Over the course of Spring break, I had the chance to sit down and look at the poems my group was doing for our project. As I was looking at the poem "The Silence of a Woman" by Liz Rosenberg, I read the word Sybil and I had absolutely no idea what that word even meant. Since I was at my home, I asked my brother, who is a literal genius, what the word meant, and the meaning of it and the related meanings shed a whole new light on this poem.
"Oh lifetime of silence!
Words scattered like a Sybil's leaves."
Sybil, in classic mythology is a Prophetess, witch, or fortune-teller. I was so excited over this newfound definition I couldn't contain myself. It is ironic how the sentence starts out saying a lifetime of silence, and then proceeds to compare it to the scattered words of a Prophetess like leaves. According to an online source, House of Names, leaves have a symbolism for happiness (internet). And for those who don't know, a Prophetess is someone who speaks, and upon speaking, they know their words will either fall on deaf ears or attentive ones. And the words that they speak are the life of the Prophetess; her happiness. In essence, Rosenberg uses this drastic simile to say that living in silence is just as bad as having the words of a Prophetess scattered about, almost as if they are falling on deaf ears and not being heard.
Upon knowing this information, I feel as if the text has a new layer of drama. It's so easy to read over that sentence and not give it a second thought, but the depth and seriousness of what Rosenberg is trying to convey in the poem I believes lies in these two lines. Every woman has a voice. Every woman deserves to be heard before she's lived so long her voice becomes just a soulful wind that hopes it can keep up. Every woman has something worth being heard. I hope the world starts listening.
Works Cited
Houseofnames.com. Swyrich Corporation, 2010-2011. 15 March 2011.
No comments:
Post a Comment