Olga Broumas: Woman with Child

Length / Form One of Broumas's longer poems, in free verse.

Allusion to Classical figure Demeter and Persephone represent divided aspects of Broumas' identity.

Allusion to Classical place Ritualised imagery (‘sacrament', 'ritual suicide', cleansing etc.) evokes the Eleusian Mysteries; poetic journey back into memory to recover her 'childbride', infant self; descent of stairs, echo Persephone's passage into the underworld.

Relationship to Classical text The reference 'tricked by pomegranate seeds' and the emotional reunion of ‘mother' and ‘child' corresponds to the version of the myth given in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, although the relationship between the texts is not programmatic.

Close translation of words/phrases/excerpts 'Without your will'  recalls Persephone's account of being made to eat pomegranate seeds ‘unwillingly' (akousan, 413) and abducted ‘greatly against her will' (poll' aekazomenen, 432). More explicit are the references to Demeter, pomegranate seeds and the underworld

Classical/post-Classical intertexts Christian nativity/resurrection: The image of a 'child bride Mary', who is both virgin and divine mother, mirrors Broumas' refracted sense of self as Demeter and Persephone. In delivering her lost child on the 'Winter solstice' she becomes analogous to both Mary/Demeter and the resurrected Christ/Persephone. The 'acid disk' and the promise 'no more flesh to chew', evoke the Christian sacrament, as well as Persephone's pomegranate seeds. Adrienne Rich (b.1929): In the prose work Of Woman Born, Adrienne Rich draws clear parallels between the Demeter/Persephone myth and the Christian resurrection story (Rich 1977, p.237ff), whilst describing the mother-daughter reunion as Demeter's 'reconciliation with her lost self' ( ibid. p.240). Broumas' 'gaslight labyrinth' also recalls the 'Bunsen-flame turned low and blue' in Rich's poem ‘Cartographies of Silence, 8' which evokes the rituals of the Eleusinian Mysteries (The Dream Of A Common Language, 1978; see also Foley 1994: 48 on the use of torches in the Mysteries). Susan Brownmiller (b.1935): The words 'Without your will' serve the dual effect of recalling Persephone's account of her abduction whilst alluding to Brownmiller's Against Our Will, a study of rape which achieved wide readership after it's publication in 1975. Although Brownmiller is dismissive of the insights Greek myths might afford on the subject of rape, Broumas draws on the raw and shocking vernacular of the modern text as a means of exploring the unsettling theme of sexual maturation embodied in the myth and alluded to in her earlier poem ‘Demeter' (Brownmiller 1975:283; Beginning with O, 1977). Eleusinian Mysteries: In 1978, the year prior to the publication of Broumas' poem, Wasson, Hoffman and Ruck published their controversial thesis, which claimed that ergot, administered through the kykeon drunk by initiates, was responsible for the ecstatic visions which attended the Mysteries. Broumas' hallucinatory enactment of these rites begins with the ritual sacrament of an 'acid disk', which facilitates the exploration of her divided self.