[book review] Giving Birth to Yourself as a Poet: A Solitary Woman by Pamela A. Babusci — Don’t Wait as I Did!
Pamela A. Babusci is an award-winning haiku/tanka and haiga artist. I have reviewed her A Solitary Woman in Writers & Lovers Cafe, Spring 2014 issue.
You will likely fall for Pamela A. Babusci. Her powerful literary persona is scattered in electrifying bits of poetry and color all throughout our literary landscape — a beauty to behold.
But in the slim paperback titled A Solitary Woman, for the first time, we get the beauty 146-poem strong, starting with a rude awakening:
will I be remembered
as a poet
a lover or a fool?
wild asters flooding
in autumn rains
You shall fall for a woman who gets stood up, fooled, and downtrodden, but who won’t budge. A woman betrayed, underestimated, and passed over, who yet wouldn’t clam up. Finally, you shall definitely fall for a woman who would grab a pen and tell it all:
six years old
always trying to please
my mother
by being the
surrogate mom
A woman who suffers the indignity of not only being in her autumn years, so shameful in America, but also, in addition, of being childless. No man would let her bear his child!
But her mothering desire is overwhelming. The image of getting enveloped in the flesh is particularly strong in this tanka:
I want to sleep
in the field of wild poppies
let their
red flesh envelop me
& my broken heart
So ultimately, we realize that the solitary woman is not solitary. She has been in a love relationship with poetry. In fact, she has been committed — engaged, and betrothed — to the Tanka, her bona fide lover.
As a result, Pamela A. Babusci is not childless. She has actually given birth to the most beautiful child she could have ever conceived — herself.
her porcelain skin
newly washed like
a freshwater pearl
she awaits her lover’s footprints
across the dewy path
So this skinny book, A Solitary Woman, is actually a testimonial of Pamela A. Babusci’s rebirth. Impregnated by Tanka, the poetess gives birth to herself as a poet.
Does it ring a bell?
As a poet, I admit I waited too long to give birth to my new self. Too damn long. The new me I carried around was too hard to predict. I bet I’m not alone in feeling that.
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