Olga Broumas: Triple Muse

Length / Form A tripartite construction throughout: three sections of three stanzas, each with three lines.

Allusion to Classical figure This poem evokes the early formulation of three Muses, as recorded by Pausanias (Description of Greece, 9.39.2ff), rather than the nine who later came to be associated with the individual arts.

Allusion to Classical place 'Spiral Mountain ' is a literal rendering of 'Mount Helicon ', home of the Muses.

Relationship to Classical text Broumas refers to Hesiod's Theogony, adopting elements of his characterisation of the Muses (nine in Hesiod) and reshaping other aspects, from a feminist perspective. Like Hesiod she speaks as a poet, but also as embodiment of the Muse.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts 'of one mind' translates homophronos (Theogony, 60), whilst 'False things we've made seem true' evokes the proclamation of the Muses in the Theogony at lines 26-8. Broumas takes a more revisionary stance toward her source text in the lines 'It's been said, she is happy whom/ we, of the muses, love': a reworking of Hesiod's' 'happy is he whom the Muses love' (96-7).

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Robert Graves (1895-1985): The title of the poem is taken from a chapter in Graves' The White Goddess, which attempts to trace the relationship between the poet and the Muse. The associations he makes between worship of the early triad of Muses and forms of witchcraft are reflected in Broumas' references to divination (Graves 1948:386-87). More interestingly, the poem subverts the patriarchal, heterosexual construct of Graves' male poet, waiting for inspiration 'served up like dinner or sex' and female Muses who are debarred from an active role in the creative process, by constructing a vision of divinity in female form as precedent for her contemporary lesbian poetic. Elizabeth Gould Davis (1910–1974): Broumas' accompanying notes also refer to Davis' The First Sex. Inspired by the 'free' anthropological method of The White Goddess, and its central female deity, this work argues for the existence of prehistoric matriarchies. Despite extensive academic criticism (e.g. Hackett & Pomeroy 1972), the popular influence of its feminist stance is reflected in Broumas' manipulation of ancient texts and mythologies. Feminist mythopoetics: Beginning with O positions itself within an evolving discourse in female poetics through the use of mythological themes. Whereas her revisionary folk-tales, 'Rapunzel' and 'Cinderella', acknowledge a debt to Anne Sexton, here the classical material recalls H.D.'s goddess poems and the work of lesbian, feminist poets such as May Sarton and Adrienne Rich, who seek to destabilise mythic constructs and the patriarchal or heterosexual values which they codify (see also Carruthers 1983; Murray 2006:346; York 1992).

Comment Accompanying notes explain that 'Twelve Aspects of God' was written as part of a collaboration with painter Sandra McKee, with the aim to express 'the continuity [of the associated myths], and of female power, through the centuries to our own time' (much of the inspiration appears to be autobiographical – cf. 'Field': 1999:268). In fact, Broumas' subversive response to Graves' reading perhaps has as much to say about discontinuity in the reception of the myth.