A Review of Cecile Goding’s Collection of Peoms, the Women Who Drink at the Sea
The steps to knowing and understanding life, both what is behind and what is ahead, are dictated to the reader through the eyes of the narrator. After you “mark off the site” by knowing where to start, and dig through the most recent past, “The layer below may surprise you – for the most part leftovers: / papers or scraps or bone – and bottles glistening with gilled things/ caught / and then neglected, curled up and starving (5).” Through this unearthing, we find difficult parts of our past, buried without purpose and needlessly forgotten. The labors the narrator endures in this poem are uttered through words that are precise and undeniable. Goding faces us with verbs such as “submerged,” “taught,” “thought,” “surround,” “woke,” “clutched,” and “faded” (5-6). The verbs alone contend with the strong and mysterious sense of wanting to “know” truth and one’s self while at the same time expressing the hesitancy and the uncertainty involved. Adding to the images of searching and discovering, Goding’s verbs penetrate the pages: “hold,” “find,” “saw,” “exposed,” “notice,”(5-6). If the first poem of a chapbook or any collection bares the job of reaching, impressing, and then captivating the reader, this poem succeeds!
In “The Witness,” we find the setting is desert, the scene is war, and problem is ironic . Although there very well is a war going on in this poem, a “war” of army vs. army, the real confrontation we find here is of nature vs. man. To be more exact, the poem is about a Fat-tailed Arabian Scorpion and a small sleeping child of two years. The narrator is spellbound in awe and in terror by the combat engaged in by the child and the deadly scorpion. The Scorpion is deadly, the child is defenseless, and the “The jets from Iraq slide in undercover/ of darkness, then rise for gulf targets” (12).
This poem is about the stuff life is made of. The small and fragile moments, the unexpected events and the things we are unaware of that constantly surround and affect us: “Whatever it was, the rumble/ of jets or the thud of pumps, the mumbles/ of sleeping children – whatever it was that sent/ You scuttling up the drain, across the floor/ to his dangling arm – is no longer critical” (12). But, the narrator still ponders the cause, the meaning of the Scorpion’s fatal actions and sees the creature as unstoppable, much like fate: “The One without/ consciousness or curiosity, yet perfectly aware – / everything (arm, chin, lashes, eyelids) passing through” (12-13). When an insect without mindfulness and marvel can kill, can destroy, in the spirit of this poem about war within war, we are asked to ask…to what extent of damage, can men do?
Goding, Cecile. The Women Who Drink at the Sea. State Street Press Chapbooks: New York, 1992
The title poem, “The Women Who Drink At The Sea” is a collage of memory and imagination. The narrator recounts in a dream-like state an event that both haunts and inspires her. She shares her magical experience. “Do you remember . . . How we watched them bend / their tall bones and kneel / to the sea froth, wait / for the tide? Hoe they put / their mouths down, the night / so still I heard the pull of lips . . . ” (16). The narrator’s experience colors her life now, with visions of remembrance and hope. Through this regression, the narrator prepares to be ready for progress. She states that she knows, now, what she “wants.”
It appears at this time in the collection, we or roaming the lower levels of the mound opened for excavation in the first poem. Goding is nearing the end of a cycle, a phase of life. Now, she wants an “us” that hasn’t yet been referenced in this self examination. She wants to emerge in the life-giving and life-taking waters of the ocean, she says, “I want to push out, feel my hair spread / on small waves your hands make, / hear the salt lapping at our joined / ankles” (17).
The ending of the poem is beautiful and captivating. The discovery process is nearly complete and Goding is ready to acknowledge this. Just as she was intrigued by the women taking in the liquids of the ocean, she too, wants “the moon to bring us in / to the mouths of the women” (17). With a story spun of mystery and magic, Cecile Goding will stimulate your emotions and call your intellect to surrender full attention to her words.
