unheard prophecies (or poems) and the daunting nature of her life. This act is not a single instance of overwhelming rage, but a cycle; she is imbedded within this system of ignorance, “chosen” yet unheard, unappreciated, undermined, and defeated. Bogan’s use of punctuation really resonates: “Again.” Certainly the repetition of again creates the image of her continually raging against the machine, yet the period, to me, speaks of her resignation. She cannot escape this cycle.
While this poem was written in 1924, this sentiment is certainly at the heart of our cultural consciousness. What value does spending eight hours in a cubicle have? Are we utilizing our talents or merely passing time? Sadly, too many of us do not respond as Bogan’s Cassandra – we suffer silently, hoping our golden years of retirement will balance out a lifetime of mediocrity.
...wow one of my many weaknesses: anything to do with Troy. haha
ReplyDelete"This flesh will never give a child its mother"
^ I'll point out the obvious and pretty flat out interpretation of that line since it stuck out to me. I think if you look at it objectively it's directly saying that perhaps she foresees her own doom, hence no child or hope for a family of her own can ever be created. Talk about depressing.
Brendan – I loved your description!
ReplyDeleteI certainly question about whether or not I use my talents productively. We do all this work, in school, extracurricular activities, jobs, but what for? Many times you don’t even know where to go, what to do, or who would even want you. When you are so lost and unsure of a place of genuine acceptance, it becomes hard to even see what your skills are.
Many times even if we have the ability to do great things, people are ignorant to the talents. There are also times where they recognize your skills, and it is because they realize your potential that they will prevent you from exercising them because of jealousy.
I suppose the ideal is for you to be certain of who you are and what you can do and to also find someone or perhaps a group of people who will appreciate you.
Euphoricagony - It is the pain that is the beauty of the poem. That gravity of the definite sound of death and loss of further generations must be deafening. *Sigh For some reason, I am seeing a dark lake...