Proyecto de Poesía: María Meléndez

María Meléndez was born in the United States of America and grew up in the Bay Area of California. As she was growing up, Meléndez loved poetry and read as many poetry books as she could. Now, Meléndez is a mother and wife, the editor for Momotombo Press at Notre Dame, the publisher of the literary journal called Pilgrimage, and a poet. She has published three books of poetry: How Long She’ll Last in this World in 2006, and Flexible Bones in 2010, both published by the University of Arizona Press; and Base Pairs in 2001, published by the Swan Scythe Press. Meléndez lives in the mainstream culture of the United States, but she does not want to be seen as post-Latino or like a woman without a history. Her passions can be identified as the exploration and incorporation of mestizo identity, feminism and femininity, and ecology into her writing. Of the three themes, her mestizo identity and feminism show up most prominently in her writing. Although the poems by María Meléndez in the anthology The Wind Shifts often address a specific audience with their allusions to mestizo history and culture, her poems can be enjoyed and appreciated by all American feminists.

First, let us examine a poem that the majority of Americans can relate to, regardless of cultural heritage. “Nude Sonnet,” a free verse poem with a prosaic look and sound, is a love poem that celebrates the body of a man. Regardless of its form, love is something that every human has felt or will feel, making it a universal topic. However, “Nude Sonnet” is not a typical love poem or the celebration of a lover’s body. In this poem, Meléndez explores the cultural expectations between a man and a woman in a romantic relationship and questions those expectations. In line 9, she asks the man, “why don’t you ever say I’m beautiful?” She then seems to realize that her request may out of place and wonders “but then, / why don’t I ever say that you are?” (“Nude Sonnet”10). Rather than keeping with the traditional expectation that the woman should be seen as the beauty in a relationship, Meléndez re-examines the typical roles between men and women and questions why she should expect something she has not given. In this way, feminist readers—both women and men—can delight in the discovery that stereotypical male/female roles do not have to be adhered to. Men’s bodies can be celebrated as beautiful, too.

The poem “Tonocacihuatl: Lady of our Flesh” is written in five stanzas of four lines, making it one of Meléndez’s most structured poems, although it does not have a rhyme scheme or meter. “Tonacacihuatl: Lady of our Flesh” makes a huge shift in audience as Meléndez writes about the mythology of the Aztecs, one of the most powerful native tribes of central Mexico. In their mythology, Tonocacihuatl is the wife of Tonacatecuhtli, the god of creation, and is herself the goddess of creation. These two gods were the original beings and created everything else in the universe. The name Tonocacihuatl means “lady of the flesh” or “lady of substance.” It can be argued that many mestizos would not be aware of this Aztec mythology; however, it is likely that mestizos have been exposed to it by their family and cultural experiences.

This poem not only is for a mestizo audience that understands the importance of the goddess Tonacacihuatl, but is also a poem for feminists. The creator goddess—a female divine entity—is not present in the majority of white Western culture. The poem’s portrayal of the Creator as a woman is a powerful one for womankind, as are the universal images and senses that Meléndez uses to describe the goddess of creation. Meléndez describes Tonacacihuatl’s breath and sweat as the “fragrance of rain,” her dress as being covered in “thirteen mirrors” and her fever as “an affliction known as August” (“Tonacacihuatl” 1, 2, 13, 16). In the descriptions of her breath, sweat and dress, Meléndez uses concepts that are familiar in nearly every life—and certainly in every North American one. One might assume that the last image—fever as August—is a familiar one, but it is good to remember that only in the northern hemisphere is August a hot and sticky summer month. Still, this poem of a female creator remains a tangible idea for feminist readers to grasp onto.

Meléndez’s poem “Remedio” is a free verse poem that focuses on images of wolves and the spirit. To better understand this poem, we must first understand the significance of the wolf image and, specifically, “la loba” that is mentioned in line 36. In Clarissa Pinkola Estés’ book, Women Who Run with the Wolves, she includes the myth of La Loba, the Wolf Woman, from the Pueblo people of the southwestern US. In Estés telling of the myth, La Loba is an ugly, fat, old woman who lives alone and avoids the others’ company. The only work of La Loba is to collect wolf bones, collecting and preserving “that which is in danger of being lost to the world” (Estés 26).

She searches through las montañas and the dry riverbeds to find enough bones to remake an entire skeleton. As she stands near a fire and sings over la criatura, the bones become the wolf—furry and breathing. The wolf becomes alive, jumps up and runs into the desert. Somewhere along the run, the wolf is “suddenly transformed into a laughing woman who runs free toward the horizon” (Estés 28).

Knowing the Pueblo myth of La Loba, we can now read “Remedio” with a better understanding of the Latino and mestizo connections and see this poem through the feminist lens. The narrator of the poem gives directions to the reader or listener, saying to “let your wolf mask go” (“Remedio” 3). This “wolf mask” is the body of the wolf that rises from the bones and runs off into the desert. La Loba, or the narrator, is telling the listener to shed their wolf skin and become the woman that the wolf eventually morphs into. Later, the narrator instructs the reader in a “simple spell for home lycanthropy,” or a simple way to turn one’s self into a werewolf (“Remedio” 30). In a chronological poem, this piece of information would come before the previous quote; regardless, this step is important as it gives a “remedy for when you’ve lost your sense / of Spirit in the world” and encourages women to “recuerda la loba” within themselves (“Remedio” 28-9, 36). The narrator goes on to instruct the reader to notice the natural world, and to “let her pass through your heart again, / this wolf” (“Remedio” 31, 40-41). Based on these instructions, the reader may safely assume that the narrator is La Loba herself and the text is her song to the bones of the wolf—encouraging the tired, dead bones to come into their full potential and run like the powerful she-wolf through the desert, eventually turning into the free woman within.

Throughout all of María Meléndez’s poems, themes of feminism—the validity of womanhood and the expectation of equality among genders—and of mestizo culture and history are deeply rooted and intrinsic parts of Meléndez’s message. From the Aztec people’s creation myths to the more recent myths from the Pueblo people, Latino and mestizo history appears and reappears in her poems. Goddesses such as the Aztec Creator Tonacacihuatl and mythical women such as La Loba bring ancient and respected views of women into mainstream American culture. Even more so, Meléndez surveys the life of a modern American woman and realizes that expectations in love between men and women should not be any different. Although sometimes her specific references to Aztec and Southwestern US myths may occasionally isolate some mainstream American feminists, Meléndez’s poetry is accessible enough that all of her readers can enjoy and appreciate her portrayals of mestizo culture, feminism and femininity.