#NAPOMO 2017 #GUEST #POETRY #BLOG "reopening" by BETH ANNE BOARDMAN for #NATIONALPOETRYMONTH

reopening

i found an old poem –

written on a warm day,

when a dramatic offshore wind

streamed spray out to sea,

off the crests of rolling, tumbling

massive turquoise waves….

“here’s the truth:”

the poem said. 

“I no longer believe

in true love….”

oh! sad! (i thought.)

(how long ago did i write this? why?)

“I no longer believe in love

between a man and a woman,”

the poem went on.

(hm, what?)

“I believe in

  silence

  and space

  and the

  great unknown.”

(ah!)

“I have gone into

 the place

 I have always feared.”

(yes!)

“Beyond ideas of

 love –

 and into

 silence.”

(oh, yes!)

•

silence:

a cold, interstellar

kind of place, at first –

terrifying

huge

endless –

like standing in

the mouth of a huge black cave….

yogis, holy people, healers

tell us:

in silence lives all possibility.

all dreams

hopes,

nightmares

next to despair –

we humans will

hop like jack-rabbits,

dance like deer

(i’m afraid i’ve done these things myself)

just to outrun  

silence....

ubique silentium….

•

here’s the thing, though:

silence contains the grail –

truth, love – tristan and iseult, arthur, the green knight –

it’s hard to describe, but

listen….

in welcoming my own existence,

in making a hospitable place for my dreams,

i am finding a dearness in myself –

what a surprise! 

and all my loves have deepened,

and breathing comes ever easier,

and guess who just walked in my door?

True Love!

©2017 mythopoetry.com
©2017 Beth Anne Boardman All Rights Reserved

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Beth Anne Boardman, RN, MA, PhD lives in California and New Hampshire. She travels and lectures on the Mythology of Sport; Women and Myth; and the Alchemy of Adolescence (her dissertation topic), in addition to consulting as a writer to websites. 

Recently, Beth has served on the board of the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association and as Regional Coordinator for local alumni. Her career spans work as a registered nurse, the study of world dance and music, and the profound joy of raising two children.



For more poetry by Beth see
   POEMS FROM THE OTHERWORLD


For stories and essays on creative life & culture see   MYTHMUSE

APRIL #GUESTPOST Introducing "OTHER ASPECTS OF APHRODITE" by playwright and cultural mythologist LAURA SHAMAS

OTHER ASPECTS OF APHRODITE

The last time I formally studied the Greek Goddess Aphrodite, or her Roman counterpart Venus, was over sixteen years ago.  At that time, Aphrodite was discussed primarily as the Goddess of Love, Beauty, Fertility, and Sex/Pleasure.  As Paul Friedrich writes in The Meaning of Aphrodite, the goddess is often reduced, in scholarship, to: “a fun girl and a patroness of prostitutes…” (2).

The Aphrodite myths (or fragments of these myths) that are most familiar are:

 

"The Birth of Venus," Sandro Botticelli, (c. 1486). Uffizi, Florence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus

1) BIRTH - The birth myth, in which Aphrodite emerges as a nude fully mature adult from the ocean, seeded by the castration of the sky god Uranus.  This story is a link to the more general category of “Indo-European Dawn goddess” and highlights her symbolic value as a fertile, generative deity.
2) MARRIAGE - Her marriage to the Greek god Hephaestus, the brilliant craftsman and jewelry-maker of Olympus, who has a shriveled foot. He famously crafts a net of gold to catch his wife in her infidelities.

3) LOVERS – Aphrodite’s many lovers include Ares, god of war; Hermes, the messenger/trickster deity; Adonis, the handsome youth associated with the renewal of vegetation and rebirth; the mortal Anchises, who was an animal herder when he encountered Aphrodite; Dionysus, the god of wine, theatre and frenzy; Poseidon, the powerful deity of the sea; and finally, her first love, Nerites—the gorgeous sea deity who refused to live with Aphrodite in Olympus, and was changed into a seashell by the goddess as a punishment.

4) MAGIC GIRDLE - Aphrodite’s magic girdle or “cestus” (some say it was a belt) was crafted by her husband Hephaestus, and was borrowed by goddess Hera to help heal conflicted couples, including her own marriage to Zeus. Aphrodite’s cestus could inspire desire and passion; Aphrodite promises Hera in Homer’s The Iliad, Book 14, that if Hera wears it: “I think whatever is in your heart’s desire shall not go unaccomplished.”

5) THE TROJAN WAR - Aphrodite is featured in the Judgment of Paris, the prelude to the Trojan War. In a competition for a golden apple, Aphrodite is picked by Paris as “most beautiful,” over Hera or Athena. As part of the deal, Aphrodite promised Paris the gorgeous, married Helen of Sparta, who then becomes “of Troy.” Aphrodite fatefully sides with the Trojans throughout the war; in The Iliad, she is wounded by Diomedes in combat while trying to save her son Aeneas, and at another point, she intervenes to save Paris himself. She also fought alongside Ares.

6) IRE, JEALOUSY, STING - Aphrodite’s legendary temper and jealousy.  Some examples include the stories of:  Eros and Psyche, which features Aphrodite’s jealousy of mortal Psyche’s beauty; the fight with Persephone over custody of the young Adonis which ultimately had to be decided by Zeus; envy over Hippolytus’ allegiance to the goddess Artemis, famously dramatized in Euripides’ play Hippolytus; and what she did to Nerites (see “Lovers,” #3 Above.)

Oil Jar in the Shape of Aphrodite at Her Birth, Greek,
380–370 B.C. Terracotta, pigment, and gold,8 3/8 in. high
 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Catharine Page Perkins Fund [Note use of shell]

7) REWARDS LOYALTY – Aphrodite favors those who worship her. One example: When sculptor Pygmalion, who disdains women, creates a gorgeous female statue made of ivory, he finds himself falling in love. He prays to Aphrodite at her temple; the statue comes to life and is named Galatea. Pygmalion marries Galatea, lives happily, and credits Aphrodite for the miracle.

But there are other aspects of Aphrodite, and much we still do not know about how the goddess was perceived and worshipped in her own temples during different eras and locations. This is puzzling, because according to art historian Christine Mitchell Havelock in her art survey book The Aphrodite of Knidos and Her Successors, the goddess remained incredibly popular through different epochs: “Probably more ancient statues survive of the nude Aphrodite than of any other Greek divinity”(1).

In The Meaning of Aphrodite, written in 1978, Friedrich identifies a general scholarly “avoidance of Aphrodite,” and mentions several works by classicists in which she is treated as a minor deity or omitted altogether. Friedrich attributes this gap to “deep cultural and religious biases “ among scholars who attempt to comprehend and contextualize Aphrodite as a religious figure in antiquity (2).

When I attended the "Excavating Aphrodite” Symposium in April 2012 at the Getty Villa in Los Angeles as a general audience member, I was stunned to learn, from the expert archaeologists who shared research findings there, that most temples of Aphrodite still had not yet been fully excavated—and some not really at all. In the five years since, it is doubtful that major progress has been made, due to the financial, institutional, and cultural requirements for such major endeavors. (Here’s the most recent New York University report on excavations in Aphrodisias, Turkey, where Aphrodite was the city’s patron.)

GODDESS OF MILITARISM?

When I first studied Aphrodite, I was always a bit baffled by the pairing of Aphrodite and Ares. Like Aphrodite and Hephaestus, the coupling is categorized as an allegorical unity of opposites: Love and War (Aphrodite and Ares), Beauty and Ugliness (Aphrodite and Hephaestus), Immortal and Mortal (Aphrodite and Anchises), etc.

But is war really the opposite of love? What if there’s another reason Aphrodite was paired with Ares?

In the Getty Villa’s 2012 art exhibit “Aphrodite and the Gods of Love,” there was classical art displayed that suggested Aphrodite’s link to militarism (Click here for an example.). One Roman statue displayed, “The Venus of Capua,” is a copy of a Greek statue featuring Aphrodite posing semi-nude with a military shield (the shield is now missing).

In Monica S. Cyrino’s book Aphrodite (2010), Cyrino considers war-related ties to the deity’s cult, observing that while Aphrodite could never be studied as a full blown goddess of war (49), there is at least proof of “possible militaristic elements” in her shrines and cults, such as accounts of armed statues of Aphrodite, as described by the travel writer Pausanias in the Second Century C.E. in cults found in Cythera, Corinth, with the best evidence at Sparta (51). There, Aphrodite was worshipped as a female Ares, or an “Areia,” known as “Aphrodite Areia” (51). Cyrino notes that there are other places where Aphrodite and Ares were worshipped jointly (e.g., Greece and Crete), but Aphrodite is not as militaristically represented in those places as she is in Sparta (51).

Information from the “Worshipping Aphrodite” page of the online record of the Getty Museum’s 2012 “Aphrodite and the Gods of Love” exhibit is relevant: “Although she [Aphrodite] is often perceived as having no connection with military matters, ancient literary sources preserve references to an armed Aphrodite as a cult statue at a number of sites. None of these survive, but intriguing finds from the Etruscan port of Gravisca offer positive evidence.” Their page features two images of Aphrodite wearing a helmet, and holding a spear (now missing).

In at least one location, her militarism seems to have pre-dated other characteristics. Lisa R. Brody, in her 2001 essay “The Cult of Aphrodite at Aphrodisias in Caria” writes:  “The Aphrodisian goddess was perhaps above aIl known as a goddess of warfare in her early phases of development, and this continued even after she became known as Aphrodite. It is in fact her enduring reputation as a military divinity that motivates Sulla to make his dedication at the sanctuary in the early first century B.C.” (101). Although located in modern day Turkey, Greek religious practices were thought to be replicated closely at Aphrodisias.

The Roman Venus is not exactly the same as the Greek Aphrodite, but there was a Roman deity known as “Venus Victrix [Victorious],” who was celebrated by Julius Caesar, Roman soldiers and other noted military giants such as Sulla and Pompey.

Were Aphrodite’s militaristic attributes subsumed? Were militaristic attributes acknowledged by specific cults, as part of local practices? Are the combat stories that involve Aphrodite from The Iliad (see #5 above, “The Trojan War”) indicative of a deeper military-related aspect of Aphrodite now obscured? Does her frequent pairing with Ares signal that she, too, was considered a deity of militarism? Certainly, the records of armed Aphrodite statues suggest that possibility. Or was their pairing instead indicative of a mixis (a mingling of deities), whose motto would be, as Cyrino writes: “Make love and war” (52)? Could it perhaps be related to Aphrodite’s role as the mother of Aeneas who fought many battles?

These are just a few of the questions I have about Aphrodite and militarism. I’m fortunate to have heard archaeologists working on excavating Aphrodite lecture on this topic.

#NAPOMO #POETRY #GUESTBLOG Featuring Six Poems by POET, TIMOTHY DONOHUE

SIX POEMS
Timothy Donohue

AT A GRAVEYARD BY AN ORCHARD

We know how

The slight rounding

Of a high corner

Means the headstone

Has memorized the wind

We can raise a yellow-gold apple at dusk

And trace with a cool finger

Where the sunlight sat for hours

We are much more invisible than that

We are a name halved backwards

A thousand times

Living changes lives

Until who we are

And who we were

Are less known

Than what the wind

And sunlight did

The day these bodies

Were covered with earth

We are all energy and invisibility

We are all someone

We can only imagine

DEATH COMES IN THE KITCHEN

Death will come in the window

You thought was locked all these years

The one in the kitchen

The one right above the sink

Death will be tired

And hungry and wanting

A sandwich—all that gravity

Works up a good appetite…

Light from the refrigerator

Unspools on linoleum

Like a break in the clouds

Or a temporary shroud

Death leans into the light

Looking for cold cuts

Spongy white breads and mayonnaise

But you’re too healthy for any of that…

        

So the door closes

And the darkness returns

Until death finds where you’re sleeping

And drags you to your absence

         

Complaining of a certain hunger

LIVES IN A COMA

  1.

Sometimes I wonder

If there was another way,

An ending we might have missed…

It was late morning

It was the end of summer

Cars came infrequently past that motel

A dog barked

Then silence would return,

Coating our lips

And closing our eyes

   2.

We played hooky from real love for so long

We lied about our whereabouts so often

Sometimes we forgot our real names…

Everything outside that room was always boiled

Inside we pulled black curtains

Against the heat and falling bombs

Of sunlight and friends…

  3.

No. There was no other way, no other ending…

It was late morning

It was the end of summer

We hugged so hard

We put our lives in a coma--

And left, in separate cars

INVISIBLE

1.

I stood in line behind a fragrance.

It was you. Your face was invisible,

But it was you.

This was a long time ago.

2.

An electric door kept opening and closing.

Pushing your scent deep inside me,

And urging me to say something clever

To the back of your head.

3.

Inside everyone is a door

They will not open,

And a door they will not close—

Choices must be made.

4.

I should have made you laugh.

Said some nonsense about

Your oolong tea or the candy bar

With the same name as your father

But I remained invisible.

NOTES FROM THE LAST TIME
I SAW FERLINGHETTI
       "there's no there there."                 
            -Gertrude Stein
  Everybody's Autobiography

Weekend-ending. Runway-runaway

Dallas to San Francisco 1:10 a.m.

And where I’m heading it’s 1986,

But it’s still yesterday

So much for the times of our life

I have made a mess of my life

Mixed the mess and painted with it

To outline voices in frames of silence

To take the waiting-for, out of wonder

To hear silence, with new ears

Like a poem, and making

That kind of sense, you left

Ferlinghetti in your Texas college town

And headed to his. You see his motel

Room stuttering, repeating itself in his sleep

Forty-five degrees south by southwest

The machine turned, pointing

A wing at Dallas another

At San Francisco. You hear someone

On the ground pointing a finger

At you. Feathers will fly

 The flight attendant leans over

Picking up a napkin. You use the word

“Callipygian” for the first time out loud

She smiles, looking backwards

She is happily confused. She will be

Your friend in the sky

Baudelaire said he wrote to

“Find the why of it; to transform pleasure

Into knowledge.”  I do it differently

There is so much

I don’t want to know

Between friendship and love

Comes conversational botany

A kind of plant-talk develops

Between a man and a woman

“Nice day.”  “Yes. I was tired of the rain”

“I see that bridge we were on”

Says a boy to his dad in the seat ahead

When you turn, it’s not there anymore

Your lips taste like a woman’s cheekbone

Communication from the neck up

“By definition, the poet must be

An enemy of the State” said Ferlinghetti

Afterward, you drove him to where

He would sleep, perhaps to dream

Against the state of Ramada Inn

Tired and unmemorized

You are up to 30,000 feet

And 36 straight hours

You’re slipping deeper

Into ball turret 36B

A fish turns in your stomach

It hears the desert below you

It hears the cacti and it hears

The coyotes below you.

There’s a “there” there

It’s just that whatever is unclear

Must be so cleared away, it takes the waiting-

For out of wonder.  Like hearing silence

With new ears.  Or seeing Ferlinghetti

Ten hours before arriving where he wasn’t

Thirty years ago

THE PREFERRED EMBRACE

On a sidewalk,

Snow falls between

A man and a woman

Struggling against late December winds---it’s obvious

Their separateness is pre-planned

The snowy gap is precise

And irrevocable.

There is no touching now in these lives.

No looking back, nor at each other.

Just a wobbly march forward,

Into more and more invisibility.

What was the word that sawed them in half?

What failures of desire

Would make falling down,

Alone, under a winter sky,

The preferred embrace.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Timothy Donohue’s publications include Invisible ~ Poems And Aphorisms , with an afterword by Laura Kennelly (Mandorla Books, 2016) and Road Frame Window ~A Poetics Of Seeing  (Mandorla Books, 2015), that he coauthored with Dennis Patrick Slattery and Donald Carlson, with an afterword by Stephanie Pope.

A native of Lorain, Ohio, he spent a number of years in Texas, where he received a MA in Creative Writing at the University of Dallas. In a professional career spanning four decades, he spent the first 20 years as a writer, producer and sometimes teacher of print and broadcast advertising in Texas and Ohio. He spent the next 20 years as a managing administrator and Communications Director for non-profits dedicated to providing services to individuals with mental illness, developmental disabilities and chemical dependencies. He realized, over time, that poetry could quit him any time it wanted to; but he couldn’t quit poetry no matter what he did. Recently he founded Donohue Words & Works, LLC, which he describes as a “transfusional place for words on purpose and works on canvas.”

 Visit Timothy Donohue at
donohuewordsandworks.com 

He can be reached at donohuewordsandworks@gmail.com

BOOKS
Invisible ~ Poems And Aphorisms , with an afterword by Laura Kennelly (Mandorla Books, 2016)
Road Frame Window ~A Poetics Of Seeing  (Mandorla Books, 2015), coauthored with Dennis Patrick Slattery and Donald Carlson, with an afterword by Stephanie Pope.