Mary: A Life In Verse
By
Patricia Monaghan
Dos
Madres Press
Loveland,
Ohio
ISBN:
978-1-939929-08-2
73
Pages
Review
by Dennis Daly
Spring
sparkled in every year with Mary’s especial procession around Hawthorne
Boulevard in my hometown of Salem Massachusetts, culminating in this mythical
woman’s crowning as “Queen of the Angels, Queen of the May.” As a prelude to
summer these festivities offered a fresh air escape from glum classrooms and
prickly nuns. Even Father McCarthy, our pastor, emerging from one of his deep
seasonal depressions, flickered an odd strangled grin here and there. Our
school, after all, was named St. Mary’s Grammar School, and our church The
Immaculate Conception. The Roman Catholic religion and our grade school
education seemed only appendixes to a powerful Marian cult/ subculture redolent
of feminine fertility and revolution.
Patricia
Monaghan’s posthumous collection of poems, Mary: A Life In Verse, humanizes the
mother of Jesus Christ in provocative and very engaging ways. She takes the awe
and ceremony (May processions included) that many of her fellow religionists
were brought up with and grounds them in the universality of ordinary life.
Monghan’s Mary experiences life as a young Jewish peasant woman in Galilea. She
carries all the sensitivities of her gender, her adolescence, and her place in
time. Certainly there is a bit of naiveté in Monaghan’s Mary, but opportunity
and ambition also drive her. In the collection’s opening poem, The
Annunciation, Monaghan explains,
…
there was a moment when I
hesitated.
I remember a wild desire
to
be left alone, to be obscure again
and
safe—I wanted the angel to leave,
to
find some other girl for his strange
invitation.
I was frightened. I heard
a
sound like a fabric rending or
the
tearing of flesh or a great tree
falling.
And yet: I answered.
I
leaned towards the angel
and,
with a sound like wings,
the
future was born in me.
These
conflicting passions inherent in a young woman’s pride and sexuality give the
poem its metaphorical underpinnings.
Early
on in the book the poet spins out her own version of The Magnificat, the
ancient Christian canticle in which Mary, now pregnant, details her transformative
power to her cousin Elizabeth (also pregnant with John the Baptist). Mary’s
faith or transcendent delusion magnifies and exalts her humble ordinariness
into a subconscious (or perhaps, devotional) position of power. The poem
entitled simply Magnificat puts it this way,
…
greatest of all: there are times
when
I am whole, when I dance
with
each breath and each word,
when
my consciousness dwells in all
my
parts at once. When this happens,
I
am earth, I am stars, I am incarnate god.
The
poet intersperses many wonder filled and intriguing illustrations throughout
the text. Henry Ossawa Tanner’s oil on canvas entitled The Annunciation
absolutely hypnotizes, while an Old Woman from Tajikistan, a Steve Evans’
photograph, complements the airiness and timelessness of the verse composition.
In addition Monaghan breaks up the continuity of free verse pieces with what
amounts to prose poems. “Prose” does not do them justice since some of them
truly soar poetically. Here is the opening of my favorite prose section,
I
COULD HAVE BEEN ONE who suffers little joy,
little
pain, one who redeems nothing, is guilty of nothing.
Except
for that instant when I felt power spread through
My
body.
It
was in my flesh, not in my soul, that the miracle took
place.
Life shone through my body. At the moment I
agreed,
I embodied love and power. Rivers rose in flood
with
my tears, the sea grew hot with my lust, the wind bat-
tered
in fury when I raged.
I
became the world. I had no doubts that this child was
intended
by every power I knew.
Oh,
angels toy with us so!
After
the death of her son, Mary struggles with her grief and has, seemingly, lost
her faith. She goes to the temple seeking comfort and understanding—perhaps.
She finds rage. A well- dressed kohl-eyed woman laughs at Mary and mocks her to
a companion. Mary responds in Monaghan’s poem The Rich Woman Despises My Tears
with the hatred of all humanity. She says,
…
My arm,
before
my face, froze.
What
would he
say
to that woman,
to
her companion?
He
would say,
forgive,
forgive,
they
too are in pain.
They
are small
and
helpless. He
would
say, forgive.
I
say, may your
children
die …
Mary
does recover her faith, a faith that sorrow has changed profoundly. She
understands the river of grace and the purpose of a conscience in a world of
ignorance and cruelty. Her original naiveté she wills into a universal
canniness, an all-seeing, but not quite religious, wisdom. Monaghan relates a
bit of Mary’s spirit in her poem Alleluia. Here Mary shares a sublime moment,
…
another gift came to me:
a
man walked by, playing a flute.
It
was late summer, and leaves
Had
fallen from the palm
Beside
the house, and one leaf
leapt
up as he passed, leapt up
just
as the melody piped sharply
higher,
and held a high note,
and
the sun winked at that moment,
from
behind a cloud, and a sharp
scent
of new figs filled the air,
and
I was song, suddenly song,
I
remembered in my deepest soul
something
I had always known:
that
our only purpose is to live,
to
be the eyes of god watching
this
world…
The
meek will inherit the earth, the son of Mary of Nazareth once proclaimed.
Patricia Monaghan (named at birth Mary Patricia Monaghan) clearly agrees. Her
book magnifies a simple naïve young woman into a goddess of secular goodness
and the preternatural hope of mankind. Blessed be the legend of Mary. And
blessed be the muse of Mary Patricia Monaghan.
