Marjorie Evasco s Dreamweavers by Noelle Leslie dela Cruz, Ph.D.

De La Salle University

Reading & writing (as) Woman

y In this paper, I inquire into the

ontology of poetic thinking as it serves the goals of feminist philosophizing about otherness. y I focus on Filipino poet Marjorie Evasco s Dreamweavers (1987), especially as it makes use of language in the re-construction of gender.

Statement of the problem

(1) Is there a relationship between the feminine and

poetic writing? (2) Can poetry serve the feminist goal of critiquing otherness?

Main thesis

The poetic form can construct an ontology of gender that overcomes the philosophical problem of otherness

A close reading of Marjorie Evasco s Dreamweavers

The philosophical & the poetic

y The poetic and philosophical sensibilities have long

been contrasted with each other. The former is perceived to be sensuous and affective, while the latter is understood as abstract and cognitive.

The philosophical & the poetic

y In the Western tradition, the

opposing natures of the two are famously articulated by Plato in Book X of The Republic, in which he refers to the ancient quarrel between literature and philosophy.

A comparison of two sensibilities

The philosophical
y Abstract y Ideal y Rational y Logic y Argument y Literal y Objective y Cognition, reflection y Utilitarian

The poetic
y Concrete y Embodied, sensuous y Emotive y Narrative y Myth, imagery, metaphor y Figurative y Subjective y Intuition, reverie y Aesthetic

Dualistic thought and the othering of the feminine in philosophy

y The question of gender has long been neglected in the

writings of philosophers (e.g. Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Heidegger) who have inquired into the affinities and disaffinities between poetry and philosophy. y This neglect is unfortunate because the lens of gender best exposes the pernicious dualisms of thought and language.

Feminist philosophy: Key points

The predominance of men and the general absence of women in philosophy The application of male standards in universal accounts of life and human nature The phallogocentrism and somatophobia of traditional western philosophy

The denigration of women s nature and experience by male philosophers

Dualistic thought and the othering of the feminine in philosophy

Masculine-identified terms Abstract Spirit Transcendence Mind Reason Objective Self Justice Public Political Feminine-identified terms Concrete Flesh Immanence Body Emotion Subjective Other Care Private Personal

Poetry as a way out of dualism

From Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry by Jpoet ane Hirshfield (1998), page. 17

In ACB of Reasing, Ezra Pound describes poetic meaning as taking three primary forms. First, he names melopoeia, a poem s music. Second, there is logopeia, a poem s intellectual component. We come now to this third power: phanopoeia, the making of images.

Poetry as a way out of dualism

From Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry by J Jane Hirshfield (1998), page. 114

good poetry carries broad information within brief speech. Image in particular, by gathering many energies toward a single end, creates an intense compression of meaning; it carries into the mind the solidity, particularity, and multifacetedness of actual objects. Such concreteness is a handle: it can be grasped. It must also be turned. That turning opens the reader into a place of enlarged awareness, where different connotations may resonate together. Before the slipperiness of unformed thought, the image offers purchase; to the stolidity of things, it offers imagination s alchemical, stirring powers.

Poetry as a way out of dualism

From Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry by Jane Hirshfield (1998), page. 16

y To be aware of a poem s effects aware of the expectations raised by each new word and aware of how the poem satisfies and changes those expectations throughout its course does not require naming every moment s strategic gesture. It requires only our alert responsiveness, our presence to each shift in the currents of language with an answering shift in our own being.

Evasco s poetics in Dreamweavers

y In The Other Voice: Reply to Anzaldua, a paper that prefaces Dreamweavers, Evasco writes about growing up with the womenfolk of her family in Bohol and hearing their stories y The women sent their brothers to school by weaving and selling tikog and romblon mats, at a time when women were not allowed to travel alone and studied, if at all, only the homemaking arts

Evasco s poetics in Dreamweavers

y Born woman in a different time

under different circumstances, I had the chances Nanay Tinay never had. I grew up in many schools which taught me the power of language and the language of power. I was trained too well to look at everything from a distance: how to evoke with words the life in the mountains without holding Nanay Tinay s hands and letting her speak

Evasco s poetics in Dreamweavers

y

how to judge the pitcher s form without putting into the picture the village woman s bent back straightening ever so briefly at the well before she is bent over again; how to follow the proper rules of language without even asking why I had to invoke the divine or the human only in the masculine. (page 11)

Evasco s poetics in Dreamweavers

y This language of exclusion cut

up my tongue and my dream life into several separate pieces. It is this language that excludes our foremothers from our books, and continues to push us to the periphery of things, render us invisible, separate us from each other, maim our bodies and our spirits. (11)

Evasco s poetics in Dreamweavers

y In the long process of awakening

to the deepest levels of my creative life s fragmentation, I have recently come to terms with the healing art of speaking in tongues. I have remembered our mothers original language, the metaphors of connectedness. No longer is it enough to know how to manipulate the word-thoughts so that they sound clever, objective, universal

Explanation for the book cover

y The Itneg sorcerer s blanket

integrates the mata (eye) motif and the ancient Asian key design. Both eye and key designs relate to the sense of an integrated SELF. In archaic artmaking that self was expressed as the Universal Female or the Great mother archetype. Our research shows continued use until century of blankets with these designs by female sorcerers to communicate with divinity. Marian Pastor Roces

Dreamweavers by Marjorie Evasco

We are entitled to our own definitions of the worlds we have in common: earth house (stay) water well (carry) fire stove (tend) air song (sigh) ether dream (die)

Dreamweavers by Marjorie Evasco

and try out new combinations with key words unlocking power house on fire sing! stove under water stay, earth filled well die

Dreamweavers by Marjorie Evasco

The spells and spellings of our vocabularies are oracular in translation one woman in Pagnito-an and another in Solentiname still another in Harxheim and many other women naming half the world together

Dreamweavers by Marjorie Evasco

can must be will move their earth house their fire water to their song their dreams well.

Conclusion
Is there an essential relationship between the feminine and poetic writing? Yes. The feminine has been traditionally devalued and marginalized in various discourses. Poetry and the literary arts are othered in Western rationalistic philosophy. The poetic sensibility is closer to the feminine-identified set of terms. Thus, to poeticize is to make use of a writing form a way of thinking which is feminine-identified, regardless of whether one is male or female.

Conclusion
Can poetry serve the feminist goal of critiquing otherness? Yes. Poetry provides a new way of expressing gender that transcends, overcomes, or reconciles the dualisms of abstract thought. It does this by way of the literary turning, i.e. a transformation on an old way of thinking into a new one which is accompanied by a shift in being. Evasco s poem Dreamweavers is a case in point.