Identity Conflicts in Dorothy Livesay's Love Poetry: Liminality, Duality, and Irony, in an Oral Examination Held on April 25, 2011

IDENTITY CONFLICTS

IN DOROTHY LIVESAY'S LOVE POETRY:

LIMINALITY, DUALITY, AND IRONY

A Thesis

Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Master of Arts

in English

University of Regina

Jaime Rae Speed

Regina, Saskatchewan

April, 2011

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FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES AND RESEARCH

SUPERVISORY AND EXAMINING COMMITTEE

Jaime Rae Speed, candidate for the degree of Master of Arts in English, has presented a thesis titled, Identity Conflicts in Dorothy Livesay's Love Poetry: Liminality, Duality, and Irony, in an oral examination held on April 25, 2011. The following committee members have found the thesis acceptable in form and content, and that the candidate demonstrated satisfactory knowledge of the subject material.

External Examiner: "Dr. Craig Monk, University of Lethbridge

Supervisor: Dr. Christian Riegel, Department of English

Committee Member: Dr. Kenneth Probert, Department of English

Committee Member: Dr. Florence Stratton, Department of English

Chair of Defense: Dr. Christopher Oriet, Department of Psychology

'Teleconference i

Abstract

Dorothy Livesay's later love poetry is intrinsically concerned with the inner- workings of love and the female identity. It is therefore subject to be read with a focus on the importance of identity amidst love, and my research aims to discuss Livesay's engagement with identity. However, I further borrow from Victor Turner's concept of liminality which, when coupled with concepts of duality and irony, illuminate Livesay's articulation of the problematic female identity in love. The thesis considers how the combination of these concepts, along with detailed explications of Livesay's love poetry, lead to the formation of a divided identity that highlights ironies in both of the speaker's longings for individuality and unity in love. I approach the poetry from The Unquiet Bed

(1967) and Plainsongs (1971) thematically, focusing on the ways in which the poems reflect Livesay's speaker's preoccupation with her identity as a woman and lover. The following thesis provides new and detailed analyses of Livesay's poetry, with the aim to gain a better understanding of the problematic female identity in Livesay's love poetry, and to demonstrate the interconnectedness of identity, love, and eroticism through concepts of liminality, duality, and irony. ii

Acknowledgment

I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Christian Riegel for his supervision of the thesis. His expertise, patience, and understanding inspired and enriched my graduate experience. I appreciate his vast knowledge, as well as his persistence, advice, and guidance from the very early stages of this research. Above all, he provided me unwavering encouragement and support. I am eternally appreciative!

I would like to thank the other members of my committee, Dr. Florence Stratton and Dr. Ken Probert, for the assistance they provided at all levels of the research. They offered valuable and timely feedback, as well as guidance and keen observations. I am grateful for the time they spent reviewing this thesis.

Finally, I would like to thank The Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, whose financial assistance contributed greatly to the completion of this study. iii

Table of Contents

ABSTRACT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER ONE 17

CHAPTER TWO 50

CHAPTER THREE 78

AFTERWORD 108

WORKS CITED 114 1

Introduction.

Dorothy Livesay is a mid-twentieth century Canadian writer and lyric poet whose contemplative and perceptive works span six decades and include over twenty volumes of poetry, as well as numerous works of fiction and published articles. Livesay's poetry probes conflicts between life and death, men and women, waking and dreaming, and love and hate. Her earliest imagistic poetry of the 1920s displays the poet's use of these opposing matters to demonstrate her interest in exploring love and relationships.

Livesay's political interests began to dominate her poetic writing in the 1930s, as the onset of the Great Depression drew her into social concerns, spurring her to speak out about social awareness and the need for freedom from oppression and capitalist tyranny.

However, her work demonstrates a resurgence of interest in the theme of love in her erotic love poetry of the 1960s and 70s, particularly in The Unquiet Bed (1967) and

Plainsongs (1971). Livesay's return to the theme of love displays the speaker's contradictory vacillation between her dualities: her desire to be autonomous, and her willingness to surrender her autonomy. The love poems of The Unquiet Bed and

Plainsongs are influenced by two opposing notions that generate a duality in the speaker: on one hand, the poet displays a Thoreauvian transcendentalism, wherein the individual attempts to establish wholeness of being by withdrawing from human relationships in order to create an awareness of her connection to the physical, natural world, as well as cycles of decay, birth, and growth; on the other hand, she displays affinities with D.H.

Lawrence, by attempting to establish a connection to another human being through sexuality, displaying sexuality as an elemental force that connects individuals.' The 2 speaker's innate need to experience wholeness by connecting her identity to a larger, more basic order oscillates between her desire to feel enlargement of self through sexual union, and her desire to enhance her individuality by connecting her self to the natural world. The speaker's need for autonomy is established in her affinity with her elemental surroundings that expand her identity, while her connection with her lover displays her submission of autonomy to experience an enhancement of her self through sexual union.

Livesay's love poetry was inspired and influenced by "the work of Virginia

Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, H.D., Edith Sitwell, and Amy Lowell" (Esther Sanchez-

Pardo 167)." Livesay's focus in the love poems on opposing elements within an individual's own personality, the notion of elevation of self through transcendence and freedom, and the need for autonomy in love further echoes the works of Doris Lessing.

Also, as Sanchez-Pardo finds, Livesay shows similarities to "women poets who would assert their own power" such as "Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop,

Sylvia Plath and Adrienne Rich" (168). Further, Sanchez-Pardo attributes her "Canadian modernism" to her affinity to writers such as P.K. Page and Miriam Waddington (174).

Her work is further comparable to such Canadian contemporaries as Lorna Crozier,

Daphne Marlatt, and Margaret Atwood,"1 particularly in her use of irony to examine love, eroticism and identity, her celebration of the natural world, as well as the quest for and theorizing of identity, especially in relation to nature and in depictions of power roles that victimize or diminish the female identity.

This thesis focuses on works from The Unquiet Bed and Plainsongs as they reflect the paradoxes Livesay experiences in love that illuminate her central concern of identity. 3

In these works, I examine what is typically regarded as Livesay's "mature" or "later" love poetry, not only in regard to the poetry being produced at a later age, but also in reference to the shifts in the way she approaches the theme of love in a romantic, physical relationship, as this changes from her earliest volumes. The mature love poetry builds on the earlier love poetry of her youth,lv where she already establishes a focus on conflicts, dichotomies, and constrictions in relationships, often accompanied with universal statements of love and a note of uncertainty. However, the earlier love poetry remains romantic in its aim with the physical aspect of love only suggested.

In the later love poems of The Unquiet Bed and Plainsongs eroticism is given a much greater central role. In the mature love poems, sex brings about feelings of wholeness and unity, while simultaneously threatening the speaker's identity and causing dependence, thus creating the dichotomy between submission and assertion of identity that leads to her duality. Her mature work focuses on love as a platform to explore the oppositions and conflicts between lovers in a sexual relationship/ illuminating the notion of paradox in love, especially in regard to independence and identity. The need for individuality opposes the need for symbiosis and unity in love, emphasizing the dissymmetry between desires and the truth about love. Although the views on love are paradoxical, the attempt to reconcile the opposing elements of love display that love's contradictions are true. There can never be unity in love without the need for independence, nor can there be independence in love without a desire for unity. The expectations in love misalign with experiences in love, so that in wanting both unity and independence, there is disappointment. Although Livesay's persona believes in a type of 4 love that includes a harmony of both autonomy and unity, this type of love is not possible, and any attempt to combine her opposing desires fails. Because these contradicting desires cannot be amalgamated, a duality appears in the speaker. Paradox and duality in love quickly become ironic, specifically since love is posited as the cause for both her expansion and restriction. Re-construction of identity is demonstrated to be the solution for this duality. However, by re-constructing her self and gaining autonomy the subject loses the desired intimate connection with another, so that autonomy disrupts her expectations for love, leading to further contradictions and impossible reconciliations in trying to preserve love and unity. The mature work is focused on the exploration of the conflicts and irony in love that develop a divided female self, and the individual's ultimate need for self-preservation and autonomy.vl My research contributes to knowledge about Livesay's poetry, specifically by focusing on the aspect of identity, through a study of concepts that illuminate identity conflicts in the love poetry: liminality, duality, and irony.

My analyses of Livesay's mature love poems are informed by the key concepts of liminality, dual identity, and irony in love, as well as the ways in which these concepts function in connection to each other. A significant component of the love poems is the poet's use of liminality to express a condition of oscillation and uncertainty. Victor

Turner's anthropological experiences with and findings on liminality are especially illuminating in relation to literary representations of threshold experiences. Turner defines liminal passages as "literally 'threshold,' movements betwixt and between the formerly 5 familiar and stable and the not-yet familiar and stable" (Blazing 132). Although Turner's liminal theory derives from cultural initiands exiting one state of being and entering into another, in relation to identity, the liminal is exemplary in illustrating the state Livesay's speaker inhabits in experiencing the loss of her independence in love, before being capable of exhibiting a new understanding of self. It is therefore necessary to examine the characteristics of liminality, and how they function in both the break-down and re construction of the individual's identity, as well as in the period of non-identity.

Certain cues are particularly characteristic in indicating that one has entered into liminality. Inhabitation of liminality is suggested through paradox, because the liminal space is one of ambiguities and dichotomies; the use of paradox is significant in signaling uncertainties since "the most characteristic midliminal symbolism is that of paradox, of being both this and that" {Blazing 49). Paradox demonstrates that liminality is a place of obscurity, especially obscure identity, since as Roisin O'Gorman describes in her discussion of liminality, the liminal is represented "as a site which can un-do fixed identities" (103). The liminal condition of an uncertain identity is initiated by experiences in love; Adele Nel finds such a connection in her study of liminality in poems of journey, and argues "that love is consistently regarded as the limen or threshold through which entry to the Other or the other side may be gained" (233) since "the experience of love, like the experience of travel, is a liminal experience, a place of perpetual in-betweenness"

(234). Experiences in love that threaten the true identity lead to liminality, suggested through paradox, and during the liminal period identity is constantly in flux, causing unease. 6

The liminal space causes anxiety as it is a place that can be inhabited permanentlyv" with no clear sense of self. In experiencing liminality, the subject is often made stationary. The act of being stationary is another indicator of liminality, signaling an inability to move beyond the liminal experience. Inability to transcend the liminal experience is further demonstrated in images of seclusion, and separation from external surroundings, as proper interaction with the world is not possible while still inhabiting a liminal state. However, the liminal space is not just a space of fear, isolation, and permanent inhabitance, but has the ability to be a space of expansion, growth, and freedom.™"

Since liminality is a space of expansion, identity is enlarged and re-constructed in this period as well. Liminality's purpose is to supply its subject with change and regeneration through transcendence; Turner finds that the significance of the liminal experience is to "detach ritual subjects from their old places in society and return them, inwardly transformed and outwardly changed, to new places" (Blazing 48-49). Liminality causes reform to earlier identities, supplying the liminal subject with the opportunity to develop or re-create a truer sense of self. The elements of regeneration and change are significant components in transcendence, as the role of liminality encourages its subjects to undergo important changes that produce a higher understanding of self.

However, for Livesay's speakers, before transcendence can occur, and a true self can emerge, the subject must first experience, and reconcile, a duality in identity.

Liminality obscures identity, and the individual's identity is divided by wanting to retain a sense of identity that relies on another's definition of the self, and the simultaneous 7 desire to construct an independent sense of self. This duality impedes transcendence of the liminal space. In his study of developing a self, as well as a sense of autonomous belonging, Wolfgang Kraus states that division of self is a part of the process of constructing one's identity, since identity creation involves both "the dissolution of old attachments, which have been sources of security for the individuals, but which at the same time have been authoritarian and confining" but also allows for "the development of new options, resulting in more individual freedom of choice" (129). Further, the creation of the self is closely tied to liminal experiences. Kathleen Sclafani finds, by examining themes of exile and return, that threshold crossings are characterized by "internal transformations" displaying that "identities are constructed, rather than being predetermined by race, gender or ethnicity," also remarking that an important aspect of identity construction is that identity formation is closely connected to it also being

"deconstructed, reconstructed" (6). In liminality, identity often undergoes a sequence of transformations; the continual construction of identity is a distinctive factor of liminality.

This period of inconclusive and unsteady identity can cause alarm and produces opposing desires. In their study of both social and psychological views of identity formation, James

E. Cote and Charles G. Levine term the "identity crisis," defined as "a period during which an individual's previous identity is no longer experienced as suitable, but a new identity is not yet established" (95) particularly as "identity confusion is manifested in terms of contradictory self images or aspirations, roles or opportunities" (96). That is, self-contradictions and paradox are evident of non-identity. Identity conflicts arise "when there is a misalignment between a person's self-definition and an other's definition of his 8 or her personal or social identities" (136). Although the individual's self-construction is significant, identity is shaped and influenced by external factors as well.

Identity formation is affected by both internal and external experiences and relationships:

It is internal to the extent that it is seen to be subjectively "constructed" by the

individual, but it is external to the extent that this construction is in reference to

"objective" social circumstances provided by day-to-day interactions, social roles,

cultural institutions, and social structures. (Cote and Levine 49)

External pressures to reform identity are significant because when the individual's identity is over-powered by another person, it can be experienced as a lack of autonomy;

Diana Tietjens Meyers' study on creating autonomy, as well as the various factors that impact autonomy, finds that "Individuals experience lack of autonomy as a sense of being out of control or being under the control of others," often causing these individuals to

"feel anxious about their choices" (210). The individual's relationships with others

"threaten[s] autonomy, for responding to others' needs and fulfilling one's responsibilities to them can become so consuming that the individual is deprived of any opportunity to pursue personal goals and projects" (52), which ultimately causes unease about personal choices as well as feelings of confinement. In their study of self and identity formation, Mark R. Leary and June Price Tangney also contend that others have an effect on one's understanding of self: "in a close relationship, the other is included in the self. The idea here is that in close relationships, cognitive representations of self and other overlap" as "we incorporate into ourselves the others' social and material resources, 9

the others' perspectives, and the others' identities" (444). The incorporation of another's

identity can be a source of expansion for the individual, but may also be ironically

perceived as reductive to individuality, so that resolving the individual's divisions by

ending the confining relationship increases individuality.

Recognizing that a divided self is problematic motivates the individual to

reconcile the duality.,x The identity conflict is itself expansive as it causes

acknowledgement of discontent and therefore induces re-construction of individuality.

Cote and Levine note that when an individual, particularly a woman, attempts identity

revisions "a process of self-discovery and growth is undertaken following a path marked

by attempts to maintain 'connections' while developing 'competence'" (81). It is this

need for both unity with another, as well as autonomy, that makes reconciling duality and

transcending liminality increasingly difficult for Livesay's speakers. The difficulties the

speaker experiences in choosing between unity and autonomy is further complicated by

love's ironic abilities.

Dual identity and irony are connected components; Linda Hutcheon argues that

"women's marginalized and 'divided self is interpreted as the enabling precondition of

irony's distance, doubleness, and even duplicity" {Irony's Edge 32). Irony functions to

illuminate the contrasting elements between desires and what is in actuality the truth

about love, and since liminality expresses desire and possibility rather than actual facts,

liminality allows irony to flourish. Turner also finds that liminalty represents desire more

than reality, therefore exhibiting the "subjunctive mood...the mood of may-be, might-be, as-if, hypothesis, fantasy, conjecture, desire" (On The Edge 295). Hutcheon's study of the 10 use of irony in contemporary Canadian texts also finds a connection between irony and liminal experiences, since "irony's metaphor is perhaps liminality" (Double-Talking 30) because "Irony opens up new space, literally between opposing meanings, where new things can happen" (31). Like liminality, and duality, irony in love is figured as a means to provoke the development of a true self."

Ironically, love can be both confining and expansive to the identity.*1 Irony derives from liminal experiences. Isabel Soto conceptualizes the ambiguities and dualities of liminality "as a site of doubleness or, rather, a site which engages a system or systems of doubleness (for example, irony)" (10-11). Liminality and duality are further related to irony since the main elements of irony are "Contradiction, division, doubleness"

(Hutcheon Splitting Images 97). For Livesay's speakers, irony is perceived in love's ability to both restrict and enlarge the identity. The integration of another's identity can be a source of expansion: "people enter and maintain relationships because in a relationship one includes the other in the self - and thus expands the self by gaining access to the other's resources, perspectives, and identities" (Leary and Tangney 454).

However, the notion that fusion of identities causes growth is contradicted by its ability to confine and to lead to a struggle for power and submission, especially as "irony appears to be used by those who are concerned about the incongruities and discrepancies of power structures" (Hutcheon Splitting Images 30). Also, the view of love as causing both reduction and elevation is often experienced simultaneously. Jonathan Tittler defines irony as "best understood as a spatial movement, one which permits a simultaneity of vision from several perspectives" (42)."" Further, David M. Halperin's work articulates 11 that irony is a necessary response to eroticism and love: "Irony is the very condition of love, its mode of being" (52). He finds that "Love is an ironic condition insofar as it produces a necessary doubling of perspective.... Love is defined by the fact that the truth of love, if there is one, never coincides completely with the experience of love" (53).

Love's irony is that there are incongruities in expectations for love between the desire for love to enhance identity, and the knowledge that expanding the self though another's identity ultimately diminishes individuality.

As exhibited above, the elements of liminality, duality, and love are precursors for irony. Further, an ironized view of love displays the insufficiencies of love that arise when there is an attempt to reconcile duality of identity and transcend liminality, but the poles cannot be reconciled without disrupting expectations for love and self. Rosario

Ferre and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert's study of women who use irony finds that irony is commonly used to express "the dilemma of love and freedom" as women are most often

"divided between their need to come to terms with the formulas imposed by society to control them and their need to persist in their search for an ideal love that had as its goal, not the possession of the body of the beloved, but the transcendence and perfection of their own selves" (902).XIU Experiences in love that lead to a liminal position draw out duality of identity, as well as the imbalance of ironical notions of love. An ironical view of love propels transcendence and choice, so that the features of irony, liminality, and duality ultimately become the means for regeneration.

The above concepts function together to enable Livesay's speaker's regeneration, fostering the emergence and acceptance of her autonomous self, despite love's 12 impermanence. However, liminality is not always transformative for the speaker: when the speaker chooses her independence over a stifling union with her lover, she enhances her autonomous self; however, when love and union are perceived as increasingly enticing, the speaker displays a willingness to collapse her autonomy to preserve love rather than her self. The speaker's approach to love and her self shifts in the love poems from a woman reluctant to submit her identity to love to a woman inclined to sustain love, while voluntarily relinquishing her autonomy. This is a significant shift that will be examined as it is illuminated in the varying uses of the notions of liminality, duality, and irony, especially as these concepts display that liminality does not always work to regenerate the individual, particularly when the speaker's dual and ironic perspective impedes transcendence by insisting on an impossible notion of love.

Whereas the second and third chapters display an enlarged focus on duality and irony, especially as they obstruct the speaker's ability to transcend liminality into individuality, in the first chapter, I focus on how the speaker's experience in love enables her to come to a clearer sense of her self. She is able to celebrate her individuality as love necessitates the development of her true self, and in transcending her experience in love she ultimately chooses her individuality over harmony in love, leading to the end of love, but her own acceptance and permanency of self.

The first chapter examines love's collapse in "The Unquiet Bed" and "The

Taming," from The Unquiet Bed, as well as "The Operation," from Plainsongs. In these poems, the speaker is unable to both assert her independent identity while experiencing dependence and unity with her lover, as well as accept the roles her lover demands of her. 13

Her lack of an identity the speaker can accept as her own causes her to enter a liminal space. The speaker's uncertain identity in liminality provokes renewal of self by developing and expressing her autonomy, thereby transcending liminality. However, love must end for her individuality to be expressed.

The second chapter explores how Livesay's use of natural metaphors establishes the paradox of identity in "The Touching," and "The Notations of Love" from The

Unquiet Bed, and "Auguries" from Plainsongs. Union and the incorporation of another identity is perceived as both threatening to the speaker's autonomous identity, as well as enhancing her sense of self. Since the speaker's enhanced identity relies on her lover's identity to inform her own, she enters a liminal state of non-autonomy. The notions of dual identity and irony are intensified in this chapter, since the speaker's knowledge that love enlarges her identity opposes her need for autonomy. However, the speaker transcends the liminal experience, independently enhancing and renewing her understanding of her self which points to the inevitable transience of love and unity. This chapter shows how the speaker's desire for an unattainable kind of love that simultaneously allows for both unity and independence becomes more pronounced.

The third chapter focuses on the speaker's increasing desire for permanency in love, contrary to her earlier strivings for a liberating love, by examining how her need for an enduring love is brought about through themes of communication and distance in love in "The Cave" and "Birdwatching," from Plainsongs, as well as "Four Songs" and "And

Give Us Our Trespasses," from The Unquiet Bed. Union itself is not the cause of the speaker's depletion in this chapter. Rather, her attempts to alter love and her lover to 14

conform to her view of symbiotic and permanent love allows her autonomy to be ignored,

causing the diminishment of her self that leads her to enter liminality. The speaker enters

the liminal space as a result of both the denial of her autonomous needs from her lover as

well as her refusal to supply her self with these needs and accept the end of love. Irony in

love comes into increasing focus in the final chapter, where her ironical desires hinder her

ability to transcend liminality and gain autonomy, because both unity and independence

restrict the speaker, especially since autonomy now becomes ironically viewed as

confining, rather than releasing. The speaker is perpetually figured in a liminal position, a

captive to love, unable to transcend because asserting her autonomy actually results in

deprivation; love must end to accommodate her autonomy, thereby ensuring the privation

of her autonomous needs from her lover both in love and unity as well as in individuality,

rather than their fulfillment, which she suffers as destitution, rather than rejoicing in

fullness of self.

The love poems create a bleak statement of the gradual collapse of love, but also

display the speaker coming to terms with the absence of love as she escapes the captivity

of love by insisting on individual growth, so that her disappointments in love, seen in her contradicting desires, allow her to get in touch with her self and resolve her inner conflicts by developing a better understanding of her place outside of love.

1 Rick Anthony Furtak describes the philosophy of Henry David Thoreau as "articulating a version of transcendental idealism" (35) whose "philosophical explorations of self and world" deals with "the concrete problems of living in the world as a human being" (42). He notes that "Thoreau recoils from the idea that we could find some kind of higher reality by looking beyond nature" (37) as it is through the "harmonious interdependence of all parts of the natural world" that connect the human and natural worlds, especially as the "wildness" of the nonhuman world is "the same creative force [that] is also active in human nature" (38). Thoreau's writing implies that human beings will realize their highest potential in identifying "the primitive vigor of Nature in us" (40), and so "must approach the world as nature looking into nature" (42). For D.H. Lawrence, however, harmony in human beings is not found in the individual's 15

identification with nature, but rather through a focus on "instincts and intuitions" (Gerald Doherty 18) that bring awareness of "sex as the balance between male and female" (Peter Nazareth 39), establishing his "belief that man could never realize the triumph of the living spirit without passing through the experiences of sex" (Dayton Kohler 29).

11 S&nchez-Pardo further situates Livesay among these writers by adding, "[t]he stylistic evolution of Dorothy Livesay was undoubtedly influenced by the work of older modernist writers such as Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield" (169), especially since "[i]n her journals, she refers numerous times to Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield as a source of inspiration" (172).

Loma Crozier's no longer to people examines eroticism and identity, and the ways in which relationships affect the individual identity, particularly in "With my fist," whereas poems such as "On the Writing of a Love Poem," "Living Day by Day," and "Getting Pregnant," from Inventing the Hawk, are concerned with female identity, connections and contradictions between male and female, as well as women's roles. Daphne Marlatt's use of double meaning and wordplay in leaf leaf/s point to the importance of female agency and choice (for example, "who moves"), and "listen," "the tri-cornered heart," and "small print" from This Tremor Love Is explore the nuances of desire and love, roles and relationships that are confining, as well as the connections created between people in a physical relationship. Margaret Atwood's "Postcard," "Variations on the Word Love," and "Variations on the Word Sleep" (from True Stories) explore the concept of love, identity conflicts and the need for connections in love, even if hopeless, as well as the relationship between external surroundings and emotion.

,v Prem Varma's discussion on the progression of love as theme in Livesay's work finds that "Love is one of her main themes, her lyrical love poems are her best poems, regardless of the period of her development. This is not to suggest that her work is static. As a matter of fact the love poetry of the later volumes is very different from the love poems published in Green Pitcher and Signpost. While the earlier love poems are romantic and reticent in their expression of love, the later ones are more frank and direct, at times overtly sexual. As we trace the development of her love poetry we can see how coyness gives way to frankness, and romantic love becomes more physical and sexual" (17). v Nadine Mclnnis notes in her study of Livesay's mature love poetry that in her shift from her earlier love poetry, Livesay "begins to explore the pleasures and problems of the erotic relationship in the context of male privilege and power. The love relationship no longer merely provides an emotion for writing poetry. It becomes a proving ground for sexual/textual conflict" (3).

" Peter Stevens' discussion of the progression of Livesay's love poetry notes a shift in her mature love poetry as she begins to emphasize her need for individuality in love: "Her later poems, however, show a greater interest in woman's individuality, her need for freedom, her right to exist in her own way. Woman as herself is very much a part of her love poems" ("Dorothy Livesay" 26). v" Turner describes the liminal space as "a very long threshold, a corridor almost, or a tunnel which may become a pilgrim's read, or, passing from dynamics to statics, may cease to be a mere transition and become a set way of life, a state" (Blazing 49).

V1" Robert Daly's study on the use of liminal space in literature finds that liminality brings forth freedom and restitution: "Liminality does occasion danger and fear, but it also enables choice and multiplicity," especially as this emphasizes the individual's autonomous choice, emphasizing "freedom as a positive and necessary aspect of the role played by liminality in regeneration and renewal" (71).

IX Tietjens Meyers emphasizes, in her discussion of creating autonomy, that "self-alienation or poor fit between self and action prompt self-monitoring, possibly leading to change" (67). 16

* Nancy A. Walker's study on the use of irony in novels by women finds that irony "is in itself enabling, allowing the woman access to an alternate reality that permits a more complete identity" (60), especially as transcending these contrasting boundaries are "part of a journey to autonomy and wholeness" (114).

Xl Hutcheon's exploration of the use of irony in Canadian texts finds that irony is employed to display conflicts within one's identity: "irony seems to be at least one of the ways so-called English Canadians have chosen to articulate their problematic identities" (Splitting Images 39). x" Lydia Rainford's argument on irony agrees with the notion that irony represents simultaneous but contradictory perspectives that do not ultimately lead the perceiver to be able to make a choice between the two: "the ironic movement is not a matter of choice or decision, of one or the other, but a simultaneity, which is also a repetition, which nevertheless avoids being the same because it is caught between and takes account of the other" (63).

Xl" Tittler also finds that irony allows for conflict resolution or transcendence: "When the mind is paralyzed by conflicting drives, irony offers a way of escaping from the conflict and rising above it" (41). 17 Chapter One.

Dorothy Livesay's mature love poems of The Unquiet Bed and Plainsongs present the breakdown and collapse of love that leads to identity conflicts for her speaker. In the poems I analyze in this chapter the speaker's identity problems arise because union in love diminishes her autonomous identity since new identities and roles are imposed on her, and love leads to dependency that stifles her independence. The speaker's identity becomes unfamiliar to her in her experiences in love, diminishing her individuality, so that love causes her to enter a liminal state of obscure or non-identity. In liminality the speaker's identity is conflicted by desiring a shared identity with her lover but also an individual identity, creating a divided self. However, I argue that the depletion of the speaker's identity that leads to liminality, as well as irony and duality, provokes the resolution of her conflicted identity and the re-development of her autonomy.

Loss and re-emergence of identity are re-occurring experiences in Livesay's work.

The speaker experiences the loss of her identity, becomes non-autonomous, and finally emerges as an autonomous individual. It is necessary to understand how this process of oscillating identity operates and is represented, as well as its patterns and functions, and the effects of these occurrences on the speaker. I will therefore consider Turner's work on the liminal in his anthropological studies, and how it relates to the process Livesay's speaker's identity undergoes in experiencing liminality, as well as her transcendence of liminality by attaining a complete sense of self. Observations on the attributes of liminality and how these features operate to propel transcendence of liminality and a new being contribute to my analyses of Livesay's love poetry and provide a way in which to interpret the speaker's passage through love. Rather than focus on how liminality 18 functions from an anthropological perspective, this chapter intends to illuminate the

workings of liminality within a literary context, specifically by focusing on identity

transformations during the liminal period. Turner defines the liminal as "literally

'threshold,' movements betwixt and between the formerly familiar and stable and the not-

yet familiar and stable" (Blazing 132). That is, for Livesay's speaker, a stable

autonomous identity is lost in love, causing her to inhabit a liminal space of non-identity.

A feature of liminal situations is to aim to revise the identity so that liminality

may be transcended into a stable identity. While in a liminal state, the speaker undergoes

transformations to her identity and perception of self. These movements and shifts

are marked by three phases: separation; margin (or limen); and reaggregation. The

first and last speak for themselves; they detach ritual subjects from their old

places in society and return them, inwardly transformed and outwardly changed,

to new places. A more interesting problem is provided by the middle (marginal)

or liminal phase. {Blazing 48-49)

As Turner's phases suggest, a significant aspect of liminality is that the liminal subject

cannot achieve transcendence until revising the self. I argue that the speaker enters the

liminal space by becoming dependent on her lover to apply to her a sense of wholeness in

her identity.1 However, in this state she can neither accept the identity her lover supplies

her with nor have her individual identity validated, and so cannot transcend the liminal experience until she becomes autonomous.

Before Livesay's speaker achieves autonomy, her identity fluctuates and is

revised in the liminal space. Since Turner's phases emphasize this middle or liminal

period as the most problematic and intriguing, it is necessary to understand how the 19 liminal space operates, and therefore impacts the liminal subject as well as her transcendence. The liminal site is particularly significant to this thesis as it is in the liminal period that identity is completely broken down and diminished. Paradoxically, liminality is also a space of expansion, and so encourages the speaker's identity to be enlarged, re-constructed, and re-born in this period as well. Lack of identity in the liminal period produces a divided self who views love's functions ironically: love is simultaneously expansive and restrictive. This division provokes contradictory desires, generating conflict in the poems that the speaker must reconcile in order to once again attain identity and transcend obscurity. Specifically, the speaker must choose between accepting an imposed identity that guarantees love, or re-creating her true identity, ensuring the end of love.

The chapter analyses Livesay's "The Unquiet Bed" and "The Taming," from The

Unquiet Bed, as well as "The Operation," from Plainsongs, and explores how love is the gateway to the problematic liminal site, where the in-between state of uncertain identity, and oscillation and contradictions of self, foster the development of the speaker's independent identity. Liminality and love play key roles in both the breakdown and forming of an autonomous identity. This study aims to provide an understanding of the factors that contribute to non-identity and liminality, such as love, duality, and irony. The chapter will clarify the links between love and identity through the concepts of liminality, duality, and irony by not only elucidating the roles of each in Livesay's poetry, but also by illuminating their connections to each other. These connected concepts contribute to the outcome of the speaker's identity and sense of self-worth, first by contributing to her lack of identity and finally by compelling the development of her autonomous self. 20 "The Unquiet Bed" displays the value Livesay's speaker places on identity, as well as the contradictions she perceives in love and her final celebration of individuality.

The third of the four sections in The Unquiet Bed is dedicated to the love poems, and opens with the title poem, "The Unquiet Bed." The placement and title of this work are significant in opening the section since "The Unquiet Bed" connects the entirety of the love poems by introducing the use of paradox, preoccupation with identity, and ultimate proclamation of self. The liminal self has an uncertain identity, and the first stanza already points to the importance of a clear identity by asserting that the speaker's identity is more than merely physical. Her declaration that "The woman I am / is not what you see" (1-2) emphasizes that her individual identity relies on more than physical traits, while also implying that her true self cannot be recognized, suggesting an apprehension that her true self will not be known. Further, describing who she is not, rather than who she is, points to an awareness that others may falsely discern her identity, while also demonstrating that during the liminal period, a true identity has difficulty emerging.

The speaker recognizes that who she is in a physical sense is not adequate to completely describe her: she is "not just bones / and crockery" (3-4). The several meanings of the word "crockery" point to her anxieties about her identity and how others perceive it. Benita Sharma finds that "The Unquiet Bed" "reveals Livesay's quest to find recognition of the woman's real self. She tells her beloved that she is not what he imagines her to be. She is not decorative or fragile - not just 'bones and crockery' - an object which must be handled carefully or else it will break" (52-53). The word 21 "crockery" also calls forth the notion of "crock" which may point to the speaker's fear that she will be misinterpreted as being exaggerative, nonsensical, or absurd. However, in connection to dishware, her use of the word "crockery" affirms that she is more than a physical object, while also implying that she will not be confined to taking on the

"traditional" role of "woman." Shirley Foster's work on female novelists who protest restrictive female roles is apt here, since she finds that women writers need to express

"their resistance to restrictive and falsifying ideologies about womanhood" (154), demonstrated by the speaker's insistence that she is more than a physical representation of "woman," already pointing to her unwillingness to being restricted by one role.

In the second stanza, the speaker demonstrates that her past experiences in love have altered her current identity, emphasizing love as a liminal experience that transforms the identity. The passage focuses on dichotomy as an integral part of the speaker's identity: "the woman I am / knew love and hate" (5-6). This dichotomy is the first of many oppositions the speaker experiences in love. This opposition leads to irony in love, which creates a paradox that divides the speaker.

The dichotomy in the second stanza further reveals love's ironical ability to both confine and unite individuals. The speaker presents a shift in tenses from the present to the past in "I am" to "knew," emphasizing that her current identity relies on past experiences, especially as her focus on "parents" (8) reveals that identity begins to form at a young age. The word "chains" (7) in this passage implies a link or connection, so that the speaker sees her identity as connected to her parents. This sense of union and linking 22 through love, and the ways in which love expands identity by connecting people, is significant as it is also through love that Livesay's speaker finds unity with her lover.

Leary and Tangney's study of self and identity development as well as the factors that impact identity also find that identity formation is influenced greatly by people external to the subject: "Relationships play a central role, probably the central role, in shaping and reshaping the self' (455). However, since she hates the "chains," she reveals that although love connects and links people, love has the ironical ability to also confine her identity. This is especially significant since the word "chains" also implies "shackles," and so recalls many of the images of being bound or made captive that the speaker creates in the love poems, particularly where she feels her individuality is bound and confined by her lover's dominance over her in poems such as "Notations," "The Cave," and "Birdwatching," often signaled with images of being bound, chained, or limited. The speaker displays love's functions ironically: although love is expansive by linking individuals and forming their identities, love is also diminutive since the connection it creates between people restricts individuality. Halperin's study on the necessary connections between eroticism, love and irony finds that "Irony is the very condition of love, its mode of being" (52), and argues that love is "an ironic condition insofar as it produces a necessary doubling of perspective" (53), which is demonstrated in the speaker's depiction of love as both enlarging and depleting her sense of self. Liminality also encourages an ironical perspective. Hutcheon defines the main elements of irony as

"Contradiction, division, doubleness" (Splitting Images 97), which are also elements 23 suggestive of liminality and the duality it creates. Since the speaker hates these chains,

she reveals that she will not allow her individuality to be confined.

The speaker demonstrates that love is confining, but in the third stanza she reveals

her opposing and contradictory desire for liberty in love, setting up the paradox she

typically longs for in her love poems: a desire for a liberating love that will release her

from restricting expectations, allowing her the freedom to be her individual self, and also

a desire for unity in love. In experiencing liminality, Livesay's speaker employs paradox

in her contrasting perceptions and images to signal that her identity occupies a liminal

space." The use of paradox in the poem is considerable; Turner notes, "the most characteristic midliminal symbolism is that of paradox, of being both this and that"

{Blazing 49). Paradox is further representative of the speaker's liminal identity; Turner

finds that liminal subjects characteristically do not have singular or clearly formed identities: "They evade ordinary cognitive classification, too, for they are not this or that, here or there, one thing or the other" (49). An examination of the mid-liminal state displays the liminal identity as one that, through paradox, creates a duality of self, wanting both liberty and unity. Through this paradox the speaker articulates, as Sharma puts it, that "Though she has fought against a possessive kind of love that keeps one a prisoner, she has had the vision of a different kind of love not commonly prevalent between man and woman - a love that is not possessive, yet committed and involves total loyalty to the beloved" (53). Although the speaker's "longing" (9) is for love to "set men free" (10), the word "might" (10) implies that freedom in love is a desire that is not 24 possible, especially in its connection to her realization that love creates "loyalty" (12)

that will "yet hold them" (11), expanding on the second stanza's revelation that love is

confining. In "The Unquiet Bed" the speaker's liberation is denied in love and is only

possible through asserting her autonomy at the poem's close.

The final stanza repeats the first two lines of the poem, pointing to the speaker's

continuous agitation that her identity is uncertain or not properly perceived. The stanza

ends with the declaration that love must comply with her desires, and "make room" (16)

for her autonomous self, implying that her individuality has not been given adequate

space, while also displaying her need for her individual identity to be recognized.

However, she demands that love "move over" (15) for her to be able to assert her

autonomy, emphasizing that autonomy and love are not simultaneous events, and that she

cannot experience freedom in love.1" "[M]ove over" further emphasizes the notion of

distance or separation that often permeates the love poems. The love poems that focus on

distance between the lovers, particularly "The Cave," "Birdwatching," "And Give Us Our

Trespasses," and "The Operation," convey that this separation, along with the assertion of

her individuality, bring about the end of love. The word "move" further implies a

movement or shift in her self that draws attention to her own movement in transcending

the limits of love to realize her individuality. The speaker is able to ensure a place for her

self, which simultaneously ensures the end of love.

Although "The Unquiet Bed" is a love poem, the speaker's lover is denied a role in it, so that the poem, in describing the construction of her individuality, focuses on her 25 love for and acknowledgement of her self, and her refusal to submit that self to love.

Linda Anderson claims that writing by women that is concerned with reaching their true identities is often accompanied by themes of threshold experiences that indicate their movement into individuality: "In writing herself the woman is also reaching into writing and her story will more obviously be informed by a dynamics of self-becoming .... [the woman] exists at a threshold, referring back in a constant process of coming into being"

(60). As the first poem in the section of love poems in The Unquiet Bed, it is significant that the poem introduces and addresses the struggles and contradictions that Livesay's speaker establishes throughout the love poems that contribute to liminality, irony, and dual identity, as well as the assertion of the speaker's autonomous self.lv Further, "The

Unquiet Bed" displays that liminality is a necessary condition for the speaker to be able to assert her individuality. In traversing the threshold of love, she moves from a liminal place of obscure identity into a confident proclamation of her individuality.

Identity is also a central concern in "The Taming" from The Unquiet Bed, which is demonstrated by the speaker's liminal position and love's ironical ability to both confine and liberate her identity. In "The Taming" the speaker expresses that in a loving relationship, she risks having an identity she does not accept as her own imposed on her.

The title of the work implies that the speaker is actively transformed, as her lover attempts to modify both her identity and role as woman. Identity transformations are significant during liminality since it is a period of non-identity, where identity fluctuates and alters before a new one is created. Turner notes that identity revisions are a crucial 26 aspect of liminality: the liminal period involves "a sequence of movements in space-

time, involving a series of changes of pragmatic activity and a succession of transitions in

state and status" (On the Edge 158). The speaker regards her lover's attempts to alter her

as threatening or damaging, which is suggested in the negative connotations of the word

"tame," implying that her lover will use force, discipline, and punishment to "correct" her

identity. As Foster puts it, women writers "use their work to articulate their sense of the

destructiveness of conventions which condemn women to a single function" (155).

"Taming" further emphasizes that the transformation demanded of her affects her inherent nature.

The opening stanza reveals that her lover confines her to a role of "woman" in his

verbal command for her to "Be woman" (1). The line also emphasizes the paradox

between liberation and confinement in love; ending the line on "be" emphasizes the

notion of freedom to be any role she chooses, and the rhyme between "me" and "be"

further reinforces the assertion of her self. However, she is not liberated since the

following line continues to demand the role of "woman" (2). This division between a

liberated and restricted identity in love leads to an ironical view of love, and Hutcheon

finds that "irony seems to be at least one of the ways so-called English Canadians have chosen to articulate their problematic identities" (39). The isolation of the words "I did

not know" (2) suggests that the speaker does not recognize the identity being forced on

her as her true self, already suggesting her inability unable to conform to this role. The

third line reveals that what she is unaware of is the power and impact of her lover's 27 demands.

The following stanza emphasizes the impact of her lover's words, and that in

being forced to adopt an imposed identity the speaker experiences inadequacy. In trying

to fulfill the demands of her lover, she is confined to a subservient role, placing her true

identity in a liminal space, where her autonomy is denied. The domestic image of the

speaker preparing a meal for her lover suggests her acceptance of the implied traditional

role of "woman" that her lover demands of her, but it is during this activity that she

recalls he "made me listen" (6). "[M]ade" implies that his words are forceful, suggesting

that the role of "woman" is not fully accepted by the speaker, but is something she submits to through force. The speaker experiences duality of self in the liminal space since she complies with the imposed identity, wanting unity in love, but does not accept it as her true self. His words are not only forceful, but critical - "No, dammit. / Not so

much salt" (8) - pointing to her inadequacy in the role of woman, wanting her to perform

her role flawlessly and by his direction. His criticism of her excess use of salt is further

employed as a metaphor to suggest that he disapproves of her excess, demanding less

from her, so that she is limited by love. He demands that her identity be subdued, wanting her to docilely accept his demands, and in her "taming" she is made submissive by conforming without aggressively questioning or criticizing these commands. His desire to limit her is further emphasized in his order that she fulfill his demands without question:

"just that / and nothing more" (10-11). The speaker is restrained from autonomy and fulfilling more than the role of woman. 28 In the third stanza, the speaker repeats her lover's demands, accentuating her

identity as liminal. She recognizes that his words affect her identity, accompanying her

revelation that her personal fulfillment and autonomy have been denied. She sees her

lover as the one who has "denied" (15) and limited her. She is denied "darkness" (15) at

"night" (14), emphasizing that what she is being refused, her true identity, is inherent to

her self, as darkness is natural at night. She realizes that her identity is governed by her

lover rather than herself. Meyers explains that when an individual feels under the control

of an other, the subject deviates from her true identity:

Individuals experience lack of autonomy as a sense of being out of control or

being under the control of others.... they may feel they have been made into

vehicles for projects that they do not disavow but that are not their own. In one

way or another, nonautonomous individuals suffer from alienation from self.v

(210)

In liminality the speaker recognizes this alienation from self, which motivates her to

assert her need for a true identity. Anderson notes that in women's writing that concerns

threshold experiences of becoming their true selves, there is a desire to find "a place

inside herself which is also outside the roles offered to her by society" (63). The speaker

initially accepts the role her lover demands, but as the role is not her true self, she cannot

transcend liminality and reconcile her own duality until she becomes autonomous. The

rhyme between "night" and "right" (16) demonstrates her "right" to celebrate and possess

her complete identity, or to "turn in my own light" (17). The speaker recognizes a threat 29 to her self as her lover imposes a new identity on her, but since liminality propels

development, she comes to acknowledge her right to exist as an individual.

The speaker's experiences with love are strongly connected to her search for

identity in liminality. Nel also connects love to liminal experiences and argues "that love

is consistently regarded as the limen or threshold through which entry to the Other or the

other side may be gained" since "the experience of love, like the experience of travel, is a

liminal experience, a place of perpetual in-betweenness" that "ultimately leads to a

(re)discovery of the self by means of the poetic word" (233, 234,243). Livesay's speaker

enters liminality because of her experience with love, and liminality regenerates her

identity, so that in transcending the experience, she re-creates her identity, developing a

truer sense of self.

The final stanza of the poem returns to her lover's insistence that she adopt the

role of woman in her identity. Although his words remain adamant - "Do as I say" (18) -

they lack the force and impact the speaker perceives earlier. She now hears his demands

"faintly" (18), emphasizing by recognizing her right to autonomy, she finds his words deficient in magnitude, making his demands only barely or weakly perceptible to her.

Since his command now lacks force for the speaker, she demonstrates that she ultimately rejects the identity he imposes on her.

In "The Operation" love is once again posited as a site that leads to liminality by diminishing the speaker's identity, where the liminal position further encourages self- growth and autonomy. Plainsongs comprises three sections: "Loving," "Living," and

"Being," and the first section consists of the love poetry. The poem "The Operation" closes the section of love poetry, where its placement functions as a final statement about 30 love. The title of the poem refers to the process of changes the speaker undergoes in liminality.

Turner explains the structure of events that comprise a subject's experience through the liminal process:

(1) rites of separation detaching the ritual subject from quotidian, secular reality,

and often involving symbols of killing and death; (2) rites of margin or limen,

often involving the subject's seclusion in a special hut, shelter, or cave, where

former rules no longer apply and new ones remain in abeyance, a state at once

liberating and terrifying for the subject, who is also an intiand into cultic

membership; and (3) rites of re-aggregation, in which the subject is returned to the

mundane realm, restored to health and integrity. (Blazing 234)

Livesay's speaker experiences each of these processes in her modification, first undergoing separation from society, unable to interact in the external world, signaled through images, often simultaneously, of death and rebirth. In liminality, she is governed by roles and an identity unfamiliar and threatening to her, where her identity undergoes diminishment as well as enlargement, through which she is able to transcend and return to

"health," made operative in society due to the assertion of her autonomous identity.

In the poem's opening, the speaker describes living as dangerous, especially living in a passionate relationship, while also establishing her need to live autonomously.

Stevens remarks that the first section of "The Operation" "opens with a sense of crisis.... this crisis made all the more emphatic in her mind because it happened after her tremendous experience with love" ("Dorothy Livesay" 41). The use of the word "blaze"

(2) refers to a passionate life; Livesay's speaker often uses the image of fire as a 31 metaphor to describe eroticism or passion,V1 especially in "Four Songs," here

emphasizing the dangers of passion. She further demonstrates passion as threatening,

since "after the blaze of being / alive" (2-3) she finds herself facing "the wall" (4),

suggesting that her life has been made stationary due to excessive passionate living. The

phrase "faced the wall" (4,6) is repeated twice, further emphasizing that love is a liminal

place that stifles her autonomy, and so her life has been stalled.v" Once stationary, she

finds "breath must be thrown" (5) over the wall, conveying the difficulties of living a

restricted life, and demonstrating that she will have to move beyond liminality and love to

achieve a complete and fulfilled life. The description of the wall as "scratched by the

graffiti / of trying" (7-8) displays that she regards life as an account of one's struggles.

She also makes her "mark" (10) on the wall, demonstrating that she endures suffering. By

leaving her mark, she emphasizes her need to make her self known, pointing to the

importance of autonomy. However, she describes the action of leaving her trace as a

"trembling mark" (10), implying a hesitancy or a sense that she has become unsure of her

self due to her experiences of living and loving, where her uncertainty of her self further

signals her submersion in liminality.

In the opening, the words "blaze," "graffiti," and "mark" (2,7,10) signify the dangers and struggles the speaker encounters when her identity is immersed in a liminal space.Vl" Yet these words also signal her desire to be recognized, or to make an impact.

However, as the poem progresses, she becomes a signifier to her lover. By adopting the role of subservient patient in the poem, she applies meaning to her lover by placing him in the role of her appraiser and saviour, so that her identity is understood only in respect 32 to his, which further stabilizes his role, and de-stabilizes her own. Ultimately, this

makes the speaker dependent on him since her identity and life are "his" (19).

Although the speaker senses a threat to her identity by relying on her lover, she is willing to submit her individuality to gain a sense of unity. The image of the "knife" (11) emphasizes danger, and the threat she discerns is connected to "a warm flame" (12), emphasizing passion as a danger. The spacing of the line accentuates the distance

between the lovers as the threat is "between us" (12), so that passion both separates and

unites the lovers. There is also distance between the lovers in their separate roles, as she identifies herself as "victim" (13), reliant on her lover, whom she sees as her rescuer from threat or injury, placing her into a subservient, "grateful" (14), role. The gaps in the lines further emphasize their separate roles, as her role of "victim" opposes her lover's role in

"appraising" her quality or worth.1" Her lover assesses how to transform her "bone and flesh" (16) into a "new woman" (17), making the speaker dependent on her lover to create a new identity for her. The image of the "needle" (18) further displays that her identity must alter for her to be cured, suggesting that her identity as an independent woman is a sickness or disease, cured only through becoming dependent on her lover.

Yet, the "needle" is also a metaphor for the erotic act, demonstrating that the lovers will attempt to bring about her recovery, that is, her dependence, through sexual union.

Indeed, the effect of the "needle" brings about her subservience and dependence, as she finds that she is made "his" (19), emphasizing that it is though sex and love that the speaker submits her identity. Through her submission her lover is made more powerful, while the speaker's identity is further diminished. The speaker and her lover are divided 33 by their separate functions, but declaring that her function is to be made "his" displays

her need to lessen the difference between them and unite.

The speaker's need of an operation to cure her sickness ensures that she must be

separated from society, as well as from her lover. Turner notes the importance of

segregation during liminal experiences: "when individuals or groups are in a liminal state

of suspension, separated from their previous condition, and not yet incorporated into their

new one, they present a threat to themselves ... requiring their segregation from quotidian

life" {Blazing 159). Even after her operation the speaker continues to be separated from

ordinary life by her isolation at the hospital. Her post-operative seclusion emphasizes that

her new identity as a dependent woman is not her true identity, and that she remains in a

liminal space, with her true self obscured.

After her lover operates on her identity the speaker again emphasizes their

separation in terms of their roles. She is "dazed" (20), or confused and unstable, while he

is precise, displaying that the lovers are not united after her procedure. The lovers are also

physically separate, since he stands in her doorway. Stevens notes that the doorway is "a

key image in Dorothy Livesay's poetry ... used generally as an entrance to new experience, as a release, a revelation or emergence into some new world" ("Dorothy

Livesay" 42). Although the image of the doorway may suggest that she is entering into a new experience, made possible by her lover having created a new identity for her, she simultaneously perceives her passage through the doorway as blocked. The door emphasizes love as a liminal place, and also recalls the image of the wall in the poem's opening. Since her lover obstructs the threshold she must cross, he inhibits her ability to transcend liminality, which suggests that the operation has not supplied her with a true 34 sense of self, but rather has further removed her from her genuine self. It is significant

that he stands "silent" (22) in the door, since Livesay's speaker is typically threatened by

silence's ability to stifle her. He stands in the doorway until his identity is "recognized"

(24), asserting his identity or role as "surgeon" (25). The isolation of the word "surgeon"

in the line emphasizes their contrasting roles, since he is dominant while she fills the

diminutive role of patient. In his study of identity and ascertaining a sense of belonging

Kraus states that "the self-other relationship should be considered in terms of the

construction of difference and power" (125). The speaker's emotional state oscillates

from anger to calm, emphasizing her personal instability during liminality, but notes that

what she has retained "still" (32) is the "intimate flashing bond" (33), or connection,

between them. Livesay's speaker finds her self dependant on her lover and their

connection. Mclnnis notes that she "attempts over and over to resolve her need for

imaginative autonomy with her interconnectedness with others" (42). Although the

passage displays that the lovers are in opposition to each other, making the speaker

inferior, the speaker is adamant in insisting that a connection exists between them.

However, this "bond" is "flashing," which implies that their connection is not stable or

permanent.

Since her lover accumulates power by asserting his will over the speaker, he declares her healthy after the procedure, seeing himself as having healed her by operating on her identity, and so sends her to live in and join the world. The speaker creates a sense that everything is possessed by her lover; it is "his" office, "his" corridor (36), and so when he "pronounces" (34) her health she agrees, since she is also "his." Although the speaker's actions show her willingness to obey him, she displays uncertainty in regard to 35 her reparation, emphasized by the isolation of the words "near steady" (35) to describe her departure from the hospital.

Her representations of the world she enters into further demonstrate that she remains unhealthy. Typically, Livesay's speaker observes the external world as connected to her internal experiences, especially in "The Touching," "Notations," and

"Auguries," so in describing the outside world she returns to with terms such as "pale,"

"smog," and "foul" (39,40,40), she points to the notion of illness and decay, suggesting that her new identity has not healed her, and she is further removed from health, or her true self. She notes the "snarl" (41) of the moving cars in the outside world, suggesting that she feels resentment, which is further connected to her use of the word "glare" (42).

However, "glare" can also refer to reduced vision, emphasizing her inability to see clearly as she is not yet healed or whole. In Turner's structure of liminal events, the third step of re-aggregation is marked by the subject being "returned to the mundane realm, restored to health and integrity" (Blazing 234). However, living is now more difficult for the speaker since she must not only "breathe deep," but the separation of the word "here" (43) emphasizes that the difficulty arises after she has undergone surgical operation to her identity and re-enters the world." The speaker is unable to live a complete life, signaling that in being dependent on her lover, and having her independence reduced, she remains in a liminal position. Turner notes the importance of the re-birth process in liminality, since subjects in a liminal state "are in a sense "dead" to the world - and liminality has many symbols of death" (Edge 49). The speaker struggles to live "again" (44), emphasizing that she has experienced a metaphorical death of self, but has not been 36 renewed in a way that makes living again possible. A renewal of identity will

ultimately involve the speaker being re-bornxl once again.

The second section of the poem presents the construction of identity in regard to

birth and death, demonstrating the irony in love's ability to both expand and confine the

speaker's identity. Hutcheon defines irony as a term that refers to the "recognition of the

discrepancy between reality and appearance. Its ability to express two meanings

simultaneously" {Splitting Images 9). The section opens with Livesay's speaker

describing her lover as causing her to re-enter life through eroticism, while also

contradictorily implying that sex and her lover do not cure her. The line "You pulled me

back" (45) suggests that the speaker sees her lover as someone who holds her back, or

confines her, also suggesting force, yet the next line, "into life" (46), insists that he

paradoxically also brings her into life, displaying that she sees her life as dependent on

her lover for enlarging the value of her self. She attributes her renewal to "your very

penis" (47), which, like her earlier representation of the "needle," emphasizes the curative

aspect of sex and its ability to enlarge her self-meaning. Yet the speaker's word choice

undermines eroticism as a renewing experience; their sexual union is considered a

"forging" (47), which suggests that in modifying her identity her lover has created an

imitation of her, realizing that she is not her true self, but a representation of his

expectations. The words "refrain refrain" (50) may refer to the repetition of the erotic act,

yet its connection to the repetition of the words "pulling / me back" (48-49) "refrain

refrain" reflects the repetition of entering and leaving life, demonstrating love as

continually liminal. However, "pulling me back" also suggests the speaker's confinement

in love, so "refrain refrain" further points to her refusal to be restrained. Her resistance is 37 emphasized in their differing desires since "once / was all I gasped for" (52-53), but her lover's desires, seen in his italicized speech, display his desires as increasingly insistent, emphasized in the repetition of his words, especially in the use of the exclamation mark - "/ove me again!" (56) - so that she is made inadequate by her lover's demands for "more" (55). She further demonstrates that sex and love have not renewed her life, by describing herself as "still in pain" (54).

Since identity in the liminal state is uncertain and unstable, her identity is constantly reformed so as to create a new and full identity. The continual breakdown and construction of the speaker's identity that leads to lack of identity is a distinctive factor of liminality, and points to what Cote and Levine, in their study of identity from both social and psychological perspectives, term the "identity crisis," defined as "a period during which an individual's previous identity is no longer experienced as suitable, but a new identity is not yet established," particularly as "identity confusion is manifested in terms of contradictory self images or aspirations, roles or opportunities" (95, 96). Further, according to Cote and Levine, a person's identity is greatly affected by how it is perceived by others, especially in an intimate relationship, so that identity conflicts arise

"when there is a misalignment between a person's self-definition and an other's definition of his or her personal or social identities" (136). Her lover's repeated attempts to alter the speaker's identity display such a misalignment that leads to non-identity.

However, both the erotic act and her lover's operation have not supplied her with an acceptable identity, so she must experience a re-birth of self. Sharma notes that her attempt for re-birth fails, as her lover is still the dominant force and she is reliant:

Though the sexual act has the potential of bestowing a renewal and rebirth of self, 38 here it merely reveals the lover's selfish acts of domination over the gentle,

feminine self. The second time the penis cuts her open, in an attempt to bring

forth a new self, it fails again in spite of the poet's attempt to satisfy her beloved.

She feels completely helpless, like a foetus, which 'fighting to grow / gasping for

air' struggling for release from the suffocating womb, awaiting birth and

independence. Though she has begun to see herself as a person, distinct from her

lover, she is still consumed by his will and cannot act independently. (100-101)

Although the speaker begins to feel a renewal of identity through her lover, she remains dependent by attributing the creation of her new identity to an experience with him.

The passage where she attempts this re-birth opens with her identity being repeatedly changed, or "turned" (57), displaying identity reformation in liminality. Her re-emergence is connected to swimming with her lover, so that her renewal depends on him. They swim "into darkness" (58), implying that her true identity remains obscure.

The creation of this identity is related to being born again,"" an event that as threatening since the words "fighting" and "gasping" (62,63) suggest that she struggles. She also sees the creation of a new identity as an opportunity for a new life, represented with another image of the "door" (64) as she enters into the world anew once again. However, this creation is simultaneous with destruction, as she drowns."1" The image of death that immediately follows her re-birth suggests that her renewal fails. Also, death emphasizes that love occupies a liminal space where she is not fully alive, especially since her sleeping symbolizes the threshold of consciousness, since her autonomous self is still stifled. She experiences the ambiguous quality of life and death; she is neither dead, nor 39 re-born, but occupies both spaces, signaling that her identity has not been re-created as autonomous, since dependency cannot sustain her, and she remains in a liminal position.

The speaker's identity continues to oscillate in the next stanza, affirming that she remains in liminality. The speaker's dreamed words display her longing to be adequate, which oppose her lover's view of her as inadequate by constantly reforming her identity.

The speaker's longing to be "enough" (67) is a dream. Sharma writes that "The third meeting between the poet and her doctor-lover, does bring healing. But this meeting takes place only in the poet's imagination" (101), so that eroticism is only curative in the speaker's desires. Her desire is to be seen as adequate, while the line "but you" (69) displays that her lover opposes this longing. Her lover is "ever again there" (70), cutting her "open again" (72) indicating that he still perceives her identity as inadequate, and so repeatedly re-creates her. His unceasing reconstructions of the speaker exhibit that she is perpetually on the cusp of establishing identity,X1V displaying the continuous development of her identity in the poem, which emphasizes Manuel Aguirre's observation on thresholds that "liminality is a condition rather than a location"("The Phasing of Form"

18), as her identity is in constant flux.xv

The speaker is re-created once again, identifying her lover's role as "lord" (71), emphasizing her increasing dependency since he is now perceived as more than a surgeon who modifies her, but ubiquitous creator. Her description of him as "you / were you ever again" (69-70) points to the repetition of his demands to alter her, and also demonstrates his powerful identity as certain and stable. His power over her is further represented in the speaker's repetition of describing her lover as "over me" (71,72), emphasizing his dominant role in the hierarchy, and the submissive role she has taken, particularly as this 40 is also connected to eroticism and her hope for her lover to effect a cure, which further increases the power difference between them. She depends on him to relieve her pain, since through eroticism she imagines her lover taking "my pain into your side" (74), emphasizing her longing for sex to relieve pain, and once again points to how she remains subservient in relying on her lover to fully heal her, especially as the image suggests that the speaker is comparing her lover to Christ. Therefore, the speaker's attempts to bring about a renewal of her true self through sexual union actually distance her from that possibility by increasing her dependence.

In the third section the speaker, now separated from her lover and therefore no longer dependent on him, can reflect on her experiences, and begin to heal her self. She deduces that love does not cure but causes her sickness. She sees that her independence was not a sickness that needed curing, but rather, love that leads to a dependent identity, and non-autonomy, is the true sickness. Her description of the external world - the

"seasons came / and changed" (80-81) - emphasizes that the speaker comes to see that love sickened her identity after her experience with love, and further demonstrates that she also changes. The speaker recognizes that their urgent attempts to cure her by swinging "needles deeper into flesh" (87) only worsened the disease, causing further injury in splitting "the mind's peace" (88). The word "needles" further re-connects to its earlier representation of eroticism and love, which do not repair her identity, but cause a

"split" (88), emphasizing that she has been divided by love, dealing with the conflict of whether to submit or assert her self. The speaker's dual identity in liminality impedes her transcendence, since her contradictory desires are connected to an ironized perspective on love. Although she gains unity in love, she sacrifices her individuality, so that love is 41 ironically both an experience that expands her identity through union while simultaneously diminishing her individual identity. She struggles with whether to assert her autonomy, since in gaining back and enlarging her individuality, she is denied unity and must accept love's instability and transcience. The passage demonstrates the impermanence of love since the lovers have "said farewell" and "goodbye" (83,85). Love must end for the speaker to become autonomous, demonstrated in the final line, "our ghost shivers" (90), which points to the end of unity which is now merely a "ghost."

The speaker reveals that eroticism was used as a fa9ade to cure her by pointing to sex as paradoxically both the cause and cure for illness.xvl The phrase "between us" (91) is repeated throughout the poem in the speaker's attempt to establish a connection between her and her lover. However, the next enjambed line indicates that unity is the source of the "disease" (91). Since love's illness is something "between us" she demonstrates love's ability to not only connect the lovers, but to paradoxically cause distance between them, causing separation rather than unity. The use of the past tense in the line "love was" (92) is significant in displaying love as impermanent. The speaker describes love as "indulged in as an excuse / for going to bed" (93-94) so that love was a fa9ade, and she now implicates eroticism as the cause of the transmission of the disease, as the lovers "transmitted kisses" (95). Although she demonstrates herself finding the cure, or "antibody" (97), through eroticism, "antibody" emphasizes that she must rid herself of the foreign substance that has made her ill, which implies she will have to separate from her lover and become independent to be truly cured. Further, the pun on

"anti-body" demonstrates that the physical body is not curative, as passion, unity, and dependence make her ill. 42 The implication that love is an illness that leads to the lovers' separation is further realized when the speaker recognizes that distance will return them to health. The lovers are physically separated; she is stationary, watching him from her window, while he is mobile, operative in society, crossing the street, and interacting in normal social life.

The speaker observes her lover as "cured" (99), which is significant since she defines his role repeatedly in the poem as being in opposition to hers, so that she suggests that her identity remains in a liminal state, implicated further by her immobility and separation from the external world; Turner's phases of liminality point to "the subject's seclusion"

(Blazing 234) as a signal for liminality. She points to the impermanence of love, since their relationship must end to ensure his health. She further attributes his return to health to being "free of opposites" (102); this phrase may imply that he is free of her, since her role opposes his throughout the poem, but also implies the speaker's need to be free of contradictions, and of dual identity, in order to become independent.

Although the lovers are separate, the speaker's depiction of her external surroundings reinforces the notion that she is not well yet, and has not transcended liminality: the world is "cloudy still" (103), and "rain / smirches the pain" (104-105) suggesting a blurriness that emphasizes her inability to live and interact in the world as her lover, "a well man" (101), is capable of doing. Her sense of false perception is further connected not only to how she interacts with the world, but how she interacts with herself as "distorted / mirrors" (107-108) suggests that she still has an unclear sense of her self.

However, the recognition that she has lost her autonomous self leads the speaker to her final decision: "I decide to complete the operation" (113). The speaker chooses to heal her self and rebuild her own identity, establishing liminality as expansive to identity. 43 However, just as her lover had to destroy her identity to create a new one, her creation of a new identity also relies on destruction,xv" as she must "tear myself into four quarters"

(114), displaying that she has finally fully rejected the identity her lover built for her. The image of the speaker "scatter[ing] the pieces" (115) recalls the image of the lovers

"splitting] the mind's peace" (88), suggesting that she is further divided before she can apply wholeness to her self. The speaker's identity conflict creates what Walker, in her study of irony used by women novelists, terms "a double or divided self," common in

works that convey "the forging of a new identity and concomitant abandoning of a

socially approved identity" (36). Liminal experiences are closely connected to the

creation of the self in order to defeat dual identity and non-identity. Sclafani uses

examples of exile and return to exhibit that threshold crossings are characterized by

"internal transformations" and that identity formation also includes its being

"deconstructed, reconstructed" (6). Since the speaker rejects the identity her lover created

for her, she must now re-create her own identity. Daly's study on liminality sees the

experience as one that frees the subject, especially since "Liminality does occasion

danger and fear, but it also enables choice and multiplicity" (71). The speaker

demonstrates this aspect of liminality when she articulates a "stretching out" and

"uncoiling" (118,120) emphasizing that her autonomous self is being liberated. Her

liberation is further emphasized in her description of the event as similar to that of

building a "city" and then a "kingdom" (117,122), displaying the act as monumental. She

identifies the city as built of "crystal" and "ice" (117), further demonstrating that she has

a better sense of herself since the images not only imply strength and solidity, but also

strongly contrast with her earlier representations of rain and distortion. 44 The fourth and final passage of the poem demonstrates the speaker's transcendence from liminality as she discovers and enlarges her true identity. In the final stanzas, the speaker is able to enter, and fully live in, the external world, which, according to Turner's three phases (Blazing 234), signals that she has transcended the liminal space. Her description of her individual renewal into the world once again returns to the image of a "doorway" (123). Stevens notes that "Here, as she stands in a doorway, she takes stock of herself in specific physical terms. She realizes that by an acceptance of what she is now she can rebuild a life. She can now see her lover in an objective light, enabling her to concentrate on her own life" ("Dorothy Livesay" 42). The image of the

"doorway" also suggests she has transcended the liminal space of love and is now experiencing a newness of identity, because she can "stand in" (124) it, no longer obstructed by the struggles of life or her lover's attempts to modify her. She can "push against" (124) this doorway suggesting her confidence in her new identity, which when realized, allows for her recognition of how "shrunk /1 had become" (125-126) by having her autonomy diminished.

She also objectively recognizes her lover for his true role, rather than attributing to him a role of power through her own submission; now that her lover is "gone" (128), the speaker is able to clearly see and combine his roles and identities, as "the heor "the you" she perceives her lover to be are "one" (127), emphasizing that she is now able to reconcile dualities. His identities are made a cohesive whole by separating from the speaker, and this also allows the speaker to "measure me" (129), emphasizing her need to recognize her self, and find fulfillment in filling her own standards, rather than falling short of her lover's expectations of her. Sharma points out that "The poet realizes that 45 unless the woman is allowed to grow too, the sexual act is meaningless. Not only does it bring no healing but it 'split(s) the mind's peace'. It swings 'needles deeper into flesh' and is nothing but a 'kind of disease between us'" (101), but because love is a means for the speaker to develop, understand, and celebrate her individuality, "The suffering has not been in vain but instead, it has given her a remarkable opportunity for growth" (102). The natural imagery in the final lines demonstrates the speaker's self growing "upright!"

(132), directly opposing the shrunkenness she experiences by limiting herself, emphasizing that she is able to fully live by having created her own identity.

Her final description of her self as "ever aware of height / and the cry / to reach a dazzled strangeness" (133-135) displays her acknowledgment that she must endure a kind of pain, the pain that love brings, to find the joy of autonomy, so that it is through love and love's restrictions on her identity that she can assert her complete self. Turner's phases illuminate that the speaker is now inhabiting a new identity in transcendence since she "is returned to the mundane realm, restored to health and integrity" {Blazing 234).

Love, along with its disappointments, pains, and conflicts, deplete the speaker's identity, but in the absence of love she settles her contradictions. The final passages of the poem connect to its title, as she is made operative or functional in the end, not by her lover's operations and attempts to repair her identity, but in actively operating on and asserting her own identity.

"The Operation" presents a bleak statement of love since love is posited as an illness that sickens and removes her from her autonomous self. However, the speaker is able to reconcile her dualities and transcend liminality. Although love is an experience one must "recover" from, the poem closes with a cure:xvl" to be separated from her lover. 46 However, the speaker does not lament this separation and loss of unity, since the collapse of love allows her to escape liminality, reconcile her divisions, and become complete. Christian Riegel, who examines liminality in the act of mourning, describes the state of liminality as "an in-between state that demarcates a change in human development" (6), which is particularly illuminating in "The Operation," since the speaker undergoes several processes of change that signal her progression through liminality so that once love collapses, she is able to develop her autonomy by becoming her own surgeon, the only person suitable to complete the operation.

The speaker of Livesay's mature love poetry sees love as an opportunity to unite with her lover, yet she is made submissive in this union as her lover directly tries to accommodate for her inadequacies by forcing a new identity or role on her. She surrenders her individuality, making her dependent on her lover to decipher her identity.

Her experiences in being limited lead to liminality and spur her to realize that although she feels fulfilled or enlarged by love, she is also confined by love, which causes the breakdown and division of her self and inevitable re-creation of her identity and re- assertion of her power and self by transcending liminality and ending love. According to

Kraus' evaluation of the process necessary to create a self, especially when establishing the self as separate from a previous collective identity, constructing identity

is characterized by ambivalence: On the one hand the dissolution of old

attachments, which have been sources of security for the individuals, but which at

the same time have been authoritarian and confining; on the other hand the

development of new options, resulting in more individual freedom of choice, but

also a higher risk in choosing the "wrong" option. (129) 47 Although she initially depends on her lover to fulfill her, as "The Unquiet Bed"

declares, she ultimately chooses her individuality, leading to the end of love, but her own

acceptance and permanency of self. Hence, although the love poems in this chapter make

statements about love in suggesting the paradoxes, inadequacies, and disappointments of

love, they are ultimately poems about acknowledging and loving her self. Livesay's

speaker ultimately feels inadequate, submissive, confined, and diminished by love so that

her quest for self-sufficiency compels her to transcend the boundaries of love and choose

to be fulfilled outside of love, displaying liminality as a necessary condition towards

freedom. Halperin's study on irony in love finds that love is never free of paradox:

"Love's ironies are many. But they all come down to a single paradox: the object of

desire is not what you think it is" (52). Although the speaker desires a permanent love and unity to fulfill and regenerate her sense of self, she ironically finds fulfillment only in

separation from her lover and in declaration of her autonomous self.

The second chapter looks further into how the ironies of love create a divided self

in the speaker that makes transcendence increasingly difficult. The speaker's perception

that love is threatening continues in the second chapter; the use of natural imagery

already seen in "The Operation" to demonstrate that love is restrictive as well as expansive are increased in the poems of the next chapter. In the poems in the second chapter, the speaker's intensified duality derives from love's ironic ability to both confine and expand her understanding of her identity, and first allows for the reconciliation of her division by attaining autonomy, but finally becomes an obstacle in the speaker's ability to see her individuality and the loss of love as positive choices, so that she remains divided and unable to transcend liminality. 48

'Tietjens Meyers' finds in her study on identity and the meaning of autonomy that "the sense of wholeness ... is characteristic of autonomy" (66), so that in the speaker's lack of autonomy, she looks to her lover to supply her with a sense of wholeness, creating dependence.

11 Nancy Bredendick's analysis of threshold concepts in literature illuminates the liminal space as one that often accompanies paradox and incertitude in regard to the subject's identity; she describes liminality from the liminal subject's perspective as "a space where something happens; a site of interaction, conflict, and change, where the self is fluid rather than fixed, where signs are double-sided, and meaning is ambiguous" (4).

The lover is unable to property perceive the speaker's identity, making love confining, so that the speaker cannot experience liberation in love; Shirin Kudchedkar writes: "Her lover does not really see her; he sees an image of his own making. She is not that image. She requires more room. If she is to lie in this bed, if she is to continue with this relationship, she must be known and accepted as she truly is" (200).

IV Susan Gingell's reading of "The Unquiet Bed" finds that "Its title and its context as part of a larger sequence of poems about a couple encourage a reading of the poem as an account of a woman's struggle to maintain and have recognized her full sense of self within an intimate, heterosexual relationship" (5). v Tietjens Meyers further notes that relationships that affect the identity are capable of reducing autonomy: "these ties also threaten autonomy, for responding to others' needs and fulfilling one's responsibilities to them can become so consuming that the individual is deprived of any opportunity to pursue personal goals and projects" (52).

" Meira Cook finds in her study of Livesay's love poetry that her use of the word "fire" expresses "her preoccupation with the erotic aspects of romance" (114).

In the third chapter, I examine how liminality obstructs the speaker's living to such an extent that her inability to transcend by choosing either love and its disappointments or autonomy without love leads to a continuous sort of liminality, where the speaker is somewhat paralyzed by her own indecision.

"" Turner explores the significance of signifiers in liminal experiences: "In symbols there is always some kind of likeness (metaphoric/metonymic) posited by the framing culture between signifier (symbol-vehicle) and signified(s); in signs there need be no likeness. Signs are almost always organized in "closed" systems, whereas symbols, particularly dominant symbols (which preside over or anchor entire ritual processes), are semantically "open." The meaning is not absolutely fixed, nor it is necessarily the same for everyone who agrees that particular signifier ("outward form") has symbolic meaning" (Blazing 171).

™ In her study of conflicts and construction of social identities, Karina V. Korostelina finds that "Role identities are interconnected because one person's behavior influences, and depends on, other people's behavior. Every role, even stable and fixed, has to take into account the features, needs, and skills of the other people who are involved in complementary roles" (22). x Bredendick articulates that "coming out into a new world is the heart of liminal experience" (3) illuminating Livesay's speaker's inability to be incorporated into her old world; the speaker is incapable of assimilating into her old world, as her experience with the liminal requires that she create a new world to reflect the changes her identity undergoes. Manuel Aguirre adds that "Postliminal rites never quite bring initiands back to their familiar world, since a transformation has taken place in them as a result of the passage itself and, therefore, the world they come "back" to is always a new one" ("Theory of Thresholds" 13). Since she can not integrate back into her old world, but has not yet found a new world, this suggests that she has not transcended the threshold experience, as the first operation has not cured her and her true identity remains obscure. 49

Xl Stevens writes that "So far in the poem the hospital experience is a kind of parallel with her experience of love, so that her emergence from the hospital is in a sense a re-birth. She must learn to live again; she must learn to face the world of external reality" ("Dorothy Livesay" 40). x" Joyce Whitney notes that in Livesay's love poems, "From the moment Livesay can accept the life-death cycle as naturally as she has always accepted the circle of the seasons, she has only a small step to take to comprehend the act of love as a microcosmic death-life cycle, ever renewing, ever nourishing" (107).

Xl" Paul Denham finds that in Livesay's love poetry "life is a cycle; death and destruction, in the natural world as in the human, are necessarily followed by rebirth and renewal. But in the later poems, death and life are simultaneous as well as sequential processes" (Dorothy Livesay 30-31).

XIV Kraus finds that the notion of a developing identity is "a story without closure, constantly open to change.... it implies the continual rearranging and reframing of ones' selves, testing and negotiating the interconnection" (124).

** Aguirre's consideration of thresholds in literature further explores the continuous condition of liminality that demonstrates that "we exist on the edge of ourselves, and our true identity is the paradigm that contains all these inflected possibilities. The theoretical outcome of this is a human existence in endless motion, ever engaged in 'liminal acts'" ("Theory of Thresholds" 25). The repeated development of Livesay's speaker's identity in being numerously destroyed and created reflects the repetitious manner of the liminal state, where Aguirre emphasizes that "identities are fluid, inflected, unfinished, and that their dynamics can be meaningfully associated to the dynamics of passage. Passage, of course, does not merely consist in a closed loop but leads to incorporation either to a new world or to a world transformed. Nor are passages isolated, finished events but parts of series, or waves, or tides: they are multiple, extended, repeated, continuous, incremental" (25).

XV1 Sharma notes that "The poet finds herself in a paradoxical situation for the lover is not only the doctor who performs the operation on her... but is also the "cancerous organ" itself' (99). xv" Diana Relke's study of poetic identity in the work of Canadian female writers, including Livesay, notes the tendency to connect creative acts with acts of self-destruction: "Most of the female characters are engaged in acts of creativity as well, but whether they create poems or babies, cradles, and whips, their creative acts are almost invariable acts of self-destruction" (10).

*vm Stevens notes, in his study of the love poems, that "Livesay emphasizes the physical aspects of love, so it is not surprising that the poem "The Operation" (Plainsongs), connects her experience of love and her recovery from it" ("Dorothy Livesay" 41). 50 Chapter Two.

The poems I analyze in this chapter continue to articulate Dorothy Livesay's speaker's desire for unity that, once attained, reveals that love and union diminish her identity. Her lover does not force a new role or identity on the speaker, as he does in the poems of the previous chapter, but instead, union leads to dependence on his identity to inform her own and therefore conceals her individuality. Her autonomy is obscured, but union ironically also causes the expansion of the speaker's sense of self. I contend that the speaker's identity oscillates from a diminished to an enlarged state in the poems of this chapter, creating an increased division in the speaker. Her difficulty in reconciling her divided desires is due to her emerging realization that both autonomy and unity are disappointing choices since they must occur separately. Her desire to merge the contradictory elements of individuality and union impede her transcendence of liminality.

In the first chapter, I argued that the speaker was able to reconcile contradictions and her division by choosing and celebrating autonomy, whereas in the second chapter I examine the progression of her duality that makes autonomy a less than appealing choice.

Understanding Livesay's use of nature is critical to understanding her liminal identity, especially in expressing that liminality is caused by love and union, and that liminality is further perpetuated by her ironic perspective of love and her divided desires.

Livesay's love poetry reveals nature's destructive tendencies in relation to the depletion of her identity, as well as its nurturing characteristics in relation to cultivating a new identity. The threatening experiences the speaker perceives in nature reflect her realization that unity with her lover does not fulfill her desire for wholeness in love or wholeness of self, but is ultimately a threat to her autonomous identity that leads her into 51 liminality. In re-creating her self to transcend liminality, the speaker again uses nature to describe her emerging individuality. The speaker employs natural language to signify her understanding of both the dissolution and re-emergence of her identity. In his study of the poetic self in Livesay's poetry, Dennis Cooley suggests that the speaker's connection to nature, particularly in her later love poetry, is "so strong she makes it an identity"

(116).' Natural metaphors are further employed to display that in being diminished by love the speaker gains an understanding of identity." Turner describes the liminal period as an experience where "groups and individuals adjust to internal changes and adapt to their external environment" (Blazing 251). The space between entering the liminal period and the speaker's ability to exhibit autonomy to transcend liminality is difficult due to an intensified sense of duality caused by her ironic portrayal of love.

The speaker's opposing desires to unite with her lover but also to enhance her individuality create a divided self, since she cannot have both unity and independence.

The love poems "reveal how a woman's individuality is submerged because she submits, and yet there is the desire within her to assert her ego" (Varma 30).'" Sexual union initially satisfies the sense of enhancement that the speaker desires. As Leary and

Tangney explain, in terms of identity "people enter and maintain relationships because in a relationship one includes the other in the self - and thus expands the self by gaining access to the other's resources, perspectives, and identities" (454). After her initial feelings of expansion, the speaker ironically finds that her autonomy is diminished, making self-governance impossible due to her reliance on her lover. She is unable to simply look past this irony and develop autonomy to escape a restricting love. Rainford's examination of women and irony illuminates the speaker's inability to make a choice for 52 autonomy: she describes irony as "not a matter of choice or decision, of one or the other, but a simultaneity, which is also a repetition, which nevertheless avoids being the same because it is caught between and takes account of the other" (63). The speaker wants only the enhancement and connection with her lover that unity brings, without the restriction, so that she is able to simultaneously exhibit her independence. The impossibility of this desire means that the speaker must choose either unity or autonomy, or else remain in liminality with neither an independent nor a united identity.

The speaker's increased dual desires, and her ironical perspective on love are illuminated by natural images in the poems of this chapter: "The Touching," and "The

Notations of Love" from The Unquiet Bed (1967), as well as "Auguries" from Plainsongs

(1971). Although duality and irony do not yet impede the speaker's ability to transcend the liminal space in "The Touching" and "Notations," this chapter examines how these elements function to make both autonomy and unity increasingly disappointing choices for the speaker, especially in "Auguries" where the inability to bring her contradictory desires to fruition causes the speaker to remain in a liminal position. This chapter continues to provide an understanding of the factors that contribute to a liminal identity, and also aims to clarify the role of irony in forming a duality in the speaker that becomes problematic to her transcendence of liminality.

In "The Touching," the speaker's feelings and perspectives are depicted in her descriptions of her external surroundings, which illuminate liminality, duality, and irony in the poem. The first section of "The Touching" examines the speaker's relationship with her lover and her relationship with nature that illuminates her fears and desires. The descriptions of nature represent the speaker's duality by reflecting both her fear and 53 desire to attain the ultimate goal of love poetry: unity.IV Her eventual realization in the third section of the poem that the union she desires with her lover has the ability to deny the speaker her personal identity is already evident in the first two sections of the poem, emphasized by her portrayal of the natural world. The speaker presents the natural world as painfully cold, describing "dawn" (4) as the "coldest" (5) time. The cold is so intense that the dawn creates a "shiver" (3), or a physiological reaction, displaying the need to react against the cold in a protective manner, as the speaker will also react to the threat to her identity that unity with her lover causes.

The coldness of the environment is paradoxically connected to images of relief and protection. The speaker's opening lines, directed to her lover, display her desire for love to protect her: "Caress me / shelter me now" (1-2). Her desire for tenderness and security is especially apparent since "Caress" and "shelter" alliterate with the threatening components of this passage, "coldest" and "shiver." The speaker also desires protection from the "dawn." The "dawn" draws attention to liminality in the poem, being both the end of night and beginning of a new day, suggesting that her identity is in transition. Her need to be sheltered from the dawn draws attention to her fear of loss of identity and need for consolation from liminal experiences. Liminal experiences affect the speaker's sense of self as liminality can be understood as "a site which can un-do fixed identities"

(O'Gorman 103). The speaker's innate need to protect her self from these troubling natural occurrences reflects her need to preserve her individual identity. However, her desire is for her lover to protect her, displaying her duality, because she fears the loss of her identity in unity, and yet wants union to protect her identity, thereby desiring both unity and independence. Also, "dawn" further operates as a pun for development or 54 coming to a realization, signaling her emerging understanding of self, as her liminal experience in love leads to better perception of her individual self.

Because liminal experiences reduce Livesay's speaker's identity, she searches to heighten her sense of self. She describes love as enlarging her identity, which is ironically opposed by her indication that love threatens her identity. In the second stanza, the speaker feels a successful expansion of her identity through sexual union, incorporating her lover's identity into her own and relying on his identity to shape and renew her own.

The first line - "pierce me again" (6; emphasis added) - suggests sexual union as a persistent form of personal enhancement. For the speaker, union creates a "second heart / beating" (14-15), or a combined identity. The sense of completeness Livesay's speaker experiences in sexual union is illuminated by the effects Leary and Tangney find a relationship has on identity: "Relationships play a central role, probably the central role, in shaping and reshaping the self.... Much of the process, perhaps most of the process, of becoming close has to do with disclosing the self and linking self and other" (455). At the same time, she presents union as a danger in her use of the words "pierce" and "beating"

(6,15), so that love is ironically both a source of expansion and danger to her identity.

Stevens also finds these ironical elements in the passage:

Love as a kind of violence, a union of entrance and submission, ("pierce me

again/gently") leads to completion, to a merging in new life. The joining of man

and woman in the sexual experience enlarges the individuality of woman, for the

"steady pulse" of the penis she feels as "my second heart/beating." ("Dorothy

Livesay" 37)v 55 The stanza's final line further emphasizes love's irony, ending on the word "beating," and giving this word multiple meanings within the passage: "beating" connects the idea of unity where two people share a heart beat as she incorporates her lover's identity into her own, to the erotic event that makes their union possible, and finally to her perception that unity is a threat. As well, the alliteration of "pierce" with "penis" (6,8) suggests that attaining a shared identity through sex contains a threatening element to her self, especially since the isolation of the word "gently" (7) demonstrates the speaker's alternate need for tenderness or relief in unity that arises from the threat she perceives.

The word "me" (9), especially since it makes up an entire line, displays the importance of the speaker's self, again displaying her duality in wanting independence even once she attains union. Her sense of self relies on her lover to "complete" (8) it. Her dependence on his identity to inform her own and offer refuge displays that although she experiences a renewal of identity, she is not autonomous, and so occupies a liminal position.

The speaker finds consolation in her lover's identity, but still ironically apprehends a threat to her self in the second section that she is in need of further relief from. The "Light" of morning "nips" (16), signifying the aggression of nature in its capacity to bite or pinch, while again pointing to the sharp, stinging quality of the cold.

Further, the light signifies a new day, and the end of dawn, or reconciliation of liminality.

Often, Livesay's speaker employs the dark as a metaphor for her ambiguous or concealed identity. In being threatened by light, the speaker suggests that her independent identity is also threatening, since her independence would disrupt unity. The speaker's fear of independence is a necessary reaction to her own duality; though she fears the loss of independence for unity, once having attained unity, she fears its loss through gaining her 56 autonomy. Threatening descriptions also enter into the speaker's sexual experiences, demonstrating that she still considers love and unity as threats since they obscure her individuality, while this concealment is simultaneously regarded as a protection offered by her lover. The metaphor of light is drawn into the intimate realm of the lovers' relationship to compare what is first perceived as menacing in nature to her lover's

"kisses" (20). This danger is connected to the opposing notion of relief. The word

"cover" (22) emphasizes her desire for consolation from her lover, wanting protection or warmth from the cold. Also, "cover" suggests obscurity or fafade, as unity conceals her identity. Again, the speaker is divided in seeing unity as masking her true self, but she still submits her individuality for a connection with another.

In the third section, the speaker articulates that attaining union and submitting her individuality make her identity liminal with no clear bordered sense of self, but also that this loss of self propels the development of her autonomous identity. Varma argues that in

"The Touching," the persona searches for a complete identity and "Through sexual union completeness is achieved" (26). However, in the final section the speaker emphasizes the irony of love, by revealing that sexual union paradoxically makes her incomplete. The phrase "each time," repeated four times (23,28,33,40), connects their union to sexual experiences, and emphasizes that both her renewal and her diminishment are a result of sexual union. She first attributes their union to an enlargement and re-birth of her self:

"I'm born again" (26). This renewal ironically leads her to view herself as incomplete rather than whole; she is re-born "deaf dumb" (27), lacking senses, displaying that she is missing something inherent to herself. In trying to gain a sense of wholeness through her lover, her individual self is contradictorily diminished. Mclnnis notes the diminishing of 57 identity that takes place in Livesay's love poetry: "her autonomy is eroded by the male lover's invasion of her body. Whether the surface tone of an erotic poem is celebratory or not, each poem presents a breaking down of the female self' (76). As a result of eroticism and being diminished, the speaker "whirls" (29), suggesting that she remains confused and in a liminal state.

Liminality encourages the speaker to recognize her loss of autonomy, and to try to regain her individuality. Even in her confusion she realizes that she is a "part of some mystery" (30), or of something larger, united with all forms of life. She does not come to this realization on her own, as she "did not make or earn" (31) it, but comes to this awareness through her liminal experience in love that aids in developing her understanding of self. The "mystery" she is a part of "seizes me" (32), putting the emphasis on the importance of "me," or her self. The emphasis on the speaker's self is contrasted with her lover's identity - "your identity" (35) - emphasizing the two as separate beings rather than unified. The speaker's dependence on "your identity" is threatening to her own since it encompasses her self, causing her to "drown" (34), emphasizing the annihilation of her self during the liminal period of non-autonomy.

The speaker's lack of self in liminality is further emphasized by her declaration,

"I am not I" (36). Since liminality regenerates the identity, the speaker's recognition of her lacking individuality encourages her to re-establish herself as an autonomous individual. She begins with affinities between her self and nature that reflect the process of changes made to her identity; she is not yet her autonomous self, but she articulates an expansion to her individual identity that connects her to nature: "I am not I / but root / shell / fire" (36-39). As Stevens interprets, these lines suggest "She is swallowed within 58 her lover but although she loses her own individuality, she feels herself within a larger, more basic and elemental self' ("Dorothy Livesay" 38).VI The diminishment of her identity through unity triggers the development of a new self that incorporates her surroundings, rather than incorporating, and thus dissolving, her identity into her lover's.

Her new awareness of self does not include her lover, signaling that she begins to develop a sense of autonomy and to see her self as an individual, separate from her lover. Her identity is not yet stable as it alters from the natural stationary object of "root" (37) to the image of fragility that "shell" (38) suggests to the final image of "fire" (39). As Turner finds, in liminality "very often symbols expressive of ambiguous identity are found"

(295), which emphasizes that without an established sense of individuality she remains in a liminal state. The visual staggering of these lines further implies that her identity is rapidly altering, as she begins to transcend liminality in this process of changes that leads to her transformation.

The speaker employs metaphors of life and death to express her transcendence of liminality; she experiences a re-birth of self in union with her lover, but ultimately she must be alone, separated from her lover, for her independence to be re-born. In union, she is re-born: "I tear through the womb's room / give birth" (41-42). There is still a connotation of danger, as the birthing of her new self is a "tearing." Ironically, love is both renewing and destructive. The speaker's dissatisfaction with the self created in union with her lover is clear since the image of her re-birth is followed by "and yet" (43), suggesting her dependant identity in union is not adequate. Developing her individuality is once again represented as a birthing. Turner finds that completing the rites of passage in the liminal experience involve "symbolic representations of death and rebirth" to 59 illustrate the importance of "regenerative renewal" (Blazing 159) required to transcend the liminal experience. Her birthing in unity is not only disrupted by "and yet" but the line is completed by the word "alone" (43), displaying her need for independence, and also that she can only transcend liminality when separated from her lover. The importance of her individuality and singular self is further signaled by her use of "I"

(41,46) as well as the isolation of the word "one" (46), as even after her birthing in unity she finds herself alone, struggling to regain her independence.

In order to re-create an individual self the new life the speaker creates with her lover must ultimately be destroyed. Whitney's examination of death imagery in Livesay's love poetry establishes a connection between death and life: "Perhaps the most interesting characteristic of Livesay's work is the imagery of death, which finds its way into poems most expressly concerned with life" (100). The natural image of herself "deep in the dark

/ earth" (44-45) she finds herself alone in emphasizes her own burial as she experiences the deathv" of her previous identity in order for her autonomous identity to be re-created, or "re-born."vl" The development of the speaker's identity displays that the liminal "holds a promise of growth, change, and possibilities that can come into actuality through the ritual processes of transformation" (O'Gorman 103). The speaker struggles, or

"wrestl[es]" (46), during the destruction of union and re-creation of her self, displaying that she has been divided by struggling throughout the poem with whether to submit her identity into her lover's or assert her autonomy. In the liminal state the speaker's knowledge that love ironically both enlarges and reduces her identity intensifies her duality. It is not until love ends that the speaker is able to enhance and renew her

understanding of her self, thereby transcending the liminal experience. The final line of 60 the poem clarifies that she is "wrestling / the element re-born" (46-47), so that despite struggling with duality, she is ultimately re-born as autonomous. The speaker's loss and renewal of identity is significant in entering and transcending liminality since:

the self, as the integrative energy of a human entity, experiences liminality as the

successive disintegration of one state of the person, the emergence of the stateless

individual, and the reintegration of the person in a new state. The person, the self

shaped by social tradition, has his / her mysteries, too, wherein the self is unmade

in order to be remade, dismembered in order to be remembered. (Turner, Edge

151)

In being diminished by love, and then transcending her experience with her lover, the speaker comes to a better understanding of her individual identity. The creation of this identity relies on the transience of love and unity to create fulfillment of self, so that love and unity are necessary for the re-creation of a new identity, symbolizing a new life, where it is autonomy rather than love that brings about the relief the speaker desires.1"

The speaker's desire to create a shared identity through sexual union is repeated in

"The Notations of Love," resulting in the speaker's liminal identity, where love's ironic abilities create a duality in the speaker. Natural metaphors in the first section of the poem establish that love reduces the speaker's identity, while also demonstrating that through this diminishment, love is ironically also expansive. The description that opens

"Notations" presents her lover's actions as destructive to the speaker in the metaphor of him stripping her of her flesh so that she is "bared...to the light" (2), suggesting vulnerability in love. While the image of the speaker being stripped "to the bone" (4) is certainly a threatening one, it is also connected to being "undressed" (4), drawing 61 attention to sexual union as destructive. Pamela Banting's reading of the poem agrees that love is a diminishing force: "For Livesay, being in love with a man can mean finding oneself stripped beyond nakedness" (15). Further, the speaker being stripped of her physical self implies that she is experiencing the loss of her personal identity. The speaker declares that because of her lover's actions, she is made incomplete - "You left me nothing" (1) - emphasizing that her identity is stripped of all meaning in unity.

The speaker's loss of individuality displays her identity as liminal. Turner emphasizes that as subjects undergoing a change of being "move into liminality, they experience a change...symbolized in various cultures by the loss of their names, removal of clothing...They are reduced, so to speak, to a generic prima material which is to be reconstituted and repersonalized" (Edge 137). As Turner illuminates, liminality reduces identity, and this diminishment allows for re-creation of identity. The second stanza reveals that the speaker's identity is both reduced and re-made in love. The speaker continues to articulate that her erotic relationship with her lover threatens the submission of her physical body and identity, although she simultaneously experiences a renewal of identity, incorporating nature into her dissolution as well as her enhancement. The speaker repeats that she has been left with nothing, but the word "yet" displays that being reduced to nothing triggers her transformation: "you left me nothing, yet" (5). In her reduction she perceives herself as being "melted down" (6), implying that her identity is undergoing a process of transformation where her identity must first be diminished in order to be enhanced. Her altering self connects her to nature since she melts "into the earthy green" (7). The speaker's transformation is connected to danger in the image of melting down, and is further connected to eroticism; the "earthy green / grass" (7-8) that 62 the speaker dissolves into begins to grow between the speaker's "thighs" (8) which is emphasized by the internal rhyme between "green" and "between" (7,8) that suspends the image of "thighs," creating a link between eroticism and its ability to alter and reduce her identity. Since eroticism causes unity with her lover, erotic language in natural metaphors illuminate her unity with nature, demonstrating her "desire to connect with nature through the creative energy of sexuality" (Cook 110). Her lover reduces her identity, and this reduction leads to her incorporation into natural elements, suggesting that love both diminishes her identity, and also creates a new understanding self.

Love causes the decomposition of her body and identity, occasioning liminality, but "yet" (5) she unites with nature, suggesting transcendence through love. Livesay's speaker is re-created and united with nature, displaying her renewal of identity, while simultaneously suggesting the death of her old identity, as "the woman's body can be seen as a corpse decaying into the earth, a flower shooting from between its skeletal teeth" (Banting 15). The speaker describes her self repeatedly as being reduced to nothing. However, her merging with nature is expansive as she does not only become a part of the grass, but is able to produce a "flower" (9) as well. The passage presents the speaker's reduction as a transformative act, since she is able to thrive and grow "green grass" and "flower." As Stevens writes, these opening stanzas portray "The idea of loss of self, of complete submission in order to reach to the elemental life in which a new self is released" ("Dorothy Livesay" 39), so that submitting her identity in love ultimately heightens her sense of self. The speaker's flower develops out of "unclenched teeth" (10), implying that she is comforted by her renewal, which is coupled with her realization that her lover has left her with something else: "you left me with nothing, but" (11). She is left 63 with only "a tongue to say it with" (12), having preserved the power of communication. The first section of the poem creates an ironic viewpoint of love, since her lover is able to diminish her identity, but this diminishment encourages an enlarged sense of self.

The first two sections of "Notations" demonstrate that love heightens the speaker's sense of self and therefore in the second section of the poem the speaker displays willingness to submit her self and identity to gain love and unity, despite

recognizing that love also restricts her identity. The image of the flower in the speaker's

mouth in the first section connects to the second section, which begins with the line "in

my mouth" (13). This line creates the expectation of something in her mouth, but the next

line reveals a notion of emptiness and destitution: "no love?" (14). However, the question

mark displays that she is wary of this idea, which is expanded on in the next line - "only cruelty you say" (15) - displaying that it is her lover who finds her devoid or lacking. The speaker's "reply" (17) to this is "take love take love" (16), revealing love as something

which must be abruptly taken rather than given, which further displays her desperate

willingness to submit her self in love. Since love is to be taken "the hard way" (18), an element of force or aggression still remains connected to love.

The final stanza in the second section is a description of the speaker's external

surroundings, a characterization that mimics the aggression of the previous stanza. The

words "twisted and sparse" (19) suggest distortion and destitution, since in liminality the

speaker's identity is obscured and diminished. The stanza ends with the speaker "facing

the rock / the fountain's force" (20-21), which, along with the alliteration of "f' in this 64 stanza and the rhyme between "sparse" and "force," emphasizes aggression. Even though she sees love as renewing her identity, submission and aggression are a part of love.

The third section of "Notations" also establishes a connection between identity and environment, especially in regard to the speaker's identity and liminality. She describes her self as having "Crow's feet" (22) around her eyes, suggesting a preoccupation with aging, which is expanded on in her portrayal of "a skeleton of leaves"

(25) on her forehead. Her natural metaphors do not only point to aging, but "skeleton" further indicates death, signaling her liminal identity. This image of death is contrasted by vitality and youth, when the speaker reveals that she has retained one trait of vitality:

"Only the lips stay fresh / only the tongue" (26-27). Further, her mouth has a function as it "unsheathes its secret skin" (28). This recalls the first stanza, where the speaker's physical stripping of skin is a metaphor for losing identity. Here, the unsheathing of her skin contrasts her initial diminishment since the skin revealed underneath is a "secret," suggesting she has the ability to retain her secret, or true, self. Her true self is connected to life and vitality, opposing the initial images of death, implying that individuality will bring an end to liminality. Additionally, the tongue is also connected to nature since it

"bolts / the lightning in" (29-30) where "bolt" insists on the act of retaining or securing, implying her need to retain her identity. Further, bolting the "lightning" is significant, since lightning is difficult to contain, much as her identity is in love. The passage demonstrates the speaker's duality since, although she displays her desire for unity in the previous sections, she also demonstrates a need to retain her individuality. 65 The first three sections of the poem establish love's ironic ability to diminish the speaker's identity, but also to heighten her sense of self, creating a duality in the speaker's need for both unity and independence. The fourth section of the poem demonstrates the changes to the speaker's identity in unity and reliance on her lover's identity to inform her own. The image of "Siamese twins" (32) emphasizes the unity between the two lovers in the poems, as two beings exist in one body, which emphasizes the notion of the fusion of selves and identities, especially since "The Siamese twins in section iv evoke the omnipresent Platonic description of love and lovers" (Banting 16).x

In connecting to her lover's identity, the speaker's sense of self is enlarged. The passage displays the speaker's thinking that unity is natural only to a certain few, "in Siam" (34), but finds that unity occurs in more than the physical sense of Siamese twins, but also between lovers. As Denham writes about Livesay's poetry, "Love may be a struggle for mastery, a threat to the individual, but it may also be a condition making freedom possible" (Dorothy Livesay 9). In the poem's opening sections love dissolves her identity, but love is also paradoxically celebrated for the unity that it can create.

Although the passage celebrates unity, the final line draws attention to the speaker as an individual, seen in the words "I am" (38), especially in the rhyme it creates with

"Siam." "I am," along with the retention of the personal pronoun, "I," in lines 31 and 36, in addition to the long "I" emphasized in "Siamese" and "Siam," is significant in showing that even though she desires unity with her lover, she continues to struggle to maintain her personal identity, displaying her duality, and suggesting that her identity is still liminal. Unity will remain an important part of her autonomous self, suggested in the word "trace" (36). The memory of unity will stay with the speaker, as "traces" connects 66 to the title of the poem to stress that the "notations" or marks of iove are connected to what she learns about identity. Sharma's study of Livesay's love poetry finds that love enables the speaker to "discover love's transforming power but to learn how to accept the transience of love and pleasure, enjoy it while it lasts and let the memory of its beauty sustain one later" (55). Therefore, love may be impermanent, leaving only "traces," but the changes to her understanding of identity that she gains through love are permanent.

The second stanza of the fourth section further elaborates on the opening section's ironical depiction of love. Union is formed between the lovers when the speaker begins to incorporate her lover's identity into her own, using the possessive pronoun "our" (41) to display this completion. In this passage, "the substructure of their love can seem to join them at almost a physical level" (Stevens, "Dorothy Livesay" 39); the speaker expresses spiritual unity due to the twinning of their "minds" (41), and physical unity of the lovers being "bound" (44), recalling the natural image of a bird "in flight" (44), as their two bodies fuse to create one. The speaker stresses the importance of unity - "my left arm is your right arm" (43) - so that when she describes their shared identity, "what is left is female and male uniting to form a whole" (Whitney 107). This unity is paradoxically fillfilled in recognizing "these absences" (40), suggesting that an important component of identity is still missing, as union is achieved only when the speaker's individual self is

"absent," displaying that her condition in liminality and non-autonomy is caused because she submits to gain unity. The enjambment that occurs between lines 43-44 isolates the image of their physical union from the idea of being "bound," so that "bound" implies not only their bodies being bound to each other, but also paradoxically suggests images of capture, inescapability, and unwillingness in being "bound" to his identity, displaying tension in the poem despite having found unity.

In the fifth section of "Notations" the speaker expands on expressing love's ironical ability to enlarge and diminish her identity, while displaying that love is the vehicle through which she is able to become independent. Her experiences with love enable her to determine a sense of individual self when union and reliance end. First, the speaker experiences completeness through physical union with her lover; she is incomplete, or "disparate" (45), but the erotic act offers resolution to her separateness by her lover "lying down between" (48) her "stretched" (45) legs. Mclnnis' focuses on desire in Livesay's work suggests that "A note of desperation creeps into the poems as the persona suggests that only the male lover, through his sexual attention, can return her lost bodily autonomy" (69), as it is through eroticism that she senses wholeness of identity. Additionally, in their exploration of the self and identity, Leary and Tangney remark that "in a close relationship, the other is included in the self. The idea here is that in close relationships, cognitive representations of self and other overlap" as "we incorporate into ourselves the others' social and material resources, the others' perspectives, and the others' identities" (444).

The speaker experiences united love, but her legs being pulled "two ways" (45) increases the implication that she has been divided by desiring unity but also wanting independence. Her independence, which is denied in unity, is what ultimately fulfills her when love and unity end. Physical union with her lover is fleeting, pointing to the impermanence of unity and love. It is only when the lovers "separate" (49) that she is able to retain completeness within her self, emphasized by the image of her legs closing 68 and feet uniting (50-51) so that she forms her own whole. Furthermore, the fusing of her legs, once extended in two directions, displays her ability to reconcile her own division, and re-create her self without reliance on lover. Her feet "unite" (51) suggesting a unity with her self now, more so emphasized since "they form a pedestal" (52), signaling her ability to support her self, as well as self-elevation. Describing herself as

"serene- / no longer desperate" (54-55) presents the notion that attaining a sense of her individual identity is necessary to feeling fulfilled. Further, the rhyme between

"disparate," "separate," and "desperate" displays her development from a divided and liminal identity, to her separation from her lover that successfully secures and satisfies her. Through experiencing love and unity, she is better able to understand her own individual identity and to apply wholeness to her self when love ends.

In the final section of the poem, the emphasis lies on how the lovers' identities have been transformed by their interactions, revealing that her lover was elevated in her diminishment. The stanza begins with the italicized words spoken by her lover, emphasizing that love has been an enlarging experience for him. As Mclnnis finds, in the final section of the poem the speaker has recognized

that her loss of autonomy was directly linked to his answered needs. "/ was naked

/ and you clothed / me," he tells her as his only words of praise. Love, ironically,

has provided him with protection from his own naked vulnerability. In contrast,

sexual intimacy has not only undressed the persona; it has practically

deconstructed her. In his self-involvement, he doesn't notice. He emphasizes

solely what she has provided for him, and he is able to ignore her anxieties. (70) 69 The lover focuses only on what the speaker has provided for him, emphasized by the isolation of the line "we" (58) in his words. Further, her lover takes on the words of

Christ (Matthew 25:36). The comparison sets up the lovers' relationship as one in which the speaker's lover is most powerful and recalls the marriage of Christ to the church, illuminating the significance of connection and unity. Since love has not been symbiotic, or equally supplied the partners with a sense of fulfillment, the speaker now describes the effects her lover has on her autonomous self. He praises the speaker at night: "he utters these words "in the dead / of night," when the woman's individuality is concealed by darkness" (Banting 16). In "bright light" (66) he is incapable of any "other word / of praise" (63-64), demonstrating that her individuality is not acknowledged and it is through her diminishment that she supplies him with wholeness.

The speaker experiences loss so that her lover gains his desires, but she too gains through her experiences in love. The line ending in "I" (68) disrupts the rhyme between

"light" and "night" (66,68) emphasizing the significance of the changes that occurred in the speaker, especially as her lack of concern over whether it is "day or night" (68) suggests complete acceptance of her autonomous self and that her identity is no longer obscure. The images of "bright light" and being "undressed" (69) recall the initial image of the speaker's undressing and loss of autonomous self. Her lost autonomy at the poem's opening is brought into focus at the poem's close, as she is able to resolve her struggle with identity. Denham notes that the lover in ""The Touching" and "The Notations of

Love" enables the "I" to be in touch with her innermost self' ("Lyric" 103). Love becomes the vehicle that propels the speaker into liminality, transforming her identity, so that when love ends she is able to transcend into autonomy. The final lines "dance / 70 differently" (70-71) notably stand out in the alliteration and slowing down of the final four lines to display that her identity has been altered, but in a celebratory way as "she dances the dance of her difference" (Banting 16), triumphant in her individuality.

"Auguries" of Plainsongs resembles "The Touching" and "The Notations of

Love" in the role natural metaphors have in presenting the speaker's desire for unity and her contrasting desire to achieve this unity while also maintaining her independent self, creating a duality in the speaker, because love is ironically both restrictive and expansive.

Varma writes that in the love poems of Plainsongs Livesay "talks of love, love-making, and the role of the lover" (28). In "Auguries" the speaker displays apprehension due to her changing identity that is attributed to marrying, and uniting with, her lover. The speaker articulates apprehension in the opening lines where she perceives tension as she depicts herself being propelled or shoved: "Night shunts me on the rails of dark" (1).

Susan Broadhurst's discussion of liminality explains that "A certain sense of excitement is generated by the liminal: for instance, in many of the works, feelings close to disquiet and discomfort are experienced" (1). The speaker's apprehension stems from the natural world in her fear that the "night" or the "dark" (1) obscures her identity and therefore will alter her, expanding on the idea of movement that the metaphor of the train car suggests.

The speaker's fear reflects her apprehension of marrying her lover, since union makes her identity liminal. The movement leads her to "persistent / wayside stations" (2-3). This implies that the changes that threaten the speaker are unrelenting and repetitive, while

"wayside" signifies the neglect of her individual identity. The reference here to a way station draws attention to an intermediate stopping place, between two principal stations on a railroad, reflecting her position in liminality in the poem. Additionally, the way 71 station is also suggestive of a place to stop and rest on a long journey, again implying liminality as a necessary condition between two poles. The word "persistent" further reveals that she remains in the same state for an indefinite period.

Marriage itself is a liminal act that will unite the two lovers, which further evinces the liminality of her identity, as she perceives marriage will diminish her identity by making it more fragile, and easily over-powered by her lover's, leading to duality of self.

Turner explicates that liminal experiences "cluster particularly around birth, marriage, and death" (Edge 132), and Livesay's speaker comes to inhabit the liminal phase due to marriage, where she articulates unity as a type of death of one identity, although it can also be a re-birth of a new identity. Her need for self-preservation leads to apprehension of her own transformation. The speaker imagines the possibility of marriage, where the isolation of the words "I turn" (5) as well as the repetition of this phrase in the seventh line, suggest that marriage, as a liminal act, has the ability to "turn" or change the speaker's being. She imagines growing "younger" (8), which suggests that her transformation makes her more vulnerable or naive. The speaker also perceives her own delicacy in the natural imagery that reflects her alterations; the speaker turning into a

"robin's egg" (6) demonstrates that she is made more fragile through these changes. The speaker further imagines her identity as something as fragile and elemental as a "shell"

(10).*' Isolating the image of the speaker as a shell in her lover's "hand" (10) from the idea in the next line that the purpose of the shell is "to be broken" (11) emphasizes her fear that the lover has the ability to over-power her individuality and break her fragile identity. The speaker's apprehension about her altering identity is seen as a threat, as it is perceived as a purposefully destructive act caused by unity with her lover.*" 72 The speaker initially fears the threat of the loss of her self through union or

marriage, since "The release from individuality through complete union seems to be too

open a position, may bring about such a thorough nakedness of soul as to threaten the

very basis of the personality" (Stevens, "Dorothy Livesay" 30), but she perceives an even

greater, though opposing, threat when she is confronted with the possibility of love and

the union ending. The return to imagery of "night" (12) and darkness accentuates the speaker's apprehension of change, as the line draws attention once again to the idea that night "shifts" (12) her, since ending unity and dependence on her lover will alter her identity once more. Thus, her fear is of being "alone" (17) and being denied unity rather than independence, displaying the speaker's duality in initially wanting to retain her individuality in union, and then desiring unity. The isolation of the line "you have said no" (19) displays that the speaker's lover is denying her, and the tone of fear in the passage emphasizes that what she is being denied is something vital to herself. The speaker's identity is once again engaged in liminality, as her attempts to preserve her individuality are overthrown in her desire for a shared identity with her lover.

The speaker continues to question identity, and ironically realizes the potential fulfillment of a shared identity in the final stanzas of the poem that demonstrate the duality of her desires in wanting a kind of unity with her lover that will also allow her the freedom to be her autonomous self. In losing unity with her lover, the speaker reevaluates her apprehensions that love alters her identity so that she longs for a shared identity with her lover she can celebrate rather than fear. The stanza opens with the same image of rails and movement that opens the poem. However, the image of "sunrise" (23) opposes that of the dark, displaying that by imagining the prospect of a union that will not change her, 73 but allow her the freedom to be her self, her anxieties will be relieved. This is further

emphasized by imagining a "green place" (20) and "morning station" (22), where both

images oppose the dark. Additionally, this station opposes the liminality expressed in the

way station in the opening stanza, displaying her desire for a love that allows for a

bordered sense of self. As well, rather than being "shunted" or "shifted" she imagines that

the rails are "leaping" (22), implying willingness and joy rather than forced movement.

The speaker is asking for this image to exist, not only displaying her desire for

individuality in love, but also expressing the impossibility of this notion, especially in her

inability to locate such a place, "further ahead" (21). She has not found this place, or this

type of relationship, but is looking for some sign that the future will fulfill her

contradicting desires, which is suggested by the title, "Auguries." The contradictions in

love are further demonstrated by the term "blazing" (24) which suggests her desire for

passion that is cut short by the word "yet" (24) as the speaker "mourns" (24),X1" or

grieves, over "the turns" (25) or changes that love brings to identity. The terms "blazing"

and "mourning" further represent the speaker's duality as there is both passion in unity

and grief for the loss of individuality through the transformations love causes. The

speaker's duality is illuminated by Cote and Levine's explanation that in identity

revisions there is a longing for both individuality and connectedness: "a process of self-

discovery and growth is undertaken following a path marked by attempts to maintain

'connections' while developing 'competence'" (81). Duality is demonstrated in the speaker's memory of their erotic experience. She creates the paradox between rise and fall; the speaker demonstrates that her "limbs rose" (26), suggesting that love elevates her, but the emphasis lies on "fell" (27) in its isolation in the next line, as eroticism 74 ironically leads to her diminishment. The speaker further remembers their unity in terms of natural language; she identifies her body as "islands" (29) and his as "the sky"

(30) so that he is able to surround her - "cupping my body" (31) - suggesting that in unity, her lover contains her identity so that her sense of self integrates his identity. In her description of this events she recalls her self as being "under your loving" (27), still ironically demonstrating love as causing her to submit her identity. Also, since he is represented as "the sky" (31), he takes on a ubiquitous nature, whereas the speaker is related to "islands" that peek out of "water" (30), making her identity seem less powerful and significant.

Her lover's identity may cause expansion for the speaker's sense of self, but the notion that the fusion of identities causes growth is contradicted by her representation of love as a struggle for power and submission, leading to an ironized view of love, or as

Hutcheon explains, "irony appears to be used by those who are concerned about the incongruities and discrepancies of power structures" (Splitting Images 30). Her desire remains for both independence and unity, so that rather than fearing that she is fragile and easily broken by her lover, she now longs for union with him that will support her identity, as she awaits his "return" (34), where again she will not be "shunted" or

"shifted" into movement or an altered identity, but asks for and longs for love's, and her lover's, ability to "lift" (35) her into a new identity, desiring an enlarging type of love.

"Auguries" establishes the duality of the speaker's contradictory desires, and that neither can be satisfied; although she wants unity, she fears the loss of individuality, and although she longs for individuality, she fears the loss of unity. Therefore, since she cannot reconcile her duality, her contradictory desires inhibit her from transcending 75 liminality. Ultimately, love ends and the speaker remains with an impossible notion of

love, hoping her lover will "return again" (34), but that she will be allowed autonomy

even in unity. However, her questioning of the existence of such a love displays her own

awareness that her opposing desires cannot be simultaneously attained, especially as her

final plea implies that only her male lover can "lift" or restore her identity, which would

ultimately lead her again on the quest for self-sufficiency. The shifting of the speaker's

desires display the irony in her view of love: "All irony can do is instill an oscillation, a

moment of resonance when paradoxes are registered and competing factors are assessed"

since irony is "best understood as a spatial movement, one which permits a simultaneity

of vision from several perspectives" (Tittler 41-42,42). Because the speaker has

ironically experienced both enlargement and diminishment in love, her divided

perspective obstructs her ability to choose either unity or autonomy, so that she insists on

both, which negates her transcendence. Because both cannot exist simultaneously, her

contradictions culminate to suggest that the speaker cannot any longer choose either

autonomy or unity, since neither outcomes can satisfy her.

In this chapter, I show how "The Touching" and "The Notations of Love" display

the speaker's desire for love and unity, although she is ultimately satisfied by preserving

her autonomy when love ends because her experience in love necessitates a clearer sense

of her self. In "Auguries," however, her desires fluctuate more readily as neither unity nor

independence fulfill her since they can only be attained separately, so that in fulfilling

one need she laments the absence of another. That is, the speaker's desire for an

unattainable kind of love that simultaneously allows for both unity and independence becomes more pronounced in these poems. The final chapter of the thesis looks at 76 Livesay's love poems in which the speaker's desire for unity and love outweighs her desire for autonomy to such a heightened degree that she negates her own tranformation and transcendence of liminality, and remains in a liminal state in hopes that love will return and fulfill her sense of self. The liminal space is "an ambiguous site of danger and promise, and wherever the promise is rated higher than the danger or threat, an idealization of the limen may easily occur" (Soto 9). In poems in the final chapter, I argue that the speaker's loss of autonomy is less dangerous to her self than the loss of unity, so that she remains in a liminal position of uncertainty, dependent on love to fulfill her sense of self.

"Beverley Mitchell claims that the use of nature in Livesay's work is "more than a convenient metaphor... [since] it is seldom used for simply descriptive purposes. Almost invariably the poet recognizes - or intuits - that she has some elemental and mysterious kinship with it" (517). Natural imagery in Livesay's love poetry does more than describe the surrounding scenery of the poem, as the struggles that affect the speaker are reflected in the language that describes nature, as well, nature is significant in displaying the speaker's development of self, as she incorporates her natural surroundings in the re-creation of her identity.

"Mitchell explains that Livesay's love poems are "poems of self-discovery.... Somewhat paradoxically, this recognition of the self as "separate" is accompanied by a recognition of the self as part of a mysterious unity, and the psychological tension... is established here in the conflicting desires of preserving one's "separateness" and at the same time achieving "unity" - a conflict the poet is unable to resolve satisfactorily. Awareness of separateness and unity first comes to the poet through the world of nature" (511).

For Livesay's speaker, experiences in love create paradox and duality in relation to her identity. Varma recognizes, in Livesay's mature poetry, "the paradox with which she is forever faced: whether to assert her individuality or accept a subordinate role and find fulfillment therein" (22).

IVJ.B Broadbent investigates the transformation of love poetry from its 12th Century origins in courtly love, noting the variations in content and style. Although love poetry has been modified in accordance with literary trends, and societal influences, Broadbent succeeds in linking the disparate forms of love poetry by highlighting the reoccurring tendencies in the texts. He notes the affinity in love poetry, where despite changes in the genre and the intents of separate authors, "always the ambition is unity" (14) as "Total union is an ideal we all aspire to" (86). vSharma emphasizes the renewal the speaker experiences to her identity through eroticism: "The woman seeks refiige in love. Her beloved has the power to transform "the coldest hour" into ecstasy. The lover, in this poem, is already "whole" but through the act of love, she becomes more fully alive, for love gives her a "second heart / beating"" (49-50). As the speaker is reliant on her lover for protection in love, she is further reliant on him to apply wholeness to her identity; however, her dependency displays that even in experiencing a renewal of identity, she has not attained individuality. 77

™ Sharma's interpretation of the passage notes the importance of changing perspectives in Livesay's work and further displays that "she experiences a mystical awareness and hence is born into the realization of the underlying unity of all existence. She becomes aware of herself as part of it..."born again" into the greater understanding of her own unity with all forms of organic life" (50-51). vllGeorge Bataille's study of erotic and violent taboos that lead to the formation of unity finds that death plays an important role as "it is clear that there is most violence in the abrupt wrench out of discontinuity. The most violent thing of all for us is death which jerks us out of a tenacious obsession with the lastingness of our discontinuous being. We blench at the thought that the separate individuality within us must suddenly be snuffed out" (16). The image of death that Livesay employs to describe the creation of an autonomous self displays her apprehension that in unity she may be stifled as an individual, as well as showing the importance of autonomy in assuring the individual's permanence. vm Anderson's study on writing by women in search of their true identities illuminates the importance of symbolic birthing in liminal experiences, as the liminal process "places her continually at a threshold, makes her herself a threshold. The process of becoming a subject, achieving autonomy in this view carries within itself as well a process of return to maternal origins....But recognizing within herself the process of return, her own interiority, she can constitute herself differently within the symbolic" (58).

Tietjens Meyers notes the importance of identity formation in connection to relief: "Sometimes self- definition reconciles seemingly opposed desired, personal traits, values, interests or goals. Such resolutions may bring welcome feelings of relief and repose" (40). x A.J. Smith's study on courtly love conventions finds that poets' depictions of lovers represent that "lovers in a perfect love are joined so completely that they lose their own semblance and become a strange third species" (198).

"The image of the shell in "Auguries" connects to the image of the shell in "The Touching," where the speaker similarly identifies her personal identity with this natural image of fragility. For Livesay's speaker, changes to her autonomous self are perceived as a threat, as she describes herself as becoming more fragile, and thus breakable, through changes made to her identity, once again pointing to the danger the speaker perceives is related to the altering of her individual self. x" Relke examines Canadian women poets and the use of identity in their work, expressing that "For a woman in patriarchal culture, marriage means giving up one's own identity or, in terms of Livesay's poetic, rejecting nature" (257). The speaker's identity is perceived in natural terms of fragility that display that in the union of marriage, her identity is crushed so that the power is given to her husband. xlllThe use of the word "mourn" (24) recalls the images of death Livesay's speaker employs in describing the construction of her personal self in "The Touching." Once again, identity relies on the notion of death; however, in "Auguries," the speaker describes the loss of a shared identity with her lover like a death. For Bataille, the loss of a lover ultimately leads to affinities with death, as "TTie violence of love leads to tenderness, the lasting form of love, but it brings into the striving of one heart towards another the same quality of disorder, the same thirst for losing consciousness and the same after-taste of death that is found in the mutual desire for each other's body. In essence, love raises the feeling of one being for another to such a pitch that the threatened loss of the beloved or the loss of his love is felt no less keenly than the threat of death. Hence love is based on a desire to live in anguish in the presence of an object of such high worth that the heart cannot bear to contemplate losing it" (241-242). 78 Chapter Three.

The final chapter continues to explore Dorothy Livesay's love poetry in which the speaker's identity is conflicted: she is divided by her desire to achieve autonomy while maintaining unity in love. In this chapter I continue to explore the emerging sense of perpetual disappointment due to her identity conflict seen in the second chapter; ultimately, the speaker suffers denial in both autonomy and in unity with her lover, since her needs cannot be met whether she is autonomous or dependent. Since her need for freedom opposes her need for unity in love, her duality cannot be resolved. In this chapter, "Four Songs," and "And Give Us Our Trespasses" from The Unquiet Bed as well as "The Cave," and "Birdwatching" from Plainsongs display that the speaker denies her self her own desires in order to gain unity, symbiosis and a permanent love that, once attained, reveals the inadequacies of love and unity. In the poems previously analyzed, the speaker's acceptance of the end of love leads to a greater understanding of the speaker's own individuality. However, in the poems focused on in this chapter I argue that the speaker enters the liminal space as a result of the denial of her autonomous needs and her refusal to supply her self with these needs by exhibiting her autonomy and accepting the end of love. Rather, she is confined by her opposing desires, remaining in a liminal state by refusing to surrender her desires, although her inability to attain these desires in love points to love as inadequate to fulfill her.

Livesay reveals love's inadequacies in her love poetry that centres on her desire for communication in love that conversely results in silence and deprivation of self.

Varma recognizes Livesay's "desire for communication that is central to all her love poetry. Her earliest love poems show an awareness that lack of communication gives rise 79 to the problem the female has to assert her identity" (19). The speaker does not receive verbal communication in love, causing her autonomy to erode, so that in order to receive her autonomous desire for communication, she must find solace in words outside of love, accepting the end of union.1

However, in the poems I analyze in this chapter the speaker is most often unwilling to accept the end of love, therefore denying herself her autonomy. The speaker's desire for verbal communication is not met by her lover, so she enters a liminal space because her individual desires are ignored and in this period she receives other forms of non-verbal communication, including eroticism, which eventually prove insufficient in fulfilling her. Turner notes "that in human systems of communication" during the liminal period, the subject often receives "communication [that] is not direct but which is about the forms of communication used in the day-to-day processes of ensuring survival" (Blazing 163). The boundaries of liminality are remarkable for change as a place "where something ends, but also where something new may begin," although transcending the borders of liminality can be problematic since "Crossing them incurs some kind of cost. As such boundaries belong neither to the one zone nor to the other, but lie in-between, as zones of ambiguity and undecidability" (Viljoen and van der Merwe

10). This "cost" negates the speaker's transcendence, since in entering liminality she loses her sense of individual self but gains love, and in transcending she will gain back her autonomy, but love will end.

She remains in this liminal condition by believing that love will be symbiotic and her lover will fulfill her sense of self. Turner defines this type of liminality as "permanent liminality," describing it as paradoxical in nature since "what is essentially a phase or 80 process of becoming or transformation is fixed into a status role" (Edge 146). The

speaker's desire to maintain love in the poems in this chapter is so strong that she remains

in a liminal position, denying her self her autonomy; the speaker is portrayed in a

continuous liminal period, as her need for symbiosis and permanence of love continually

diminish her needs, where she would rather submit to love in an attempt to create

wholeness, than to find fulfillment in autonomy. In this period, she longs for fulfillment

of self in having her needs met, but ensures that they are not met by submitting to her

lover and choosing to fulfill his desires instead.

I argue that in the poems in this chapter the speaker exhibits permanent liminality,

in which she accepts neither autonomy nor union, since neither can fulfill her

autonomous desire for communication in love, so that she remains in liminality due to her

irresolvable conflict for an impossible kind of love: "Whether torn between two systems

or sedately straddling them, liminal zones are seen from this perspective as sites whose

inhabitants are prey to the impossible desire of resolving their dualities" (Philip C. Sutton

5). Her inability to resolve this conflict is what Hutcheon describes as "the fence-sitting

provisionality of irony" where the subject "when confronted with the choice of two things

that are mutually exclusive, chooses both. Which is but another way of saying that he chooses neither. He cannot bring himself to give up one for the other, and he gives up

both" {Irony's Edge 51). Therefore, both union and autonomy are restrictive to the speaker as neither can supply her with a sense of wholeness, so that she experiences a perpetually self-imposed liminality, where she cannot transcend her liminality due to her impossible desires for love. In the final chapter, elements of liminality, irony and a conflicted identity illuminate both the collapse of love as well as the speaker's autonomy. 81 "Four Songs" from The Unquiet Bed employs communication to present the

speaker's individual longing for language in love. The notion that verbal communication

is of great importance for the speaker develops in the first section. She also reveals the

complications of language. She tries to create a sense of symbiosis in love through

communication with her lover, which ironically points to the difference in their

autonomous desires, as love does not create wholeness but rather separates the lovers by

their differing needs. The speaker begins to recognize speech as problematic by exploring

the implications of identity constructed by others, as well as identity constructed by the

self. In the first stanza, she projects speech onto other "people" (1), whom she imagines

will see the difference in her and her lover's individual intentions, therefore using speech

and communication to display a concern for how others will perceive her identity. She

assumes that what "People will say" will attribute autonomy to each of them, seeing her

motivation for love deriving from "delight" (2), and her lover's from "compassion" (3).

Because the speaker desires a united kind of love she points, in the second stanza, to the deceptive qualities of other people's speech. She insists on interdependence in their relationship, demonstrated in her portrayal of love in which the lovers establish a

"bargain" (6) with each other. The third, italicized, stanza, presents this bargain through her lover's spoken words. Her lover's words demonstrate the mutual agreement of "give" and "take" (8,10) that the lovers have come to; his words display the symbiotic nature of their relationship, as he offers her "passion" (11) in return for her "will" (8). In the tenth line - "take from my filf - her lover seems to be offering the speaker everything, fulfilling the speaker's need for wholeness and symbiosis in love. The line break emphasizes the opposing notion that he will only fulfill his own individual need for 82 eroticism as he offers eroticism as compensation for her submission, or "will," so that

she must submit or "give" something up to fulfill his sexual need. The internal rhyme

between "will" and "fill" (10) accentuates the un-italicized words "you said" (8),

emphasizing not only the importance of language, but that the words spoken and the

bargain or agreement set are not hers, but her lover's. The agreement is established by her

lover, suggesting not only that their relationship is not mutual, but also displaying that her

lover assumes the power role in their relationship, so that in order to attain the fulfillment he offers, the speaker must be willing to accommodate his autonomous needs and submerge her own. Ironically, the statement meant to propose a symbiotic love actually reveals that love is not mutual and the speaker's autonomy will be ignored.

In the final stanza of the first section, the speaker reclaims the lovers' intentions, pointing to the difference in their ambitions, as she sees his motivations as planned, and hers unplanned. She recognizes that his words are used as a facade to imply mutual love, as his "design" (12) is to bring fulfillment to his autonomous self. The speaker's recognition of his plan, or "design," suggests that their relationship is not reciprocal, as their individual intentions differ, despite her insistence on mutual dependence in love.

Through verbal language the speaker attempts to make love symbiotic, but instead the next section of the poem reveals that through her submission and compliance in adopting the identity or role her lover wants her to perform his desires are met while her autonomy is not recognized.

In the second section of the poem, the difference between the speaker's autonomous self and the persona her lover wants her to adopt culminate to display that in misunderstanding her intentions as differing from his own, her lover misunderstands her 83 identity. The speaker's unrecognized identity leads to a false love, as "He wants her to function as a muse, and loves the fire she generates rather than the woman herself'

(Mclnnis 63). The speaker's autonomous identity is repeatedly misunderstood, both by other people in the first passage, as well as her lover, because eroticism and her submission to his desires obscure her identity and diminish her to a single function that emphasizes his autonomy, and ignores her individuality. The word "fire" (14) in

Livesay's poetry often denotes passion and eroticism, emphasizing that her lover loves what she can offer sexually - "it is the fire you love / not me not both" (14-15) - but does not love her, as she sees it as an impossibility to love "both." The separation of the speaker's identity here is significant, since she recognizes that the "me" of her identity is not the same as the "fire" she pretends to be in order to satisfy her lover, implicating her identity as liminal, with her true self obscured by her lover's refusal to love "me," or her true self. The speaker submits her own desires to accept her lover's; in the denial of her autonomous needs, the speaker's identity enters a liminal phase, where she remains until she recognizes that love is not mutual and she must assert her individual needs in love to gain fulfillment.

The separation of "me" and the role she perpetuates as the "fire" further displays a divided self, and that her lover has ignored the individual part of her to focus on how she fulfills him. The speaker cannot fully be her self, although the role she performs does create unity between the lovers, as it "envelops" (17) the lovers, so that the diminishment of her individual self is necessary for union to take place. Her lover benefits from what she generates, however, since her fire "envelops you" (17). Her lover's "love" (14) of eroticism, or "fire," is significant because it unites the lovers and squelches the speaker's 84 autonomy. She implies that passion can be dangerous, a detriment to her identity, as

the fire is "burning [her] body" (16), so that she is depleted by passion, yet paradoxically

recognizes eroticism as an attraction, as it draws "the moth" (18) closer, but ultimately

decides that the attraction to eroticism can cause harm as the image of "the murderer"

(19) emphasizes that passion creates a threat to her selfhood." Mclnnis notes how

eroticism and language culminate to present the paradox that although the lovers desire erotic union, it also threatens them:

The longing for a way to reconcile bodily experience with verbal expression...

will reach its full pitch of urgency as the persona in Livesay's poems surrenders

her autonomy once again to love. Apparently, erotic attraction remains fraught

with danger for the persona of Livesay's poems. (51)

Again the speaker displays duality by seeing the surrender of her own autonomy as something ironically both enticing as well as harmful. Her lover's insistence on indulgence in passion compromises her identity in her attempts to create symbiotic love, therefore denying her self her own needs and perpetuating her liminality although her autonomous needs imply that more than passion is necessary in their relationship.

The second stanza of this section evokes the Dido myth to display the speaker's unwillingness to submit her identity and autonomous desires to love. She writes that

"Dido knew / this fire" (20-21), or that Dido knew that passion and union are threats.

Also, Dido "choose / that funeral" (22-23), choosing death over marriage, and in a sense, preserving her individuality. Here, the speaker sees that her individuality ought to be 85 preserved. Because she is not fulfilled in meeting her lover's desires, in the next section she begins to assert her autonomous desires rather than submit to her lover's.

In the third section of the poem the speaker insists that sex is her desire too, in her attempt to make their love symbiotic, before admitting that her attempts to diminish her desires have not worked. The speaker reveals eroticism as a physical need that her lover has recognized in her - "And yet you knew / my hunger" (24-25) - suggesting that her lover can supply her with what she truly needs. She recognizes sexual passion as a necessary part of love: "the body blunt / needing the knife" (26-27; emphasis added).

Despite insisting that sex is a need, it remains threatening as the speaker connects passion to the violent image of the "knife." However, the word "tongues" connects to the idea of language and speech, implying her true desire in love is communication. The speaker's description of sex as "your blow" (30) again suggests a threatening aspect of passion, even though she attempts to make passion one of her own needs to create symbiosis.

The violent images of the "knife" and the "blow," however, are contradicted by the speaker's admission that eroticism "eased me so" (31), demonstrating that she finds relief in unity with her lover. Ironically, her relief comes about due to the refusal of her autonomous need for communication. Passion obstructs the achievement of her individual desires since sex directly opposes the notion of speech, evident since the "blow" of sex serves to silence her, emphasized by the isolated word "quiet" (32), so that erotic union serves to stifle the speaker. Since "quiet" is set apart and isolated in the line from the notion that she is "quiet / longer" (32-33) she suggests that she has been persistently silent, having stifled her own needs to gain unity. However, the passion the speaker attains in unity satisfies the part of her that wants love to be mutual, so that both partners 86 do gain from the experience; As Mclnnis writes, the lover "offers her his sexual attention as compensation, even though the pleasure it provides is laced with violence"

(63). The isolation of "I lay" (32) in the stanza draws attention to the speaker's stillness, along with her silence. In liminality, the speaker is often immobile, displaying that although she insists that her lover fulfills her sense of self, her identity remains liminal since her need for communication is continuously opposed.

The speaker being silenced by eroticism, and her liminality, incite her recognition that her need for communication is as physical as the need for passion, especially as these ideas are connected by the rhyme between "hunger" and "longer" (25,33). Stevens finds that "the poet acknowledges the terrors, failures, and paradoxes of love. She sees its creative joys but also its abysses, gaps, and silences" ("Dorothy Livesay" 34), so that in the silence caused by passion, she realizes that lack of communication has created a gap in love. The speaker recognizes that she cannot entirely submit her autonomous self and desires to the sole needs of her lover, since "The woman, however, cannot be dominated entirely. Always, she attempts to balance light with dark, hunger and thirst, creation and destruction. Livesay immediately softens the violent image of annihilation by allowing her hunger to resolve into thirst for the man's communication" (Mclnnis 64) when the image of "tongues" that implies her need for language returns in her insistence on thirst.

Eroticism has not fulfilled her physical needs since "thirst remains" (34), which connects to her revelation of needing "tongues" or communication. Her comparison of communication to "thirst" (34,35) is in opposition to the "hunger" of eroticism, implying that the lovers' needs are individual and separate. Further, her thirst is for "cool / cool water" (35-36), directly opposing the heat of "fire," or passion, that she initially settles 87 for. Yet she wants communication from her lover, since the "white fountains" (38) of water she longs to drink come from his "gesture" (37), emphasizing her need for language in love that will create symbiosis and wholeness in their relationship. That is, the speaker desires a type of love that is unified, but allows for her autonomy. Her reference to her lover's communication as a "gesture," however, is significant in implying that he is incapable of accommodating her autonomy as his communication as non-verbal. The speaker finally admits to her autonomous need for language in love, although she displays an impossible duality for autonomy in union with her lover.1" Her duality arises from the liminal experience, since liminal subjects present "a notion of third self, that is, a sense of self which can solve the dilemma of duality; but on the other hand, they remain in the liminal or threshold sphere precisely because their intrinsic duality renders a reconciliation of the two poles impossible" (Mar Gallego 31). In the final section of the poem, the speaker resolves her duality, choosing autonomy despite having to accept the end of love.

The fourth and final section of the poem resolves the speaker's need for communication as her thirst is quenched by words, suggesting that she reaches fulfillment in refusing the denial of her autonomy. The first line implies a notion of relief as her need, or thirst, is quenched - "I drink now" (39) - while the next line points to the fact that her relief is not a product of passion, as it does not come from "fiery stuff' (40), which she continues to see as a dangerous threat in its ability to burn her: "burning the mouth" (41). Her disavowal of fire suggests that passion and love have ended. Rather, her relief is a product of receiving communication: "I drink the liquid flow / of words" (42-

43). Communication fulfills her desires, emphasized because she "taste[s] / song in the 88 mouth" (43-44). The speaker remains in a liminal position by trying to create a complete love, but in ignoring her own autonomy, she is denied wholeness in love until she refuses her lover's need for passion and fulfills her own for communication instead.

Although the speaker celebrates her autonomy and fulfillment of her needs, "Four Songs" significantly displays the speaker's willingness to submit her true self and desires in an attempt to make symbiotic love, placing her in a perpetually liminal position until she recognizes the discrepancies of love. Like the other poems in this chapter, "Four Songs" also displays that the speaker's need to create a fulfilling love ironically diminishes her sense of self, so that her desire for an impossible notion of love keeps her a captive to liminality.lv

In "And Give Us Our Trespasses," from The Unquiet ZWLivesay's speaker finds that since language is inadequate there is no place for verbal communication in love, so that these inadequacies, and the denial of the speaker's autonomous needs, separate the lovers. The speaker attempts to feel fulfillment from other forms of communication, but in so doing she is denied her need for communication in love, leading to a diminished sense of self that finally reveals the insufficiencies of love, resulting in the end of love.

The first section of the poem depicts the lovers' room in a state of movement that resembles a storm or earthquake, presenting love and eroticism as a strong, albeit destructive, force.v The speaker connects both tension and movement to love and the erotic act - "the bed did shake / under love" (2-3) - already suggesting that love can be threatening. Broadhurst suggests that the liminal space creates a sense of excitement, which often results in creating feelings similar to "disquiet and discomfort" in the subject 89 (1), which is significant especially as "quaking" (6) and "shakes" (1) imply instability or unease, suggesting uncertainty while the speaker inhabits liminality.

The speaker is recalling the tumult of the lovers' sexual relationship, but the effects of this instability affect the speaker after love ends, since she claims that

"Sometimes the room shakes" (1) now. The term "under love" is significant in not only implicating love and eroticism as the cause of unease, but further represents that her desires are over-powered in love in order to accommodate her lover's. The speaker implies that the uncertainty caused by love remains even after love ends, therefore suggesting from the beginning of the poem that the speaker does not find satisfaction. As

Jesus Benito Sanchez' study on liminality as it occasions fear states, the liminal period is not a line that can be easily crossed, as it can be cyclical, making it a problematic site of confusion for the subject, especially as passage becomes a place itself that can be permanently inhabited, occasioning fear in the subject that the liminal phase will become a permanent state in which there is no clear sense of self (81). The first section is significant in reflecting the speaker's fear of non-identity while she is in the liminal period, which becomes increasingly clear as the poem develops, and she reflects on her attempts to make love permanent that keep her in the liminal space.

The second section of the poem signals a renewal in the speaker. It is significant that her renewal occurs "at midnight" (7), a liminal period between two days. The speaker's renewal is attributed to a kind of communication that establishes unity between the lovers: "a socket / was plunged in the wall" (8-9). The word "socket" (8) suggests a means of communication between two processes; the communication she receives is essentially non-verbal and implicitly erotic, suggesting that through sexual union, she 90 experiences a type of communication that, although it lacks verbal language, soothes her desire for communication in love by causing an awakening in the speaker, since as a result she describes, "and my eyes sprang open" (10). This move into consciousness via eroticism further suggests a greater consciousness of self and transcendence through communicative love so that union with her lover is an enhancing experience. However, the section opens with "as if' (7), emphasizing that the situation is hypothetical, and that love and erotic union are not actually capable of causing enhancement to the speaker.

Turner notes that the liminal phase contains "the mood of may-be, might-be, as-if, hypothesis, fantasy, conjecture, desire" (Blazing 295). Therefore, this experience does not lead to transcendence, but she remains in a liminal position, "at midnight," ultimately needing verbal communication to fulfill her autonomous desires. The speaker's attempt to make love and non-verbal communication seem like enhancing and fulfilling experiences creates irony in the poem, since she remains in a diminished state of identity, with her true desires stifled.

Livesay's speaker finds in the next, third, section that speech does not have a place in eroticism or love. All verbal communication is lost in love, since "Whenever"

(11) the speaker attempts to speak, she is silenced. The speaker reveals that her desire for communication in love is denied, since her attempts at speech are described as "out of turn" (12), while her use of the question mark at the end of this phrase expresses that it is her lover's point of view that language is not necessary. Denham also notes the importance of the "image of silence.... silence becomes the product of suffering and love... as she recognizes the insufficiency of love" (Dorothy Livesay 10). Even when her lover silences her, he does so through non-verbal communication first: "you'd press your 91 fingers / against my mouth" (13-14). Only the lover speaks - "Listen" (15) - and his speech paradoxically stifles her speech. The last line displays their non-verbal communication through union, as she hears only his "heartbeat" (16), emphasising the lovers' unity since this is the only communication the speaker receives. Hearing only his heart further emphasizes the importance of her lover's role, as his identity ultimately over-powers hers, so that the "heartbeat" serves to display their unity, while ironically also demonstrating the speaker's diminishment.

In the fourth section, the speaker connects the insufficiencies of speech in love to the deficiencies of eroticism, which leads her to see herself as also being inadequate.vl

The words "tongue" and "kiss" (17,19) point to the inadequacies both of language and eroticism, although they differ in their insufficiencies, one being "too long" (18), suggesting that any language in love is excessive, and the other "too short" (20), as eroticism falls short of her expectations for wholeness in love. This also draws attention to her lover's point of view that communication is unnecessary, while he puts the importance on their sexual relationship. Further, the dichotomy between "long" and

"short" is significant in demonstrating a duality in the speaker, especially as she is torn between fulfilling her desire for language and fulfilling her lover's desires in order to create a complete and united love, and yet she is disappointed by both. Importantly, the word "inadequate" finds its place in this passage in relation to the speaker - "inadequate I shrank" (21) - suggesting that she is made inadequate in love by being unable to fulfill her lover's needs, and also having her own denied. Her shrinking implies that love and eroticism have not brought her to wholeness of being, but rather, depletion of self. The speaker attempts to find fulfillment in love through sexual union and her lover's terms of 92 communication; however, her attempts to fulfill her lover's desires impede the fruition of her own, so that even union with her lover no longer satisfies her sense of self.

In the fifth section, the speaker attempts to console her self and feelings of depletion, especially as her use of "Yet" (23) is an attempt to alleviate the inadequacies of love, by recalling that love has created positive changes to her being. Similar to the way love causes the speaker's eyes to spring open in the second section, she finds that among love's inadequacies it has "Yet charged" (23) her, once again displaying her need for an enhancing kind of love, which contradicts her ironical revelations that suggest her depletion through love. It is significant that she expresses this renewal in relation to her lover's physical "beauty" (24), as earlier she experiences a kind of renewal through physical union with her lover, which ultimately is inadequate in truly regenerating the speaker as she still lacks verbal communication. As the "receptor" (25), the speaker is affected by the signal or stimulus of her lover, so that she likens their communication to a cellular level in which the lover affects her through non-verbal communication. Yet, as the receptor, it is the speaker who must change in response to this communication, further emphasized in the words "trembles" and "quivering" (25,26), which suggest the notion that love and eroticism cause movement, change and uncertainty to her individual self.

This section further reflects the tumult expressed in the first passage, suggesting that non verbal communication causes fear or hesitancy, as love and eroticism are ultimately threats that cause instability to her sense of self and her autonomous desires.

Further, this passage emphasizes duality in the poem. The speaker has been experiencing an extended state of liminality due to her duality. The speaker tries to preserve love and find satisfaction with the non-verbal communication she is given in 93 love by repeatedly declaring that it is enlarging and fulfilling, but the language she uses points to her dissatisfaction. For example, the speaker attributes her uncertainty to being "under the smite / of sunlight" (27-28), where the word "under" is particularly important in stressing her position in love as being "under," or inadequate, so that her position of powerlessness alters her being. "[U]nder" further reflects the first passage, demonstrating that through love and sex, her identity is overpowered, causing her diminishment. Additionally, her modification has negative connotations, as the word

"smite" suggests that her change has been brought about in a forceful, destructive, and even threatening way, especially in connection to her being over-powered. However, the speaker's realization that she has been made inadequate in love while supplying her lover with his needs and allowing her own to be ignored, causes her to realize the importance of communication to her self. Stevens notes that "after this epiphany there is the return to words, to make sense of the silence and darkness" ("Dorothy Livesay" 35), as in the next section the speaker displays her desire for communication in love that involves speech.

In the sixth section the speaker sees the paradox of communication, in that it is

"always available" (31) but it is simultaneously impossible, for to attempt communication with another is "to push the weight / of a mountain" (35-36). The speaker's reference to the "telephone" (29) as something that "transmit[s] messages" (32) displays her need to convey information. Yet "transmit" further suggests communication by signals, once again pointing to non-verbal communication, which emphasizes the impossibility of communication as non-verbal messages cannot be transferred through the phone. The negative connotations of the word "transmit" further point to the transmission of infection or disease, suggesting that non-verbal communication "sickens" the speaker in denying 94 her need for language in love. Further, the contrast set up between the words "lift" (34) and "push" (35) reflect her duality. The speaker questions why communication is difficult, revealing that despite her recognition of the inadequacies of communication in love, she still sees it as a necessary component of love that she is being denied.

The final, sixth, section of the poem presents the notion that the inability to communicate creates insufficiencies in love, so that silence and lack of communication cause distance and uncertainty between the lovers that suggests the impermanence of love: as Stevens says, "So we are finally apart in love because of our inadequacies just as we finally have to rely on the silence beneath words because our use of words is always inadequate. There is distance between lovers; there is distance between silence and speech" ("Dorothy Livesay" 35). The first word in the section, "Between" (37), is significant in representing the speaker's liminal state. The physical distance between the words "the impulse to speak" and "and the speaking" (37,38) as well as the space between "our" and "distances" (40,41) represent the distance between the lovers caused by their opposing desires, displaying that "The notion, then, of distance, a notion that crops up time and again in Dorothy Livesay's poetry, a distance between people, in this case between lovers, is part of the poet's concept of love" (Stevens, "Dorothy Livesay"

30). There is, however, still the "impulse" for communication, but when language is not used, "storms crackle" (39), recalling the initial image in the first section where love creates agitation and turmoil, emphasizing love as inadequate as it does not unify the lovers but creates an abyss between them, so that lack of communication and autonomous recognition cause separation. 95 The final lines of the poem connect to the poem's title: she does not ask for the forgiveness of "trespasses," as she sees violations in love as a given part of love. Rather, it is "distances" (41) that ought to be forgiven, as the inadequacy of love to truly fulfill the speaker leads to distance and is what she sees as truly lamentable. As Tanya Butler notes, at the poem's close "Her single state, rather than being celebrated as autonomy resulting in self-completion, is suffered as deprivation" (38). Despite seeing the complications and denial of self in love "Forgive" (40) implies that the speaker still has a desire to bridge the gap and unite, once again displaying the speaker's duality, which she has not overcome at the end of the poem; she is "distanced" from her lover, but still sees them as unified, signaled by the words "us" and "our" (40). "Trespasses" displays the speaker's increasing realization of the inadequacies of love, but also her increased duality in her willingness to overlook her own diminishment in love. Therefore, because there is an enhanced duality in the speaker, she remains in the liminal space without transcendence or autonomous celebration, especially as the end of the poem mimics the opening which suggests that her liminality is cyclical and is not a passage that ends.

The speaker's duality and willingness to deny her self her desires to create a fulfilling love is also seen in the love poem "The Cave," from Plainsongs. The first section of the poem opens with the speaker's italicized speech, and the poem closes with the lovers' italicized words, emphasizing that communication is the focus of the poem.

The speaker's spoken words in the poem's opening further point to the speaker's conflicted identity, as she senses unity and a shared identity with her lover, while simultaneously suggesting uncertainty in her dependence. She describes herself as unified with and dependent on her lover by identifying herself in connection to him, as she is the 96 "needle" to "your north" (1). However, she uses the words "quivering" (1) and

"trembling" (2) in describing herself as the "needle," suggesting hesitancy. Her portrayal of her self as both connected to her lover, but also simultaneously uneasy, is significant in displaying love as expansive to her identity since she connects to her lover, and also ironically causing unease to the speaker's identity, since dependence both paradoxically binds and separates the lovers.

Often, in Livesay's love poetry, the speaker desires union with her lover, but in the speaker's recollection of her and her lover's relationship, the poem turns not to a longing for unity, but a remembrance that attaining an identity in relation to her lover led to the loss of her autonomous self. The line, "I never believed it" (3), emphasizes deceit in love, while the following line clarifies that in union with her lover, she did not recognize her captivity or dependence, "bound" (4) in her connection to him. The word

"bound" displays love's ironic ability to both create union as well as cause the speaker to feel restricted. She is bound by the weight of his "will and mind" (6), pointing to her possible resentment that it is her lover's desire to confine her that has made her dependent. The passage portrays the speaker as forced by her lover to be stationary all night, confined by love - "under your will and mind" (6) - suggesting that her lover is dominant, especially as "under" demonstrates she is over-powered. She depicts her self as idle - "one night all night I lay" (5) - since the development of her individuality is stunted in the liminal period by relying on her lover's identity to encompass her own, so that although love is expansive as it unites the lovers, it is ironically figured as the cause of her liminality. Further, the connection of her immobility to being "under your will and 97 mind" demonstrates that her liminality is directly caused by being over-powered by her lover's intentions.

The image of the speaker being bound to her lover, as well as the image of the compass that suggests the lovers are contained as one, suggest closeness, connection and union, although the passage also suggests distance between the lovers; the speaker has communicated with her lover, which is made clear in that he holds her "secrets" (7), but these words serve to separate the lovers as they are held in his "hand" (8), removed from her. As communication is the speaker's desire, the passage demonstrates that her lover is in control and denies the speaker her autonomous needs. Since the speaker is awake "one night all night" (5), even though the lovers are physically together, sleeping and waking also further separate them.v" The speaker reveals love as both separating and binding the lovers, although the next section demonstrates their separate desires and that her attempts to make love symbiotic deny her her desire for communication and bind her to liminality.

The speaker recalls the sexual experiences between her and her lover in the first two stanzas in second section, demonstrating the difference in their desires, and in doing so she reveals love as inadequate to fulfill her. The speaker recognizes the importance of language in eroticism, as the sexual act occurs on an "unquiet bed" (10), further emphasized by the rhyme between "bed" and "said" (12), even though their only form of communication seems to be through sex. However, the speaker notices something false or fake in eroticism and love, emphasized in the repetition of the word "pretend" (11,13), especially in its connection to her lover who she sees as putting on pretense that his only desire is for sexual union. She imagines that he is merely pretending "no care" (11), in being there only for his personal self, searching for "self-seeking ease" (14); she implies 98 that eroticism and love involve more than individual satisfaction as she tries to assure herself that his need for her is deeper than physical satiation and that he is mutually dependent, demonstrating her desire for symbiosis in love.

She insists that her lover only "pretends" to be involved with her for his personal

"ease," but her rhyme on "please" (16) emphasizes that he has the autonomy to choose whether to be separate from her: "just as you please" (16). The distance between the lovers is further implied when the speaker says "take me or leave me there" (15), revealing the impermanence of her self, as the decision to be near her is placed on her lover rather than her own autonomous will, demonstrating that she submits by assuming his power and autonomy. She recognizes the autonomy of his desires, but attempts to convince her self that his individual needs are a facade since only fulfilling his needs proves that love is not symbiotic. By trying to alleviate the denial of her individual needs by asserting that their relationship is symbiotic, she realizes she has submerged her individual desires to accommodate her lover's insistence on his autonomous needs. In submitting her individuality to comply with her lover's needs, her identity enters a liminal period where her autonomy is ignored. She remains in a liminal state by trying to reconcile she and her lover's differing needs and maintain love by convincing herself that love is an exchange wherein both their desires can be met and both can remain autonomous while being mutually dependent. However, her insistence on her lover's dependence demonstrates that he is not dependent on her, having maintained and found fulfillment of his autonomous needs. Further, the repetition of the word "save" (12,14) suggests her dependence on her lover to fulfill her desires. Also, her representation of her lover "Taking my body" (9) demonstrates submission as a part of love, as she must 99 submit her autonomous desires to create a mutual type of love, which by its very nature

ensures that love is not mutual.™1

In the poem's final passage, Livesay's speaker displays that erotic union does not

fulfill her, and that she still desires communication from her lover. She returns to the

image of sleep and dream that reflects the separation of the lovers in the first section of

the poem. The speaker associates sleep with being in a "cave" (17), emphasizing the

notion of separation between the lovers as her lover is tightly "coiled within" (18) by

sleep. Stevens writes that in Livesay's work "There is always effort and struggle to break

out of silence and dream" ("Silence" 586), so that her waking while he is still dreaming

further points to separation between the lovers. The image of the cave to reflect

separation is particularly significant in regard to the title of the poem; the poem is about

distance between lovers, but also her desire for communication, symbiosis and permanent

love that are somewhat consoled due to her lover's sleeping.

She wakens because of "your" (19) voice and dream, and the words she imagines

- "O love, we hold, we have" (20) - fulfill her desire for communication, as well as

wholeness, unity, interdependence, and permanence in love, emphasized in her use of

"we" (20). In this sense, language and love both liberate the speaker, as she realizes her

individual needs, although they still rely on her lover. Mclnnis finds that in this section

The wish-fulfillment dream the persona images at the end of "The Cave," "O

love, we hold, we have," the words she so desperately craves, serves to lessen the

impact of her lover's selfish insistence on sexual gratification. His sinister control

of her, which she only begins to admit is momentarily compensated for in her

attempt at self-consolation. (70-71) 100 The speaker has not voiced her desires, and since her desires are voiced by her lover at the poem's close, this suggests that she is not an autonomous being, as she remains dependent on him to supply her needs. The final words console her, but must be supplied by someone who the speaker has insisted is deceptive. Further, although the voice consoles her need, she also attributes it to her wakening, so that these words ironically separate the lovers, rather than unite them.

The speaker is divided throughout the poem by her longing for love to be permanent and mutual, and her recognition that in trying to gain these qualities in love, her independence is denied; Walker writes that this "sense of the divided self is one reason for the frequent use of dreams... another is the concept of boundaries to be transgressed, lines to be crossed, if only in the imagination," emphasizing that dreams

"become ways of transcending boundaries, either temporarily or as part of a journey to autonomy and wholeness" (114). However, she is awakened by his voice "only" (17) when her lover sleeps, demonstrating that it is only when the lovers are separate that the speaker is able to recognize her autonomous needs, and suggesting that it is only through the impermanence of love that her autonomy will flourish. She does not transcend liminality in this poem, but remains in liminality where her true needs will not be met since they can only be met in separation from her lover. Rather, she chooses to attempt to find fulfillment in her relationship, ironically bound not to her lover, as she depicts in the poem's opening, but to her need to make love a fulfilling experience and for love to supply her autonomous desires.1*

In "Birdwatching" from Plainsongs the speaker is once again made captive in trying to make love permanent, seen in her attempts to recall her and her lover's fleeting 101 love. However, the speaker's desire for permanency in love contradictorily points to its impermanence." In the first stanza the speaker suggests that love can be binding so that she finds that she is no longer captive, but liberated, when communication and love end.

The first enjambed line - "I could move" - implies the speaker's freedom. Robert Daly's study on liminality finds that "the condition itself can be a field of freedom" (71); often,

Livesay's speaker is liberated when love ends, signaling her transcendence into her autonomous self from the confines of love. However, in "Birdwatching," she does not accept her freedom, since her declaration of autonomous freedom is riddled with images of captivity, because her movement only leads her "in and out of cages" that bind her.

Viljoen and van der Merwe write that the "[experience of the unfamiliar world beyond the threshold often causes anxiety, even the desire to return to the familiar life of the past; only to find out that the door is locked, the ways of the past are irretrievable" (2). This sort of movement reflects liminality; love has ended and the speaker is able to transcend liminality and celebrate her autonomy, but her desire is to return to her experience with love, despite that it is impossible, so that she remains in liminality.

The opening lines are significant in linking freedom and restriction particularly with images of repeatedly crossing thresholds - "in and out of cages" (2) - that reflect the speaker's continuous liminality. Aguirre's study of liminality says that "we exist on the edge of ourselves, and our true identity is the paradigm that contains all these inflected possibilities. The theoretical outcome of this is a human existence in endless motion, ever engaged in 'liminal acts'" ("Theory of Thresholds" 25). The speaker insists on autonomous movement, despite being dependent and bound to love, further reflecting her duality, since she is divided by whether to remain confined to love, or to attain autonomy. 102 The speaker's initial celebration of autonomous freedom is not only contrasted with her true confinement, but also quickly turns to bereavement for love and communication's brevity. It is important that she is free to move only as the cages are now "open and empty" (4), their earlier captives, words, having escaped. The likening of words to birds in their ability to fly as well as the pun on the cages being "unbirdened"

(3) displays the impermanence of the lovers' words, as they cannot be bound. She simultaneously implies that the words once were successfully captured, although now she finds herself bound to the lack of words, captive by the lack of speech, revealing her need for communication in love. Jean Gibbs connects Livesay's images of captivity to dependence and loss of autonomous self: "the woman's dependence on the man appears as a prison of sorts: in "Birdwatching" she is a caged bird.... Disintegration of the self, rather than wholeness of being, seems to be the end result" (37). Livesay's speaker often searches for a liberating love that will make her whole, but in her dependence on the words of her lover, even though they are impermanent, she remains imprisoned, or liminal, so that in spite of her insistence on her own liberation, she can not be truly liberated until she is free from the confines of her impossible desires for love.

In the second stanza of the poem, the speaker continues to insist on liberation, although her images continually point to her captivity and inability to transcend liminality. Beginning this stanza with "Instead" (6) implies that rather than experience autonomous freedom, she is a captive to the "cabin room" (6) she sits in alone. The word

"sit" (6) further implies that she is stationary, not interacting with her surroundings. This is significant, as the title of the poem also demonstrates her inability to interact with or impact her environment, while her segregation further suggests that she remains in a 103 liminal state. In Aguirre's analysis of threshold crossings in literature he states,

"[w]hen the passage is not concluded, a condition of sterility or paralysis may result; action in this arrested mid-phase is apt to become contradictory or self-cancelling"

("Theory of Thresholds" 25). Not only does the speaker's continual liminality induce her immobility, but further encourages a divided perspective. In describing her situation, the isolated word "free" (8) suggests that she is herself free, but she is only free to watch the freedom of birds from her window, suggesting that she is not free herself, but captive to the freedom of words, although she can make no effect on these circumstances.

In the final stanza of the poem, the speaker is still imprisoned by her recognition that language is not permanent, and that the cage she is stuck in is one created by both herself and her lover. Imprisoned behind her "window" (10), she is free only to watch the birds, rather than interfere or take an active role, reflecting that she can recall her lover's words, but cannot actively impact them or ensure their permanence. She is watching from a "window," but also from a "closed-in thought" (11), suggesting that even her thoughts are captive and cannot be communicated, as making her thoughts known ensures their impermanence. Her desire for words to be permanent is demonstrated in the lines, "not easy to catch / words flying" (12-13), as she recognizes she cannot bind what is "free"

(14). The repetition of the isolated word "free" once again points to her disappointment that language is free and impermanent, which paradoxically ensures her own lack of autonomous freedom, continually engaged in liminality.*1

She attributes the lost words to her lover, who she sees as treating communication, and herself, "so carelessly" (16), displaying that he is the one who does not necessitate communication, pointing to the difference of their individual needs. She recalls a time 104 when there was "no cabin built" (18), which over time has become her cage, and attributes the building of its foundations to union and communication, as it is "the day we walked and talked" (17) that they created the cage or cabin she admits to being in still.

Recalling the cabin being built out of love and communication further demonstrates these to be confining rather than liberating. She further implies that imprisoning language and love to the confines of a cage is destructive in the image of "pressing down last year's leaves" (20), which suggests a stifling as the speaker's liberation has been stifled.

Livesay's speaker typically desires wholeness in love, but rather than experiencing a liberating love that allows her to be her autonomous self, she sees love as something that makes her captive and dependent. Daly recognizes "freedom as a positive and necessary aspect of the role played by liminality in regeneration and renewal" (71); the speaker recognizes that she is liberated by love's end, yet, she does not experience renewal of identity or accommodation of her autonomous needs as she chooses to remain confined by her individual desire for permanency and language in love. That is, the speaker is unable to transcend liminality since in doing so she will realize a different kind of confinement; in transcending, she will have to accept that love is impermanent, a realization that will "confine" her to her solitary self, when she longs for unity and love.

Livesay's love poetry on communication sees language in love as a need that brings fulfillment to her autonomous self, and when not received points to love's impermanence and deceitfulness, as well as its ability to oppress her autonomous self and separate or cause distance between the lovers. The speaker attempts to find fulfillment in love by submitting her autonomy to fulfill her lover's autonomous desires in hopes for symbiosis in love, which contradictorily displays that love is not mutual as she is denied 105 her autonomous needs, and her transcendence is negated in her attempt to alter love to

conform to her disparate desires.

Love ends and the permanence of her self is not celebrated in these poems, as she

can only transcend liminality by asserting her individuality, thus losing symbiosis in love

and causing her to recognize its impermanence and inability to supply her with wholeness

or a sense of renewal, which she suffers as destitution, rather than rejoicing in fullness of

self. In the first two chapters, the speaker's experiences with love and her lover bring

about an ironical view of love that most often leads to harmony as she reconciles her

duality and chooses autonomy over unity, so that although she experiences ambiguity,

she also experiences transcendence and transformation. However, in the poems I analyze

in the final chapter, the main focus is not on the speaker's transcendence and acceptance

of self, but rather how her own contradictory desires cause her to remain in a liminal

position, unable to attain or accept neither restraint nor liberation.

The speaker's contradictory desires that create a divided, or conflicted, self inhibit

liminality from affecting a transformation to her self. In the first two chapters I argue that

the speaker's liminal state is caused by love's ability to restrict her identity, but find in

the poems included in the final chapter that, ironically, it is the speaker's attempt to create

an impossible kind of love that causes her inability to transcend liminality. Her inability to transcend liminality due to opposed perspectives that cannot be reconciled without disappointment is illuminated by Rainford's definition that irony is "not a matter of choice or decision, of one or the other, but a simultaneity, which is also a repetition, which nevertheless avoids being the same because it is caught between and takes account of the other" (63). In the first two chapters liminality functions to allow the speaker to 106 escape from restrictive love by transforming and renewing her identity, while in the final chapter liminality becomes self-imposed, as she continuously suppresses her autonomy rather than expressing it.

1 The speaker's ability to accept the impermanence of love is exhibited in "Four Songs," where she is able to meet her own need for communication. However, in the other poems I analyze in this chapter, the speaker's autonomy is ignored in an attempt to make love permanent.

" Stevens writes that the speaker of "Four Songs" "recognizes the dangers of mere indulgence in passion.... She realizes the double-sidedness of insistence on passion" ("Dorothy Livesay" 37).

'"The speaker's divided desire for a love that allows for autonomy accompanied with her knowledge that her autonomy is ignored in union is similar to the impossible kind of love she longs for in "Auguries" of Plainsongs.

IV Halperin's discussion of irony in love also regards the balance of divided desires as a component of irony : "Like all great literary forms, the ironic story of love teases us with the contradictions built into its design. What distinguishes it is the way it holds opposed perspectives in unstable and dynamic equipoise. It thereby pushes to an extreme limit what all good writing aims to do - to impress on us a lively consciousness of what it does not, or what it cannot, say" (58). v Stevens writes that this "is a poem coming out of darkness, involving the darkness and the silence in itself. Love is the swaying form; the first section shows the room of love shaking and quaking" ("Dorothy Livesay" 35).

Vl Stevens recognizes Livesay's connection between the inadequacies she sees in communication to the insufficiencies she sees in herself: "The poet recognizes her inadequacies, a sort of recognition of the impotence of language even in the act of using words" ("Dorothy Livesay" 35).

™ Stevens articulates the importance of Livesay's images of "sleep and dream [that] represent loneliness and distance" ("Dorothy Livesay" 35).

Denham sees Livesay's use of paradox as a tool to balance her opposing desires: "The need for balance pervades these poems: the need to surrender the self in love, yet keep it whole; to exult in life, while being aware of death; to value love, yet recognize its transience; to affirm the ecstasies of the flesh, while acknowledging its limitations" (Dorothy Livesay 32).

IX Halperin argues that irony and contradictions are necessary components of love: "When we are unhappy in love, we typically experience a driving epistemic need to find the cause of our unhappiness, to discover whether it lies in ourselves or in the world. But it is pointless for a lover to attempt to locate the true source of his joy or his suffering: to be in love means to be unable to determine whether the desire one feels originates in oneself or emanates from the other, whether the causes of one's suffering lie in the other or in oneself. The wish to escape, in the midst of grief, from this perplexity, or to transcend it, is a wish to step off the world. Plato's transcendental theory of desire offers such a cure for our suffering, a cure shaped from the start by the reality of the suffering it would spare us, but it can provide this cure only by abolishing the epistemic tension in love, by persuading us ultimately to see love as unitary, logical, consistent, whole, and free from paradox - in short, by saving us once and for all from love's irony" (52). 107 x Stevens notes that the "poems in The Unquiet Bed and Plainsongs attempt to describe the momentary bliss and fearful transient qualities of human love" which reveals "the impeimanence of a human relationship even though it may achieve harmony and union" ("Dorothy Livesay" 35-36).

Xl In times "when the liminal becomes a trap, a site of stricture and conrol" it presents the "anguish of those living on the margins and edges" (O'Gorman 126), especially since this "kind of liminality, the potentially endless fluctuation between poles and conditions, can be incarcerating, infuriating even, frustrating to the point of manacles" (Etienne Terblanche 175). 108

Afterword.

Dorothy Livesay's exploration of the conflicted female identity, the self s diminishment and potential for enlargement are themes that are further carried through in

Ice Age, published in 1975. Whereas these concepts are illuminated through love and sexual union in the love poems I analyzed in the thesis, in Ice Age the female identity as aging and dying becomes the medium to discuss the liminal female identity. Peter

Redgrove, in an interview, stated that "We rehearse for the big death through the little death of orgasm, through erotic living. Death as transfiguration." In Ice Age death and aging, rather than sex and love, become the liminal acts that transform the speaker's identity by both reducing and expanding it, and in death, she transcends life. I have contended that in the love poetry liminality occasions both death and birth, a concept with re-emerges in her poetry on aging to demonstrate that even in death there is new life.

The connection between Livesay's themes in her love poetry of The Unquiet Bed and Plainsongs and her poetry on aging and death in Ice Age are articulated in

"Catechism" where she says of her own poetry that she writes about "a few strong feelings / about love and dying / and loss" (3-5). "Last Letter" further serves as connecting these bodies of work. The poem could function as a statement about death but also as a love letter, since it combines many of the concepts I've illuminated in the thesis and yet expands on these in her new work. The speaker continues to value unity - "you are my eye my ear / my mouth" (14-15)- and also to recognize that the female identity submits in love for unity and remembrance: "I am certain now: / in love, / women are 109

more committed. / The imprinting / cannot be erased" (9-13). The poem also creates destitution in an ambiguous statement that could refer to love, as well as life: "Yes, the road leads nowhere" (1). The poem reveals that its true intent is to make a statement on life as she calls time a "common measure" (5) with "He and you at the poles / myself caught / in an age between" (6-8). Her description of this duality and her placement at neither border illuminates that the act of aging is itself liminal.

Similar to the second chapter of the thesis, in Livesay's poetry on identity and aging natural images illuminate the theme of death, and also express liminaliy. The

"dark" serves for a metaphor for death in "Summer Landscape: Jasper" - "brief as brightness is / caught between dark and dark" (14-15) - expressing not only life's brevity, but that living is itself a liminal period. Nature is further used to juxtapose death and life in "Widow." The widow who thinks of death simultaneously creates new life: "the woman sowing / nasturtium seed / planting geraniums" (4-6). Life as something that emerges from death is further portrayed in the widow's liminal act of "waking at midnight" (7) to find herself transformed: "flowers growing out of her belly" (8). In the love poetry death and birth both arise from liminality, and the poetry on aging further demonstrates that in death life flourishes.

In the love poetry, the speaker's identity must be reduced before it is enlarged.

Reduction is also a product of aging in "Cassandra" where the speaker describes an old man with "flesh so shrunk" (2) like an "animal's... a deer / a dead dog" (5-6) and also recognizes her own diminishment through aging: "my own / shrunk arm" (7-8). Similarly in "Legends" the speaker declares, "I am so small again /1 shrink" (27-28) so that "in my 110

old age /1 am not human / nor woman / but terrified hairy beast / crying for shelter" (30-

34). As the title Ice Age insinuates, these poems involve images of destitution, vastness, emptiness, and loneliness, but these concepts are opposed by the speaker's depiction of aging as expansive to her identity. In "The Cabbage" she demonstrates the societal view that age is reductive as she is given pills by her doctor "that reduce me / from animal / to

vegetable" (2-4). However, she asks for him to "implant some sunflower seeds / so at

least I'd be able to see / over the fence" (6-8) displaying her desire for age to heighten her

identity. In "Breathing" she further expresses her belief that age is not reductive with contrasting images of youth - "even in old age / a woman moves / with freshness" (12-

14) - and her desire for transformation, so that in aging she would be "a leaf perhaps /

or a breath of wind / in a man's nostrils" (15-17). The speaker's portrayal of youth in

aging is significant in understanding her view of aging as an act that revives the identity.

The term Ice Age further refers to the past, or looking back. In aging, life comes

full circle, with the past of youth and vitality contrasting age, but also being a part of

aging. The book's dedication reads, "For my youngers," and yes, there are certainly

poems about grandchildren, but this also displays her ability to look back while looking

forward. Her juxtaposition of aging as a deterioration connected to vitality and youth is

seen in "Interiors" where these concepts come full circle to suggest that age will diminish

the identity, but that death leads to new life and vitality as well - "children springing into

men / and old men dwindling / into green" (14-16) - especially as she expresses her own

ability to become youthful again: "and when you come, I fling / all old age off' (18-19).

The simultaneity of the speaker's aging and vitality is expressed in the lines, "It is Ill

summer and winter / fall and spring / all in one view" (9-11), and that "It is time to go / and time to come" (12-13). The idea that the end of life is not the end but a re-calling or re-emergence of the beginning of life is further demonstrated in "Why We Are Here," a poem documenting her concern with life and its purpose. Her interest with the female identity and its purpose is found in the words "dawn" (3) and "noon" (19,21), expressing that life is liminal, and that through liminality transformation can occur. She writes that

"Some of us especially / are women / open / ever receiving / into" (6-10), displaying the female identity's submission, enlargement, and transformation. In a poem of expectant death, her chief interest lies with life in the word "womb" (12,30) where life comes full circle since death once again leads to the womb. Her contrasting images with ice - the ice melts "to puddles" (20), "water" (24), "rivers" (26), "sea's room" (27) - further reveal her argument for life in death.

Not only does she see positive identity changes as a part of aging, but finds that death itself may be a release into a more true identity. I have demonstrated that Livesay employs themes of communication to illuminate the concepts related to identity, finding joy in words, and celebration in song. In "For the New Year," a title which demonstrates death to be an exiting of liminality and entrance into a new experience, she believes in something more than the "word patterns" (11) we know, as in death there is "perhaps an infinite song / sways in our throats / yet to be heard?" (12-14). The transcendence of liminal living into death is, to Livesay's speaker, a rejoicing experience.

However, transcendence through death and transformation do not always take on positive responses for the speaker, just as autonomous freedom is not always celebrated 112

in her love poems. "Unitas," as the title suggests, attempts to find unity between life and death, by creating balance and harmony between oppositions: "What happens to our living / is death / to eating / is hunger / to crying / is silence" (12-17). Ultimately, she depicts death as a bleak transformation, given the wondrousness of life: "We, born to flourish / in a heyday of sun / and tumble to rubble / when the ice comes" (18-21). Her view that aging and death are destructive is further seen in "Salute to Monty Python" when she declares, "Let old age take over / with violence" (24-5), although the act is also invited. The submission she displays to death is repeated in "Unexpected Guests" in the image of a "man in a boat / rowing with all his might / towards the ICE" (13-15) as if death should be strived for. This is further reflective of the love poetry where she submits her identity to gain union. It is clear in "Windows" that the speaker sees death as an opportunity for gain: "Let me see through / the windows / beyond" (28-30). Death becomes a means for complete clarity, and she displays her longing for what death can offer.

I argue in the third chapter that the speaker comes to desire an impossible love, and she also comes to an impossible desire for the human condition and death; in

"Remembering Red Lane (Died 1964)" she longs for a death that is not a death: "If we had roots we cry / death could only wither the leaf / no one could pry / us loose from the loved earth" (5-8). However, she realizes this impossibility and is instead consoled by the possibility for transformation: "he must fling himself over / to be gull or salmon..." (12-

13). Once again, she sees death as an extension of life, which leads to her acceptance of death. In "The Other Side of the Wall (for P.K.P.)" she find remembrance and life in 113

death - "all things once living having changed / but live on / there" (12-14) - so that she is able to accept her death: "The wall is death. / My death. Not to be climbed / yet. /1 have no fear" (15-18).

There are many recurrent concepts found in the love poetry and death poetry including liminality, reduction and diminishment, dualities and oppositions. The poetry on aging displays aging as diminishing the identity, and in death, the identity is ironically transformed and heightened. Therefore, life is itself a liminal act, necessary to take us from a state of reduction to transcendence and regeneration. Death is not death at all, but death is new life. In the love poetry, the speaker submits to love to gain unity and enters liminality, so that submission leads to transcendence and autonomous life. In Ice Age she must submit to living and to aging, both liminal experiences, in order to reach death, transcendence and transformation of new life. Life is a constant progression of liminal perspectives, like Livesay writes in "Surfaces": "We live / only to submerge" (20-21). 114

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