Saturday, June 25, 1994
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
The Spirituality of Female Poets
A conversation with Jane Hirshfield
Jane Hirshfield is the editor of “Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women” (HarperCollins, $22.50), an anthology that draws from the world’s major religious traditions and several indigenous cultures.
The poems—mystics, shamans, slaves, nuns, wives and mothers—celebrate the spirit and the physical world. Some of the better-known poets, including Sappho and Emily Dickinson, are the historical mentors of Hirshfield, herself an acclaimed poet who lives in Mill Valley. Both this anthology and Hirshfield’s third collection of poetry, “The October Palace,” were published this spring.
A member of Princeton University’s 1973 graduating class—the first to include women—Hirshfield, 41, has won numerous awards for her poetry, including a Guggenheim fellowship and a Pushcart Prize. But the religious path has been as integral to her life as the literary. In 1974, just out of college, she entered the San Francisco Zen Center. She spent eight years in full-time practice as a Zen student, including three at the Tassajara monastery, where she gave up writing altogether. There was no time. And though she eventually left, she has remained a practicing Buddhist and acknowledges the profound influence of that spiritual path on her poetry.
“My own preference is for a life of culture where you don’t separate a life of spirituality with from doing the dishes.”
Q You’re a poet in your own right. What made you decide to create an anthology of other women’s spiritual poetry?
A I began my research for the book in ’87 when I was helping my friend Stephen Mitchell, the translator, prepare an anthology of sacred poetry. He had a list of poets drawn up, and I looked at him and said, ‘That’s a great list, Stephen, but where are the women?’ He said, ‘I don’t know. Where are they?’ I started looking and I found some that are absolutely wonderful.
Like the Beguines. These were women who, between the 12th and 14th centuries, would have become nuns but for the fact that the church stopped supporting new convents. Under voluntary vows of chastity, poverty and good work, they created their own societal and physical structures. At the height of the movement, Beguinages had become virtual cities, housing up to 14,000 women and including hospitals, chapels, and even cathedrals within their walls. I think it is a very interesting model for women today. It’s an example of laywomen organizing their own communal living in a way never seen in any other part of the world. The church eventually suppressed them; it accused them of “heresy of the free spirit,” which is an idea that you could have an independent relationship to God.
Q What was it about the Beguines that attracted you so deeply?
A I loved their poetry; some of my favorite poetry in the book comes from them. For example, Mechtild of Magdeburg (13th century):
A fish cannot drown in water
A bird does not fall in air.
In the fire of its making,
Gold doesn’t vanish:
The fire brightens.
I also like the idea that you were allowed to come and then leave the Beguinage, and there was no stigma attached. As a student of Zen and someone who spent three years in monastic practice at Tassajara and then left for a more regular life, I understand the richness of that. It’s a training—not necessarily something you do for the rest of your life. My own preference is for a life of culture where you don’t separate a life of spirituality from doing the dishes. But having the rest of your life informed by that experience, and then going and having children—to me, that’s really inspiring.
Q Many of the poems in your book are, in fact, prayers. What is the difference between poetry and prayer?
A Poetry, at this point of time in America, is almost the way something looks like on the page. Prayer is the same use of language—highly concentrated, with a song quality to it. For example, the Osage Woman’s Initiation Song (early 20th century): “I have made a footprint, a sacred one./I have made a footprint, through it the blades push upward./I have made a footprint, through it the blades radiate… ”
That use of repetition characterizes poetry worldwide. It shows the same concentration we think of as characteristic of poetry. Most formal prayer is written as poetry.
Q You write that the theme of the book, in part, is that these are all women who broke with convention. Is that not equally true of male poets?
A When I went looking for these women, I became fascinated by their lives and the issues raised by the poems. One of the things I discovered about virtually all these women was some place where they had to break with the conventions of society. It has something to do with what happens when women speak in cultures where they aren’t encouraged to speak. Something forces them—an independence, a defiance, coupled with a strong sense of connection. The realization of your own connection to the sacred gives you the authority to speak.
One thing I loved about the book was that it’s filled not only with women of privileged background. This is ubiquitous. Spirituality is going to be a part of everyone’s life, and poetry or language to express that spirituality is going to come up for all human beings, regardless of their stature.
Q Are these “sacred” poems different from other women’s poetry—or is the condition of being a woman historically rooted in a sacred way of looking at the world?
A They’re an extension of other women’s poetry. Many cultures have defined the spiritual as being more the women’s realm. In some ways, these poems are not that much different from men’s poetry—especially if you compare mystics. But, in general, they tend to be more embodied, more particular, more grounded in the ways of the world. For example, the image of the house in the poem by Izumi Shikibu (late 10th-early 11th centuries): “Although the wind/ blows terribly here,/the moonlight also leaks/between the roof planks/of this ruined house.” It’s a generalization, of course. I don’t, myself, think that women’s spirituality is different from men’s. I think there are differences of expression rather than differences of experience.
Q Do you think many of these women regarded themselves as poets—or as religious aspirants?
A Sappho (7th century B.C.) was primarily a poet. The others were primarily people of a spiritual life who expressed themselves as poets. The remarkable thing about these poems is that they hold both the physical material world, I mean the body, and the spiritual world, the transcendent, ungraspable nature. The soul thrives in the flesh. What is celebrated is the good thing of the Earth. I think it’s harder for women —who are forced by their very physical bodies, reminded as they are every month of their connection to earth and the moon by their menstrual cycles and, of course, the bearing of children—I think it’s harder for women to say the sacred is apart from earth.
Q You write about “Saying the Great Yes,” the spirituality of affirmation. How did that influence your selection of poems?
A It very much influenced it. Every anthology will have its biases. I had mine. I wanted to find models of an affirmative women’s spirituality, women who showed the great joy of their connection to the sacred. For example, when I selected which poems of Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) to include, I did not select poems in which she bemoaned women’s contribution to original sin because I wanted to show our best side.
Q Writing a poem usually presumes a reader. For whom were these women writing?
A That’s not always true. I often write poems to discover what I’m feeling. Emily Dickinson clearly wrote not to be read but for herself. Inspiration means breathing and that’s what poets depend upon. I think it is said in the introduction that a woman who knows her own breathing knows herself.
I learned an entire history of women’s lives and other forms of spirituality by doing this book. It was wonderful, a treasure. I did it, basically, to counteract the idea that these women didn’t exist. The point of de-marginalizing them is to say they were there. Here they are. I did this book so Mechtild would be available. And because I think our image of the sacred needs to be fully rounded and not restricted to people who don’t look like us.
Copyright 1994 San Jose Mercury News
