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A review by jd_brubaker
Fast Speaking Woman: Chants and Essays by Anne Waldman
3.0
Sometimes I read a book of poems and am immediately struck by how intricate, how lively, how powerful it is. Sometimes I read a book of poems and that striking attachment to the words on the page builds slowly. And then there are books like this one, where my interest ebbed and flowed from one page to the next, sometimes striking me in such a way I felt I couldn't breathe, and other times leaving me feeling a sense of wanting more.
This book is its own mythology. From the beginning, the reader is brought into a place both of the earth and more than the earth: "I'm the druid woman" (pg 4). This is a book exploring identity: what it means for the speaker to be a woman, to be a specific type of woman, to be many types of women combined together: "I'm the tungsten woman" (pg 5), "I'm the detonating woman, the demon woman" (pg 5), "I'm the egregious woman, I'm the embryo woman" (pg 6). The reader is keenly aware that the speaker identifies herself as all of these types of women, as well as stands in as host for all of these types of women, as if the speaker herself was a conglomerate of all women. And as the poems roll from one page to the next, as the reader is brought on this journey of what it means to be these women, the language becomes ever more strange, ethereal, untethered from the physical world.
This mythology is one of this books greatest strengths. The speaker is embarking on a personal and spiritual journey, and the reader is invited to witness. It feels communal, as well individual. It feels specific, as well as universal. I felt as though I could be any woman reading this book and I would find myself included among its pages. I felt imbibed with the presence of Medusa, Hera, Athena, Calypso, Persephone, Artemis, Demeter, Psyche...I felt a distinct disconnection from everything masculine while also aware that there were parts of me that breathed in the masculine. It sounds contradictory, and I think it is and was meant to be. There's a blending of what it means to exist as a woman, both pushing away and embracing the gender binaries simultaneously.
"The mind's a relic, a fossil, antiquated solider / the mind's a crone, a dowager" (pg 43). "My body is unprecedented, maturing / my mind is antediluvian / hag's heart scowls at this waning planet" (pg 43). The stereotypes thrust onto woman since the beginning of time are embraced unabashedly among these pages, taking crone, hag, witch, bitch, whore and anything else used against women and throwing it on the page as self-acceptance. I'm not ashamed, I felt this book was saying. "The saint is a woman scorned" (pg 52).
However, there were moments when I felt deeply uncomfortable by how close this book came to cultural appropriation. While I understand that Waldman spent years of her life dedicated to studying Buddhism and other such religions and was, herself, a practicing Buddhist, and while I always felt as though there was reverence for these cultures and their rituals, I nevertheless felt that this book, its speaker, and the writer are claiming some spaces not their own. Maybe this is me not quite understanding these poems. But it was enough to make me hesitate.
This book is its own mythology. From the beginning, the reader is brought into a place both of the earth and more than the earth: "I'm the druid woman" (pg 4). This is a book exploring identity: what it means for the speaker to be a woman, to be a specific type of woman, to be many types of women combined together: "I'm the tungsten woman" (pg 5), "I'm the detonating woman, the demon woman" (pg 5), "I'm the egregious woman, I'm the embryo woman" (pg 6). The reader is keenly aware that the speaker identifies herself as all of these types of women, as well as stands in as host for all of these types of women, as if the speaker herself was a conglomerate of all women. And as the poems roll from one page to the next, as the reader is brought on this journey of what it means to be these women, the language becomes ever more strange, ethereal, untethered from the physical world.
This mythology is one of this books greatest strengths. The speaker is embarking on a personal and spiritual journey, and the reader is invited to witness. It feels communal, as well individual. It feels specific, as well as universal. I felt as though I could be any woman reading this book and I would find myself included among its pages. I felt imbibed with the presence of Medusa, Hera, Athena, Calypso, Persephone, Artemis, Demeter, Psyche...I felt a distinct disconnection from everything masculine while also aware that there were parts of me that breathed in the masculine. It sounds contradictory, and I think it is and was meant to be. There's a blending of what it means to exist as a woman, both pushing away and embracing the gender binaries simultaneously.
"The mind's a relic, a fossil, antiquated solider / the mind's a crone, a dowager" (pg 43). "My body is unprecedented, maturing / my mind is antediluvian / hag's heart scowls at this waning planet" (pg 43). The stereotypes thrust onto woman since the beginning of time are embraced unabashedly among these pages, taking crone, hag, witch, bitch, whore and anything else used against women and throwing it on the page as self-acceptance. I'm not ashamed, I felt this book was saying. "The saint is a woman scorned" (pg 52).
However, there were moments when I felt deeply uncomfortable by how close this book came to cultural appropriation. While I understand that Waldman spent years of her life dedicated to studying Buddhism and other such religions and was, herself, a practicing Buddhist, and while I always felt as though there was reverence for these cultures and their rituals, I nevertheless felt that this book, its speaker, and the writer are claiming some spaces not their own. Maybe this is me not quite understanding these poems. But it was enough to make me hesitate.