Broken
into four sections, the full-circle narrative takes the reader through the
speaker’s concrete and metaphysical
origins; the speaker’s Self in relation to a marriage; and finally, through a
dialogue with the mind during a seven-day meditation retreat. The poem "Habrienta / Hungry",
opens the book in Spanish and returns as the final poem, serving as a framing
device whose double-mindedness haunts the entire book.
In the first section, The Questions Themselves, we find the speaker defining herself through metaphors grounded in nature and religion: “I’m from seeking God like the last pear on the tree in October,” in the poem “Origins” and later in the poem “The Questions Themselves,” “Some days I’m my own private congregation.” This segment of poems demonstrates a longing to break, subvert, and reorganize the physical boundaries of identity:
Always
the surprise when I step
on
a dance floor, salsa playing,
side
eyes thrown my way, tightened
hold
on their men, the why that white girl
dance
so good? My
dance partner’s slow
nod,
his come on girl, show me what you got.
“Ain’t
Nobody’s Business”
This
poem, like many others, demonstrates Mali’s assertion that identity is
important, even when transmogrified. And it is with this reverence toward the scrambling
of Self (as I like to imagine it), that the speaker is liberated. What Mali
then encourages is a Self that includes nature, religion, politics—the
collective unconscious as expressed in all humanity. It takes confidence to do
what Mali does; acknowledge that a speaker’s identity off the page often informs
what does and doesn’t make it onto the page; that race, gender, and identity are
important—
Not surprisingly, most of the
speaker’s formulations about the nature of God come in the form of inquiries.
This strategy serves as a buffer, a way to take a critical stance against an
entity without accepting direct ownership of it. The effect of this technique
is to ask the reader or to lead the reader to ask, “Where is God, really?” and,
later, in “What if God is the cat who bats prey about the room and grunts with
pleasure” and then again in “The desire to please turned river of red: still
God?” This technique, though apropos when dealing with multitudinous concepts, reflects
little risk. At the same time, however,
the title poem, Steady, My Gaze,
moves against this trajectory, embodying a straightforward approach that
topples Mali’s neutrality and introduces the reader to a braver, more assertive
voice. This poem, ultimately, dissolves the
aforementioned apprehension in that it serves as a material invitation to the
Real, a time for absolution and truth:
This
female body, bound
by
want and hunt, rotting
flophouse,
movable casket.
Bleeding,
I run. A storm gathers.
Lightning
antlers to the sea, trees
shudder
leaves to the ground.
I
will lock racks with God.
Find
yourself another
woman
to wound.
What man doesn’t wreck
fights
for each breath
until
God finishes the job.
The following section, I Celebrate the Husband, portrays a self
more firmly identified and ready to explore new beliefs. It details the
quandary of a woman faced with the question of how to separate past violent experiences
with men from her current relationship, a dilemma both vital to understand yet
unquantifiable. In spite of the inherent difficulties, Mali manages, “to open
myself to my husband I have to / remember he is not the man who raped me / nor
the men who have tried.” It is this type of redirection of the mind that stands
out in this collection—again and again. It is the poet’s maneuvering through
surface thoughts and immediate feelings that ultimately allow her to establish
a higher and more authentic emotional self.
The final section of Mali’s
collection, Silent Retreat, further
reflects the speaker’s preoccupation with the mechanism of Self as seen through
the mind. Mali uses minimally titled poems “Day One” through “Day “Seven” to
illustrate a seven-day rendezvous of the Self—with the Self. This last section,
though fluently connecting with and continuing previous motifs, slows the
expansiveness of previous sections in an effort to meditate and meet the mind where
it is at. Though gracefully accomplished, the exuberance and drive experienced
prior is lost. Metaphorically, the last section is an unexpected docking of a
ship. And because this ship once led you
through beautiful and unexpected terrain—you want more. This, in all honesty,
is probably not a bad thing. Instead, it is testament to the talent and strength
of the speaker.
Steady,
My Gaze
is a book that challenges ideologies about the Self and God. It is a book about
identity both on the page and off of the page. And when Mali says, “Give me
your hand. Let’s shatter the idols between us,” you want to. You do it because
you know the journey of the self, as she has portrayed it, is one of the most
earnest journeys, one that heals and moves all of us toward compassion, acceptance,
and truth.
------------------------------
Diana Marie Delgado, poet and playwright, grew up in the San
Gabriel Valley. A graduate of the poetry programs at the University of
California-Riverside and Columbia University, she served as Poet-in-Residence
of Northern New Mexico College and was awarded the 2005 James D. Phelan Award
in Poetry from the San Francisco Foundation. Her work has appeared in the Indiana Review, North American Review, the Journal
of Chicana/Latino Studies and Ploughshares.
The recipient of the 2010 Letras Latinas
Residency Fellowship, she was awarded a month-long stay at the Anderson Center
in Red Wing, Minnesota. Her poetry collection, Late-Night Talks with Men I
Think I Trust, was a finalist for the 2012 Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, and
her short play, Desire Road, will be
given a public reading in the Summer 2012. She is a member of the CantoMundo and Macondo writing communities. You
can follow her at the blog, Pom-PomRituals / Tiny Umbrellas.
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