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ladynutelladuck 's review for:
Finding Mother God: Poems to Heal the World
by Carol Lynn Pearson
Second update 11/28/23 since I forgot my pre-reading thoughts from April when I placed the hold:
I like Seeking Heavenly Mother's review on her blog, but I would challenge her last idea (and that expressed by at least one other reviewer here) about wishing there were fewer traditionally female aspects portrayed. Those traditionally female qualities are already powerful on their own, even though society has belittled and underappreciated them. Wishing that the author's portrayal of maternal deity had more traditionally masculine aspects perhaps shows an unconscious influence from society that this is the only way you can have power, and that's not true. I do appreciate that it can be hard to balance how characteristics are portrayed and our perception of power, though, especially in such a personal and fluid form as poetry and art.
Update 11/24/23: as I went through the highlighted portions of things I liked, I realized there was a lot more than I thought and a lot more than my initial review makes it sound like I enjoyed. I also found myself not returning the book right away like I thought, but rereading it. There are still some poems I don't care about and those few content/doctrine/idea things explained below that I actively dislike, but once I got over the shock of the style (and just rolled my eyes and got on with it for some), I enjoyed it more and could see more value and/or insight in a few additional ones. Maybe I'll raise the rating to 3.5. I'd like to make it higher due to the topic and the varied and valuable ways she approaches it, but she would need to cut several poems and a few lines in others for me to give a higher rating. I would like to have a physical copy of that imaginary abridged version.
Original review 11/15/23:
I think I prefer my poetry in small doses. I read it in two sittings and while it was short, it could have been shorter. Some of her thoughtful writings flowed nicely and worked for me as poetry. Others were more like notes you take in preparation for an essay, but she decided they were best left as-is, assuming that as poems (aka lines broken up to look poetic) people could fill in the gaps themselves rather than her making it too formed, but that usually ended up sounding like random writing. There was more of that than I expected.
Sometimes it seemed like she had a shower thought and tried to make it more substantial (through either of those forms of "poetry"), but that made it less impactful and more odd even when we could see the connection. As tweets those could have been interesting observations, but trying to make them poems was too pretentious or weird and therefore harder to take seriously (ironically, like the Twitter one). Since it took until November for my hold placed in April to come through, I assumed that popularity meant there was more depth and saturation of feeling and less of the aforementioned writing that felt like non-poetry and filler. Oh well. The style doesn't have to be my cup of tea (though that would help it resonate more). For those issues I have with the writing, I'd give it three stars maximum. For content, maybe 3.5 (there is stuff that's higher but there was just so much else that wasn't as relevant or meaningful).
There were a few content/doctrine/idea things I took issue with: assuming you know the "one true lesson" Jesus was teaching about a parable, mistaking the tree whose fruit Eve took as the Tree of Life when it was actually the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, assuming Heavenly Mother is the Holy Ghost, and subverting the authority God has put in place for the revelation of doctrine. Other speculative things felt more innocuous, and wondering/imagining like that doesn't bother me.
Of what was left, though, I liked a lot. Too much to post here, so it's over on my blog (https://angelawroteit.wordpress.com/2023/11/17/finding-mother-god-poetry-quotes/). Of those, here are my favorites:
"I live in a Motherless house. / They are good to me here / but I find that no kindly / patriarchal care eases the pain." ("A Motherless House")
"We are here. We are female. We are divine." ("Message from Mother")
"You and I are half of heaven / and to forget that is a curse in the land." ("A God Who Looks Like Me")
"[mother goddesses] / who had done their imperfect best to mother / the people who had called them into being / were exiled all, sent without / meat or drink or thank you or blessing / into the unforgiving desert to die. / ... / is this ancient narrative not like unto the story / [of a man who leaves his wife at the gas station and it's not until a child notices their mother is gone] / is not the moment worthy of / a monosyllabic and screeching / halt! of biblical proportions." ("Goodbye Goddesses")
"Her name was stolen / but what's in a name? / We could eat bread if it had no name / but it would be harder to ask for." ("The Case of the Disappearance of God the Mother")
"all my blessings flow / through Her hands as well as His." ("The Case of the Disappearance of God the Mother")
"While God is not in Her heaven / not all's right with the world." ("Does It Matter?")
"the Heavenly Him and the Heavenly Her / do no orbiting, no presiding, no ranking / are perfect partners in a slow dance / so close you would observe / that they are One." ("Paradigm Shift")
"I was made in Her image: / Truly in her divine / and breathtaking / image. / Here. In my eyes. Look. / See me. / See Her." ("Like Mother, Like Daughter")
"I read that Muhammad said / 'Paradise is at the feet of the Mother' / and shame on me for my surprise. / Everywhere in history the longer and farther / you look the larger looms the image / of the Heavenly Woman. / Everywhere She was perceived / everywhere She was lost / everywhere She emerges again" ("A Goddess of the East")
"from their Oneness the world will be healed." ("Holy the Marriage Bed")
"Eve … saw the tree / …watched the growing / … / And so she took the first sweet bite / carefully, carefully going about / her Mother's business." ("I Want to Do That!")
"Earth the garden-- / Time the season-- / Soul the harvest-- / Love the reason." ("I Heard God Singing")
"will I then be delivered though the / death-into-birth canal that pulls me into the / reaching arms of my original Mother? / She who conceived the thought of me / and now receives the abundance of me / planted a while in earth / She who will joyfully watch and tend / and feed my eternal becoming." ("The Push and Pull of Birthing")
"I gently bring you home. / We'll stop and remember why you went away, / Why you won't stay forever." ("Heavenly Mother's Lullaby")
"I am imagining that She watched carefully / as he walked the dusty earth doing shocking things / that made their way into my Bible / and perhaps into his Mother's journal / ... / He calls women from their houses to come and listen / and follow him as disciples" ("Jesus Remembered")
"Was our Mother midwife to his mortal birth" ("Christ's Garden")
attitude that should be had toward a nursing mother: "Your reverence is appreciated." ("Woman Creating")
"I have blessed you, you know. / Not hands on head but body around body / nine months encircled" (but really the entirety of "Matriarchal Blessing")
I like Seeking Heavenly Mother's review on her blog, but I would challenge her last idea (and that expressed by at least one other reviewer here) about wishing there were fewer traditionally female aspects portrayed. Those traditionally female qualities are already powerful on their own, even though society has belittled and underappreciated them. Wishing that the author's portrayal of maternal deity had more traditionally masculine aspects perhaps shows an unconscious influence from society that this is the only way you can have power, and that's not true. I do appreciate that it can be hard to balance how characteristics are portrayed and our perception of power, though, especially in such a personal and fluid form as poetry and art.
Update 11/24/23: as I went through the highlighted portions of things I liked, I realized there was a lot more than I thought and a lot more than my initial review makes it sound like I enjoyed. I also found myself not returning the book right away like I thought, but rereading it. There are still some poems I don't care about and those few content/doctrine/idea things explained below that I actively dislike, but once I got over the shock of the style (and just rolled my eyes and got on with it for some), I enjoyed it more and could see more value and/or insight in a few additional ones. Maybe I'll raise the rating to 3.5. I'd like to make it higher due to the topic and the varied and valuable ways she approaches it, but she would need to cut several poems and a few lines in others for me to give a higher rating. I would like to have a physical copy of that imaginary abridged version.
Original review 11/15/23:
I think I prefer my poetry in small doses. I read it in two sittings and while it was short, it could have been shorter. Some of her thoughtful writings flowed nicely and worked for me as poetry. Others were more like notes you take in preparation for an essay, but she decided they were best left as-is, assuming that as poems (aka lines broken up to look poetic) people could fill in the gaps themselves rather than her making it too formed, but that usually ended up sounding like random writing. There was more of that than I expected.
Sometimes it seemed like she had a shower thought and tried to make it more substantial (through either of those forms of "poetry"), but that made it less impactful and more odd even when we could see the connection. As tweets those could have been interesting observations, but trying to make them poems was too pretentious or weird and therefore harder to take seriously (ironically, like the Twitter one). Since it took until November for my hold placed in April to come through, I assumed that popularity meant there was more depth and saturation of feeling and less of the aforementioned writing that felt like non-poetry and filler. Oh well. The style doesn't have to be my cup of tea (though that would help it resonate more). For those issues I have with the writing, I'd give it three stars maximum. For content, maybe 3.5 (there is stuff that's higher but there was just so much else that wasn't as relevant or meaningful).
There were a few content/doctrine/idea things I took issue with: assuming you know the "one true lesson" Jesus was teaching about a parable, mistaking the tree whose fruit Eve took as the Tree of Life when it was actually the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, assuming Heavenly Mother is the Holy Ghost, and subverting the authority God has put in place for the revelation of doctrine. Other speculative things felt more innocuous, and wondering/imagining like that doesn't bother me.
Of what was left, though, I liked a lot. Too much to post here, so it's over on my blog (https://angelawroteit.wordpress.com/2023/11/17/finding-mother-god-poetry-quotes/). Of those, here are my favorites:
"I live in a Motherless house. / They are good to me here / but I find that no kindly / patriarchal care eases the pain." ("A Motherless House")
"We are here. We are female. We are divine." ("Message from Mother")
"You and I are half of heaven / and to forget that is a curse in the land." ("A God Who Looks Like Me")
"[mother goddesses] / who had done their imperfect best to mother / the people who had called them into being / were exiled all, sent without / meat or drink or thank you or blessing / into the unforgiving desert to die. / ... / is this ancient narrative not like unto the story / [of a man who leaves his wife at the gas station and it's not until a child notices their mother is gone] / is not the moment worthy of / a monosyllabic and screeching / halt! of biblical proportions." ("Goodbye Goddesses")
"Her name was stolen / but what's in a name? / We could eat bread if it had no name / but it would be harder to ask for." ("The Case of the Disappearance of God the Mother")
"all my blessings flow / through Her hands as well as His." ("The Case of the Disappearance of God the Mother")
"While God is not in Her heaven / not all's right with the world." ("Does It Matter?")
"the Heavenly Him and the Heavenly Her / do no orbiting, no presiding, no ranking / are perfect partners in a slow dance / so close you would observe / that they are One." ("Paradigm Shift")
"I was made in Her image: / Truly in her divine / and breathtaking / image. / Here. In my eyes. Look. / See me. / See Her." ("Like Mother, Like Daughter")
"I read that Muhammad said / 'Paradise is at the feet of the Mother' / and shame on me for my surprise. / Everywhere in history the longer and farther / you look the larger looms the image / of the Heavenly Woman. / Everywhere She was perceived / everywhere She was lost / everywhere She emerges again" ("A Goddess of the East")
"from their Oneness the world will be healed." ("Holy the Marriage Bed")
"Eve … saw the tree / …watched the growing / … / And so she took the first sweet bite / carefully, carefully going about / her Mother's business." ("I Want to Do That!")
"Earth the garden-- / Time the season-- / Soul the harvest-- / Love the reason." ("I Heard God Singing")
"will I then be delivered though the / death-into-birth canal that pulls me into the / reaching arms of my original Mother? / She who conceived the thought of me / and now receives the abundance of me / planted a while in earth / She who will joyfully watch and tend / and feed my eternal becoming." ("The Push and Pull of Birthing")
"I gently bring you home. / We'll stop and remember why you went away, / Why you won't stay forever." ("Heavenly Mother's Lullaby")
"I am imagining that She watched carefully / as he walked the dusty earth doing shocking things / that made their way into my Bible / and perhaps into his Mother's journal / ... / He calls women from their houses to come and listen / and follow him as disciples" ("Jesus Remembered")
"Was our Mother midwife to his mortal birth" ("Christ's Garden")
attitude that should be had toward a nursing mother: "Your reverence is appreciated." ("Woman Creating")
"I have blessed you, you know. / Not hands on head but body around body / nine months encircled" (but really the entirety of "Matriarchal Blessing")