Split Daughter of Eve - Paperback

by Catherine Gonick (Author), Hayley Haugen (Editor)

In poems at turns lyrical and narrative, ironic and yearning, Split Daughter of Eve describes a lifelong attempt to arrive at a sense of soul, self, and worldly identity, from an initial dark mess of imposed meanings. This particular journey from childhood is informed by a split and warring religious inheritance (Jewish/Catholic) that intersects with incestuous shadings at home. What is sacred becomes hopelessly confused with the profane. Values urgently needed to live appear to have been lost before they could be understood, much less claimed. Questions of who, what, or why to believe, and what to stand for, are explored against a backdrop of places that include California, New York, Nevada, and Minnesota, as well as Poland, Ukraine, Israel, Italy, Spain and Turkey, while touching on history that includes pogroms, McCarthyism, Communists and Catholics, ancient mystics and martyrs, and the war in Gaza. The multiplicity of contradictions may well be unresolvable. Yet, as the poems demonstrate, sending in one's own angel of imagination to wrestle with them can offer a little aid.