In our terrifying times of overt misogyny now, a view of women’s history can serve us well. There are artifacts aplenty, and each is a symbol of a way of life and a world view. Beyond batik and blarney are rituals that are tied to self-sustenance and self-agency. Every culture that has women has women’s ways, sometimes hidden in hairdo, but nonetheless a ritual of feminine celebration.
Poetry has a well-established place in women’s history, and the ongoing efforts to suppress and marginalize women’s voices is endless evidence. Thus, offered to us as a new release is Donna Snyder’s As Meaningful As Any Other (Gutter Snob 2022), a perfect bound volume in trade size; an illustrated volume, with a number of images by Tezozomoc. The book is structured in sections, and each section has an image as a frontispiece, with one being repeated on the cover. The images themselves are digital art, saturated and warm toned, that employ a collage of a human woman and symbols such as antlers, roots, and our planet. The sections of the work are also titled symbolically, using roots, auguries, flight, awakening and crossroads. Snyder has taken fragments from other of her work and uses these as an introduction to each section, such as a fragment entitled “woman smiles” that opens the second section “auguries”:
Woman smiles, her face starred, exotic birds tattooed around her mouth, beneath her eyes, around her nose […] (11) that squares off the reader with this vision of the Divine Feminine.
The poems here are perhaps also prayers, with both overt and subtle symbolism. The last section of this text, “Crossroads”, includes the poem “ Her blood, a faded ribbon” that whispers of the moment when menstruation ceases, “ Her blood faded/ only a ribbon covered with dust”(46), a moment notable in women’s lives but rarely overtly celebrated. If the poems here are rituals, then the rituals themselves often involve visiting art museums and reading other poets as well. However, there’s also mention of acts of intimacy, such as “this little rhyme that filled my head upon awakening” with the lovely line “my lips awash in the taste of your unbathed back” (32). This is writing that is as much an account of a life as a collection of correspondence, there’s a tone of a woman telling her confident of the desert and the desert city’s denizens.
Written in a hybrid of free verse and prose, these pieces seem to echo from the lineage from which they draw. The book’s last piece, “Fool’s Moon” opens with the line “The Fool’s Moon leads ineluctably to darkness” (53) which goes on the include a dancing ritual of:
Moon paints snakes on her face. Copper bells ring. She dances, peculiarly festooned, as if time really exists […]
While the Fool’s Moon is now a minimally celebrated event, occurring every 28 years, ritualized dancing is still very much entrenched in both women’s and the wider, western culture. And while some readers may be mystified at the symbolism employed by Snyder, the symbols are common to certain types of tarot cards. There’s a sense of a tarot reading in this work, the sections and the admonitions, prayers and reminders that prompt each piece. The draw that would encompass the evidence given here speaks to the full moon and meteor shower that read this work since its arrival as a book. While this may amuse, it would be wise for booksellers of tarot too to include this volume in their inventory. And while a tarot draw, or a tarot-style poem draw might maybe remind us of our celestial seasons, there are those who are comforted by history, by this quiet and ancient wisdom.
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Su Zi is a writer, poet and essayist who produces a handmade chapbook series called Red Mare. She has been a contributor to GAS from back when it was called Gypsy Art Show, more than a decade ago.
Check out her author page on Amazon.
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