Changing Woman is one of Janine Canan's
newest books of poetry published in 2000--the other is a wonderful
book of translations, Star in My Forehead: Selected Poems by
Else Lasker-Schuler. In this review, I'll concentrate on Changing
Woman . Poetically, it's divided into five sections, beginning
with "In The Country of War" to the final "In The
Mother's Heart". It's quite a journey--one that could only
be made by a mature poet. From "In The Country of War": "Once
the world was wild./ Mother drenched her darling boy in milk and
honey./He built the house, the road, the car--and woman/made their
home, their conversation during the long journey./Now he, for millennia
worshipped with flowers and fire,/must retreat in silence, smoke
and shame..../He gives his sons weapons and teaches them to kill./He
imagines he is bigger than God.'
Then the poet enters the "Fathers' Night"--she
encounters, wrestles, rages and warns us all in our new century
of this deadly night we sleep and dream in...from "Radioactive": "Chernobyl,
Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Pakistan, Spokane Reservation, Three Mile
Island--/radioactive forever./The feminization of everything/is
required."
The path of transformation has begun to the "Journey
to the Root" (third section)--here there's human love, joy,
bliss, the erotic. And then, human pain, betrayal, loss of Paradise.
Each poem guides the way like firm, well-made stepping stones in
a lush, almost wild garden. As you pause after a poem (standing
on a stone), you see the garden is well maintained, maybe a patch
of wilderness there at the edge. This is one of the hallmarks of
Canan's poetry: a well maintained, wild passion. She ends this
series of poems with a wise song of despair, from "Epilogue": "I
thought you were my Love,/but you were only a lesson../I thought
you were my Goddess,/but you were only human."
In the short fourth section the poet takes refuge
in the Goddess of this continent, Changing Woman--she enters the
Native American myth-truth-ancient story of transformation: "Beauty
before you,/Beauty behind you,/Beauty above you,/Beauty below you...."
And in the fifth and final section Canan reveals
her hard-won transcendence--the culmination of her half century
wisdom, attended by a newborn's heart (from "My Heart"): "My
heart is pouring out of me./My heart is soaring toward you over
thousands of miles.../like a flock of night birds lit by the moon-/I
am flying after my heart." These poems, stepping stones, reveal
a mystical part of the well maintained garden, probably once gated,
guarded. Now, fully revealed. Each poem reveals a spiritual secret,
and we are grateful. She sings, affirms and celebrates the divine
feminine, the Goddess in us all.
At the far end of the garden, Changing Woman's garden,
there's a soft grassy spot to sit in the twilight. Venus begins
to appear in the quickly changing violet night sky. Read this poem,
now...