Demeter Does Not Remember

By: Mary Madec

€12.00

Mary Madec’s second collection is held by a narrative, like the one which each of us makes to hold our lives together. It takes as its inspiration the ancient Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone to explore the human journey of mother, daughter, lover. The duality of light and darkness in the cycle of the seasons provides a backdrop for an awareness of personal transformation which seeks a truce with age. Many poems tr...

ISBN	978-1-908836-31-1
Pub Date	Friday, December 05, 2014
Cover Image	The Silent Hunger by Charlotte Kelly. Oil on canvas. Reproduced with the kind permission of the artist. www.charlottekelly.com
Page Count	70
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Mary Madec’s second collection is held by a narrative, like the one which each of us makes to hold our lives together. It takes as its inspiration the ancient Greek myth of Demeter and Persephone to explore the human journey of mother, daughter, lover. The duality of light and darkness in the cycle of the seasons provides a backdrop for an awareness of personal transformation which seeks a truce with age. Many poems trace how insights come, and how memory functions in shaping our lives. Though not autobiographical, this book is deeply personal.

Mary Madec

Mary Madec received her M.A. in Old English poetry from NUI, Galway and her doctorate in Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently Director of the Villanova Study Abroad Program at NUI, Galway. She won the Hennessy XO Prize for Emerging Poetry in 2008. Her first collection, In Other Words, was published by Salmon Poetry in 2010 followed by Demeter Does Not Remember in 2014. She also edited Jessica Casey & Other Stories from Salmon Poetry, 2011, showcasing work from people with intellectual disabilities following a multi-award winning project funded by an Arts Participation Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland. Recently she has worked with immigrant writers. She is also a member of a collective of poets who, through poetry readings, reach to women who have had breast cancer and a co-author of their book Bosom Pals published by Doire Press in 2017.

Persephone: Coming of Age

At the end of Spring, she plays in the ragged grasses

clumpy, uneven, wet like the hairs on the mount of Venus,

the sentinel peaks rising in the distance

by the tender early light, now her breasts.

In the waters of the inlets her arms and legs

stretch like promontories.

She is aware of the suck and tug of the earth

taking her into itself, into its dark folds.

When she thinks of her hips, they are a boat

carved out of an old apple tree she remembers.

She longs for a river; she would give herself to its bed,

its mud and stones like flesh and bones.

And she knows, as a salmon knows, that she would go with it

into the dark places water flows, on its way to the sea.

Tumble

I land in you unexpectedly,

down and something silky like new grass

scattering

and it is soft and I fit perfectly

like in memory foam

and maybe it is a memory

and it is silky like a caress, your fingers

stroking me

and new, I have never come here before

and green somehow like soft summer

warming me

down deeper than I have ever known

and maybe you heard the whimper

as I gave myself to

the comfort of you concave

as a moon but not cold or blue

and I gave myself as a child

extends her little arms wide

and trusting on the world

the edge between inside and outside

blurred like tears blur

eyes that still see

and your arms wrap around me

and I am satisfied.

Soon it will be Winter

and Demeter does not know what she hates most

about the change – her straw hair, her broken nails,

a shrivelling up inside, no blood rain,

insomnia as she tosses her tired head this way and that.

She thinks of Persephone, the daughter she fed

and is jealous of those pert little breasts,

those eyes, reminding her of another bed

where she was desirable as a wife.

She can feel her hardening arteries, her sagging eyes

stretched to crows’ feet as she smiles.

There is no sap inside her anymore, a greyness

rising up through her thighs.

Persephone is wet with smiles

her soft legs parting for Hades.

Review: Demeter Does Not Remember reviewed by Kevin Higgins for the Galway Advertiser (January 2015)

Demeter Does Not Remember is Mary Madec’s second collection from Salmon Poetry. It is an ambitious work in that the entire collection is based, loosely, on the myth of Demeter, her daughter Persephone, and Persephone’s moody sometime boyfriend, Hades.

This is a book about the clash of generations. Though based on a myth that is a few thousand years old, it describes the eternal mother/daughter clash that is no doubt going on in Renmore and Knocknaccarra as I type.

Demeter “is jealous of those pert little breasts,/those eyes, reminding her of another bed/where she was desirable as a wife”. Many wrongly think of the Greek myths as being dry and austere; but in Madec’s hands this story gets erotic indeed: “Persephone is wet with smiles/her soft legs parting for Hades.”

Those suffering from heart conditions should make sure they have their medication taken before reading some of these poems. As we grow old we both envy and fear the young because of the reminder they are of our own all too soon demise, on days when we can barely “struggle across the river/to the other side of the kitchen.”

These are well put together poems that ask the reader some hard questions.