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Mirela Vlaica Ciocan

The Rib

The Rib is the expression of a feminist protest. It is Eves rebellion against a

patriarchal society where the man has always shadowed women. Eve is grey,

colourless, lifeless, possessed by an egocentric Adam. Men perpetuate the false idea

that Eve was spawned from a rib, therefore she claims her real origins as she is the

daughter of wide skies. Her being arises from life itself and not from the wedge of

bone.

The modern Eve rediscovers herself as mother- nature with its feminine

force that gives birth and governs life itself. There is a backward movement to the

primordial time, beneath apple trees, to the beginning of history when she [was]

singular as he [was] and so alone. Eve claims this initial moment of freedom and

power.

Anorexic

I see this poem as a rebellion against a male dominated society. During ages

women have been submitted to this patriarchal way of living, and to achieve their

liberation sometimes women have to fight against their own prejudices. Many of them

have accepted the idea that the woman is just an object, an image and to be socially fit

means to respect masculine laws. Loosing the control over their own minds and bodies

is traumatic.

Flesh is no longer part of the self, it is heretic, it is not normal for this

society. It has transformed into a witch that has to be burnt. The idea of fire is

repeated in the next stanza when it has to burn the feminine marks of the body, a

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sexuality imposed by tradition: the curves and papas and wiles. The poet does not

speak about a purifying fire but a self- destroying one. There is a total alienation of the

self in the next lines; she imposes the half- truths until the self renounces its

happiness. The biblical idea of milk and honey refers to abundance and, to a certain

extent, to happiness. She is empty, without hunger, a bitch, starved and

curveless, skin and bone, punished yet she has learned her lesson.

The next line, thin as a rib refers to the beginning, the Genesis, the

masculinity. There is a mixture of masculinity ( a sensuous enclosure, the song of his

breath, his sleeping side) and femininity ( How warm was and wide, a warm

drum) but then it fades until the femininity disappears and converges into masculinity

(I will slip back to him again). There, back to the primordial moment, caged she

will grow angular and holy, pain past, forgetting the fall- the loss of Paradise-

into dark and needs.

The reference to python remembers the biblical myth of the temptation

which ended with the fall from the Eden but also to the Greek Python killed by Apollo.

Snakes have been associated to the symbol of phallus in many cultures, therefore into

python needs could also refer to mens sexual needs. We would talk in that case about

a complete liberation of women, they would become, in this context, the masters of their

desires and sexual needs.

District and Circle

With Heaneys poem the reader has the chance to transform a dull trip with

the underground in an incredible voyage to the very heart of darkness. District and

Circle are two stations of the same underground line, Edgeware Road, site for the

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terrorist attacks in 2005. The line becomes in this context the corridor, the union between

life and death. At the entrance of the subway people have to pay their coins, as the dead

pay their coin to Charon for passing the river Styx. The escalators ascending and

descending constitute the mystic Axis Mundi, the connection between the Sky , Earth and

Hell. On these escalators, the human being loses its self and power upon his own body:

We were moved along, upstanding.

Elsewhere, underneath, an engine powered,

Rumbled, quickened, evened, quieted.

There he missed the light and has to wander in a labyrinth. Each another level down is a

step forward to death. The pushy newcomers make a human chain underneath the

vault and there in the galleried earth he is crowd-swept, strap-hanging/ My lofted arm a-

swivel like a flail. The noise is everywhere, metallic and unpeaceful; tunes from a tin,

whistle, the music larked, rumbled, noises, growl, centrifugal. The only relict / of

all that [he] belonged to] is the reflection in the mirror. The mirror, too, has an interesting

symbolism. In some cultures it is associated to life and death. It reflects ourselves and

shows how we are, but it is believed that they can keep forever the soul of the dead.