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Biblically, it was the dual authority of God and Adam that caused “Woman” to come into being and name. In Genesis we have: “The Lord God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man. The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, And flesh of my flesh; She shall be called Woman, Because she was taken out of Man.’”
In Davis, was takes on significance. In plain view, childbearing and birth looks like woman “composing” another human being. This had to be inverted by patriarchal systems through language and myth-making, enforced by laws at politics. So in Corinthians we have: “For man did not come from woman, but woman from man.” God and Adam (and God’s “birthing” of Adam) came first, neither of them born of woman.
Our present speaker seems to be uttering herself, composing herself, a new alphabet, beginning from her own a and all of her language now to come fully informed (burdened? liberated?) by her being woman.
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And we so loved Lilith we named our eldest after her. When our gynecologist asked about the name, I told her about the legend. (She seemed a bit troubled by it). I suppose my wife and I wanted our daughter to have Lilith’s courage, to go even against your creator in a bid to preserve what’s in you and strong and and fair and worthy. Myths and legends don’t always give us character interior, but I suppose Lilith was naturally (or preternaturally!) self-defining. She didn’t need a bite of Knowledge to know what’s what.
Eve’s children would have to define themselves after a line of Adams, after a long history of seeing what men would do with the service of women. This isn’t so easy now, as maybe Davis also suggests, because as you well know even our terms of “definition” (grammar, agon, “make sense,” “be reasonable,” “know your place”) have been tainted, loaded in favor of male mastery.
Panic might be unavoidable. It could signal regression in the face of such a torrent of unknowns and what-nows. It could mean a fresh start.
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Printing this to be framed. How “Suddenly Afraid” can carry both these senses of fear. More, besides.
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Each word carries such weight. The first, because, suggests causality and rationality, claimed by male intellectuals as their province and dominion. Naming was (is?) Adam’s hobby. Om marks the spiritual “other” of rationality, a path to transcendence by and enclave of men repeatedly attempting to short out (and encompass) language by moving from its first vowel (from down the throat) to its last consonant (at the closing of the lips). Davis’s own owm captures this capturing and claims it, but not via the usual routes of history and tradition, but through a form that reminds me of what’s been called Dickinsonian stuttering.
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Handwriting, typing with a typewriter (as in Eliot’s time), and with our present computers. It’s been said that each brings its own beat and breath to literature. Maybe these affect us in deeper ways, down to our “wiring,” the way we think and talk about things. For one thing, our screens are flexible as texts (and identities), easy to correct and redefine (and with connectivity, to jump forward to associations, change minds, retrace, recant, redo) as opposed to the finality of a struck typewriter key (bring down the hammer) and the commitment of ribbon centimeters to a measure of thought.
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Maybe “man” was what the speaker was? And that sudden fear might have been a sort of gasp after liberation? Your post brings me back to the time when the word womyn was brought in as an alternative, a way to disown the claims of men on women.
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The blankness that attends the piece seems supportive of any reading such as memory loss or dementia. We might also consider more active methods of diminishing the sense of self: drugs, meditative practice, etc.
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Even law-breaking is “imposed,” yes! And perhaps the fear is epiphanic, recalling the angel’s “Be not afraid” message to Mary which moves the narrative right along to birth and the passion of Christ. But we may pause and consider the woman in transition, that fear before it was discouraged. We may dwell in “Mary was greatly troubled at his words...” In our poem, the woman is greatly troubled at her loss of words.
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a wa wam owm owamn womn
Sounds like an incantation, a summoning or its opposite: a release. The unit owm stands out for me, owamn seemed to spring right from it, complete but deranged from our usual reference: woman. The last word (might not be the last, as it is unchecked by a period) is a contraction (based on our reference), maybe akin to can’t, won’t, and couldn’t.
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