What if Demeter, the timeless fertility goddess of ancient Greek myth, slipped through a crack into the twenty-first century, shook off her ankle bracelets, corn tassels, and garlands, and began a tour of our improbable culture? Award-winning poet Susan McCaslin exercises the profound mother-daughter trauma forged in the Demeter-Persephone myth with unapologetic modernity. This sequence takes on a novel life all its own: Hades steals away the maiden into a cult/culture of distorted body image, addiction, high anxiety, and rampant consumerism. Mother Demeter must negotiate this alien world of health clubs, paparazzi, and so-called reality shows locked in spiritual winter. McCaslin's lyrics are by turns profound, hilarious, and devastating as she journeys to the heart of a mother's love for her daughter. Here is poetry that seeks ties to the past inside the present, poetry that speaks to us all.
Authors
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Description conventions
- rda
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- C811/.54
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 22
- Distributor
- Canadian Electronic Library (Firm),
- General Note
- Poems Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- ISBN
- 9780888647580 9780888645517
- LCCN
- PR9199.3.M42368
- LCCN Item number
- D46 2011eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- CaBNVSL
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (125 pages)
- Published in
- Ottawa, Ontario
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)thg00974271 (OCoLC)869282844 (CaOOCEL)452854
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Transcribing agency
- CaBNVSL
Table of Contents
- Front Cover 1
- Title Page 6
- Copyright 7
- Contents 8
- Demeter Goes Skydiving 12
- Foreword 14
- Invocations 16
- 1 An Epigram for the Muses 16
- 2 Muse/Music 17
- Demeter Goes Skydiving 18
- Demeter and Hekate do Lunch at the Savoy Grill 19
- Pluto Fails to Eviscerate Himself of Despair 21
- Hades’ Gym 22
- Persephone in Hades 24
- Demeter, Greiving, Avoids Grains 25
- Demeter Tries to Adopt 26
- Was She Forced to Eat the Pomegranate Seeds? 28
- Demeter, Drowning, Remembers a Lover of Her Youth 30
- Demeter Speaks Truth to the Powers 31
- Persephone Stands Stalled Before the Shrine of Catherine of Siena 33
- Persephone Sits in the Silence 34
- Persephone Tours the Underground 35
- Persephone Hears a Layered Singing 36
- Hades Forwards his Case 38
- Underground Olympics 40
- Demeter Pauses at the Foot of the Kokanee Glacier 42
- Why did I Eat the Pomegranate? 43
- Demeter's Rage 44
- Demter Wanders the Globe 45
- Rumour's Heyday 47
- Demter Laughs 49
- Demeter Opens the Mysteries 50
- Great-Grandmother Steps In 51
- Demter Has a Short Colloquy with Her Inner Gaia 52
- A Nude Demter Descending a Stairway 53
- Demter Commits Osmosis with the Black Madonna of Russia 54
- Persephone Finds Ruth on the Threshing Floor 55
- Demeter in Iraq 56
- Hades Traffics in Corn 58
- Demeter Ascends Mount Norman on Pender Island, British Columbia 60
- Demter, Bored in Her Hotel Room, Watches High Noon 61
- Demeter Flicks the Remote to Extreme Makeover and Writes About it Later 64
- Demeter Tries to Adopt Britney Spears 66
- Hymn for a Toxic Culture 68
- Demeter Works on Non-Attachment 69
- Demeter, Exiting the Mother Role, Falls into Presence 70
- Demeter's Drum 71
- Old Love 74
- Arctic Sophia 76
- Gaia 79
- Immagini di Paradiso 81
- Old Love 82
- Turtle Love 84
- How to Love an Old Dog Without Anthropomorphism or Sentimentality 85
- Gatineau Parable 87
- I Heave Heard the Cows Lowing for their Calves 88
- Nexus of Bliss 89
- My Mother's Hands 90
- Cohort of Solitiude 91
- The Lonliness of Old Women 93
- Homing 95
- Dreams of Bodhisattva 96
- The Gospel of Mary Magdalene 97
- Halloween Night on Skytrain 98
- Magdalene 99
- Border Boogie (1969) 100
- A Glosa for Toni on her Sixtieth Birthday 105
- Beloved, Unparaphrasable (30 Years) 107
- This World is Still Possible 108
- Together, We Are Rain (A Vancouver Poem) 109
- Earth As It Is 111
- Eros the Greater 112
- Arctic Articulations 113
- Corona Anniversaire 118
- Notes 128
- Acknowledgements 132
