Dodging Around the Grand Piano Sex, Politics, and Contemporary Irish Women 'S Poetry by Ailbbe Smytb Some things insist on becoming enter how and where we will. lost, There seems to be an agreed terrain like the be-ribboned straw hat withinwhich Irish poetry criticism- L hutcure examine &S reprisentations the girl waved over the bridge including, perhaps ironically, thevery snnrelks et h smu~lfitidam h poisie to me. lately included feminist kind--can fhninine a2 I'Irhndr contemporaine et be exercised. I am not saying it's a How ridiculous it fixed terrain, once and for all, because looked, in the last decade or so its borders 22e preoccupation with Zrbbness as the prima y floating on the have been shifted in more ways than terrain of criticism has disturbing repercussions water one, and by feminists more than most. between two But it isn't entirely open either. There fbrpoetry, because poems wbicb do not nourish these swans is an agenda of acceptable topoi, of critical concerns are considered as either not who were coaxing critical and discursive priorities, be- reafly I&, or not redypoems. one another to yond which you venture at your own love. risk and peril. The risk being ob- livion, no-critics land.2 To be sure, it remeten question I'Pternel&azsomption Although I tried to reach it, is difficult, given the political geogra- chez &Scritiques litthaires que hpoksie it was swept away. phy and socio-historical circum- irlandaise est prioritairement pri- "Sit still in the boat, you fool," stances, to write outside the terrain of ocrupk par &S mythes, I'histoire et she called, "sit still Ireland and Irishness-because that, I'identitk nationale et rulturelle. or you'll fall into the river." I think, is what it is. Irish poetry -Joan McBreen, criticism is (still) hyper-concerned She told the one "The Straw Hat" with questions of myth and history, who was beyond saving with national and cultural identity.3 to have a nice day Silences This preoccupation with Irishness (she said it twice for effect) as the primary terrain of criticism has There has been very little written disturbing repercussions for poetry, I will, she assured, about sex-and-poetry critically, theo- because poems which do not nourish I'll have a bastarding ball retically, historically, or in any way these critical concerns are considered dodging the Gods at a1l.l Now, it is absolutely not the as either not really Irish, or not really around the grand piano case that there is nothing on what poems-or remain entirely uncon- that isn't really there at all Irish women poets are on about (in sidered. Clair Wills, for example, in -Rita Ann Higgings, Irish poems). There are essays and her study of politics and sexuality in from "God Dodgers articles, journal special issues, and Northern Irishpoetry, devotes achap- Anonymous" multiple theses on Irish women's ter to a discussion of contemporary poetry, on Irish women poets. Not Irish women's poetry, which she spe- Knowledge is limited by the scope of enough, yet, and not necessarily in cifically construes as questioning "cur- the eye, the acuity of the ear, the all the best places. But that's another rent definitions of cultural and na- accuracy of memory. Human, not debate, and another day. Men critics tional identity in Ireland, in particu- godly. Even interpreters, explicators, say very little about women's poetry, lar the repeated association of the use extricators. What can I know if I do and when they do, they still say re- of myth and the writer's attempt to not look, if1 do not listen, if I do not markably little, although often at link himself with, to repossess, a his- remember? length and damagingly. women crit- tory and a community." Her analysis Entree en matiere: how to enter ics, and often poets, make the run- is instructive, but given her defini- without breaking?We are locked and ning and the openings, not always to tion, I wonder if it doesn't keep out a barred against entries of all kinds. Or loud acclaim (or any at all). But the good deal more than it allows in?* maybe just we who have lost our important thing is, the great con- What about poems not determined innocence. Who has not? Lost, sto- spiracy of silence around the fact of by "debates over the figure of the len, aged away. What is the matter of Irish women's poetry has been ex- motherland?" What about poems sex, of ~oetry,or sex and poetry and posed, and broken. Which does not which explore areas of experience the spaces between? mean, however, that we are free to expressly suppressed by the myth- 76 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME makers and law-makers of the moth- I have seen mad women in my as mad what is necessary for survival. erland? time, The edge defines the centre; the edge Certainly, I agree with Eavan I have seen them waiting row on is where you go when there is no- Boland (and thus with Clair Wills) row, where else to be. It is at least in part that "a 'nation' is a potent, impor- I have seen the stripped flesh, about the eccentricity of women's tant image" (qtd. in Somerville-Arjat the abandoned eye, symbolic place, and the physical and and Wilson 84). But, however pow- I have seen the frothing mouth psychic cost of that displacement. erful/disempowering an image and heard the cries, But it is not a victim poem. There is Mother Ireland has been for many I have seen mad women in my no resignation here. The "peculiar Irish women poets, it is not the only time angle of the head," in ~rincipleanti- one and some have chosen to disre- -I have never seen them mad thetical to both sanity and poetry, is gard-discard it through poetic re- enough. here repositioned to become a differ- location (from "contemporary Irish ent angle of sight and of hearing, poetry" to the "women's poetry In the city of Boston I once saw enabling us to make sense of the cries, movement," in the English-speak- a woman the shrill screams of a mad woman in ing West). Poetic emigration moves and she was mad-as mad as the city of Boston, not as "other," but in much the same direction as the they come as connected with our selves: economic kind ("go west, young (and oh do they come, mad woman"), and is likewise not always women, I have seen the abandoned faces experienced (or represented) as nega- as often as the rest?) row on row, tive. It can be an experience of open- I have seen mad women in my ing up, where, liberated from the She walked the street in broad time particular burdens and boundaries daylight, -I have never seen us mad of the "nation," the world becomes neat as a pin-a lady no doubt enough. a bigger place and can be, may be, in blue coat, blue hat, blue purse differently phrased. blue shoes-the only note 'We can never say it often enough. Irish critics need to acknowledge out of place in it all The repetition with its strategic re- that Irish poets-especially wo- was her face-the peculiar angle placing of the pronoun makes this men--do not necessarilywrite"Irish" of her head; thrown back, jaws clear: survival requires that we refuse poems, given the strength ofthe pres- wide to be ordered, that we creatively em- sures to discard tradition and the and a scream so shrill poured out brace the madness of our anger, even marked opportunities for poetic and it lifted birds from her feet. though there is not, anywhere, any political migration to a more welcomingly open terrain.5 "In theCityofBostonnis theopen- Irish &tics need to acknowledge that Irish poets- ing poem in Mary Dorcey's collec- especially women-do not necessarily write '!Irish" tion, Mowinginto thespace Clraredby OurMothm. This is terrain unmarked poems, given the strength of the pressures to discard by history or tradition, transnational, tradition and the marked opportunities for poetic open, spacious. But movement to- andpolitical migration to a more open terrain. wards implies at thesame time move- ment away from: the collection title, the title and positioning of the first This magnificently angry poem guarantee that it will be enough. For poem, decisively accentuate a self- strips away, line by incantatory line, a poem is a delicate instrument and conscious distancing from Ireland the layers of decorum which, sealed may not, after all, be able to provide and the man-made canonical Irish tightly in place, keep the world neatly us with either a sense of (erotic) con- poem. "In the City of Boston" cuts us in order, insanity. It exposes, in broad nection or an answer to our futures: loose from what we know too well to daylight, the agonizing irony and lit- see clearly, places us in a new relation erally maddening dislocation of (and oh do they come, mad to both lived experience and poetic women in a world which defines as women, vision. It re-locates us: sane what is experienced as mad, and as often as the rest?) VOLUME 17, NUMBER 3 Irish women's poetry is no more ing through my blood educational materials (although not confined to, within, or by national1 like wolves. in school curricula), in church and historical borders than sexuality -Moya Cannon, "Hills" parliament and law and fiction.9 In- within motherhood, or sex by love, or deed, we (i.e., Irish) talk so much Irish women within the jurisdiction It is low-minded, not quite about the silence about sex in Ireland, ofIreland by legal prohibitions against "lit.crit,"and (worse) unsophisticated that there comes a point when you abortion.