Maenad
Maenad - meaning Summary
Transformation Into Otherness
The poem traces a violent, ecstatic transformation from childhood safety into a fierce, unrecognizable self. Images of domestic innocence give way to mythic, animal and ritual figures as the speaker rejects parental protection and embraces an overwhelming appetite and hunger for experience. It conveys a psychic rupture and rebirth—consuming light, blood, and darkness—until the speaker asks for identity amid altered bodies and uncanny communal presences under the moon.
Read Complete AnalysesOnce I was ordinary: Sat by my father's bean tree Eating the fingers of wisdom. The birds made milk. When it thundered I hid under a flat stone. The mother of mouths didn't love me. The old man shrank to a doll. O I am too big to go backward: Birdmilk is feathers, The bean leaves are dumb as hands. This month is fit for little. The dead ripen in the grapeleaves. A red tongue is among us. Mother, keep out of my barnyard, I am becoming another. Dog-head, devourer: Feed me the berries of dark. The lids won't shut. Time Unwinds from the great umbilicus of the sun Its endless glitter. I must swallow it all. Lady, who are these others in the moon's vat --- Sleepdrunk, their limbs at odds? In this light the blood is black. Tell me my name.
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