![]() So they make the whole way to the gates of Hell, and he’s outside, he’s in the light, and he turns around to look, but she is still not quite out. And because his music was so lovely, they said yeah, under one condition: that he walks ahead, she walks behind, and that he never turns around at any point while they’re leaving Hades and that if he does, she’ll be taken back to Hades forever. And Eurydice was killed early in their relationship, and taken down to Hades, the place of the dead, the underworld.Īnd Orpheus goes on this epic journey to Hades to bring her back, and he woos the population of the underworld, including Hades and Persephone, the queen of destruction - he woos them with his singing and pleads that he can take Eurydice back to the overworld. They were lovers, and they were really the lovers of each other’s lives. And the story of Orpheus and Eurydice is from Greek mythology. The poem’s title is “Eurydice, Turning,” and there’s a reference to Orpheus in the middle of the poem, too. And in that is profound skill and understanding, and deeper than both of those is the most extraordinary form of love. And he’s asking her if she wants to say hello - nothing too much, not “have a conversation,” not “say how you are,” not “say what’s going on” - just “say / hello,” nice and easy. And he’s reminding her of her daughter’s name, Rita. And he’s reminding her that she is a mother. The brother says 10 words at the start: “It’s your daughter, Mom! Want to say / hello to Rita?” And in those 10 words - they sound so simple, so easy, but there is so much information, because he’s reminding the mother that she has a daughter. And yet there’s lament in that, because there isn’t a conversation that’s going to happen between Rita Dove and her mother. And Rita Dove is saying that she was “wasp-waisted in her home-sewn coral satin // with all of Bebop yet to boogie through.” She paints a picture of a magnificent person, who sews, who dances, who loves music - so much vivacity, so much life ahead of her. Each evening my rote patter, his unfailing cheer.” He sounds like such a nice guy.Īnd then he passes the phone over to the mother, and on a good day, she’ll say, “Hello, Rita.” And it’s amazing the way there’s coding in this poem, even just in two words: “Hello, Rita.” And then the poem says: “A good day, then / the voice as fresh as I remember.” And a good day seems to bring with it the kind of pain that comes with a good day, because with a recognition like that, simple words - “Hello, Rita,” which her mother must have said so many times throughout their life - there comes with that all of this longing to be her daughter again.Īnd those roles seem to be reversed, and her mother is now back in a time when she’s younger than Rita Dove’s daughter now. And she phones him every evening: “Each evening I call home and my brother answers. The narrative of the poem is that Rita Dove is phoning her brother, and the brother seems to be the primary carer for their mother. In the last part of the poem, Rita Dove says, “I put myself back into a trance.” And then she continues to talk, about “weather, gossip, news.” She has to almost adjust her sense of presence to herself, before she can move from talking to the mother who is her mother, but who nonetheless seems to be present in a different time, and then modifying that to go back to talk to her brother. And this poem connects with powerful insight about the sadness, about the almost teasing way where a person’s voice sounds like themself and still is themself, but it is a changed self, and that people can be in different times at the same time, and that there is all kinds of ways of lament and sadness and adjustment that’s needed for that. And that could be a parent or a spouse or a partner or a neighbor or a friend it could be yourself. I thought of so many people that I know, who are living around and with someone whose memory is fading. “and keep talking: weather, gossip, news.” ![]() “in the only season of his life that mattered,īut who she’d always been to him, for him. ![]() “with all of Bebop yet to boogie through. Wasp-waisted in her home-sewn coral satin “Each evening I call home and my brother answers.Įach evening my rote patter, his unfailing cheer. Reading poems that speak about the experience of change and reading old mythologies where you hear an echo of yourself can give you an accompaniment to the change, to say, you’re not alone. ![]() And often, change can make you feel isolated. Life is so full of changes, you know - friendships come or go, or relationships end, or someone dies, or someone becomes so ill or immobilized that the relationship needs to change. Pádraig Ó Tuama: My name is Pádraig Ó Tuama, and one of the reasons I love poetry and old mythologies is that they help me to navigate change. ![]()
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