Empty Mirror

a literary magazine

  • About
    • About Empty Mirror
    • Get in Touch
    • Support EM
    • Colophon
  • Submit
  • Contributors
  • Essays
  • On Literature
  • Poetry
  • Reviews
  • Art
  • Interviews
  • Beat
    • Beat Generation
    • Ted Joans Lives!
  • +
    • Fiction
    • Music & Film
    • News
    • On Writing
    • Book Collecting

Finding Freedom in the Female Voice: Threed: This Road Not Damascus by Tamara J. Madison, reviewed by Jessica Gigot

Jessica Gigot

Threed: This Road Not Damascus by Tamara J. Madison / Trio House Press / 2019

Review of Threed by Tamara Madison poemsIn Threed: This Road Not Damascus, Tamara Madison’s first full-length collection of poetry, this poet and performer dances between mythical and tactile worlds. Through intimate conversations with ancestors, the Bible, and her own self as a poet and mother, she is not subtle in her message. In the first poem “Wombing: Three-Breasted Woman Shares Her Birth Story” Madison writes “I did not come here just to fight. I came/ to love you.”

The word “threed” is defined by Madison as “a being carrying three breasts (or another appendage) where normally there are two.” This prophetic figure, the three-breasted woman, acts as a muse and a guide throughout the book. In the powerful poem, “Restraint: Three-Breasted Woman on the Auction Block” she asks “Would it comfort, confound,/ frighten them more/ to know once upon a time/ we all were threed?”

Madison’s collection is broken down into three distinct sections. Throughout the book, she traverses the rough terrain of race, slavery, gender, identity, and motherhood with daring exuberance. Inventive syntax and poignant alliteration invite the reader to experience each poem, feel each line deep within the body. In “Poet’s Arrival” she writes, “Thrust from ragged wombs,/nursed on battered breasts,/whispered from my mothers’ severed tongues, / here I come.” This arrival, she shows us, is no accident, but a potentially predetermined event rooted in matriarchal lineage and unwavering faith.

A fierce mother herself, Madison writes in the poem “Covenant” which appears in the second section, “I will melt stars,/hammer for hours your shield.” However, in another poem that appears in section three, “Poet’s Transcendence,” she confesses, “I lie in the crook/ of your elbow/ safe, brave, enough/ to become smaller than small.”

To feel as if one is enough is not easy, and Madison’s journey of self-acceptance and renewal throughout these poems is contagious. So, too, is her anger and her joy. While reading Threed: This Road Not Damascus I found myself considering my own continuum, those that came before and those that came after, and felt moved to understand my own history more fully. I am grateful that Madison shares these sacred exchanges with her readers, allowing us to see how the world has been and what the world could be.

Share on TwitterShare on Facebook

Jessica Gigot

Jessica Gigot is a poet, farmer, teacher, and musician. She has a small farm in Bow, WA called Harmony Fields that makes artisan sheep cheese and grows organic herbs. Jessica has lived in the Skagit Valley for over fifteen years and is deeply connected to the artistic and agricultural communities that coexist in this region. Her first book of poems, Flood Patterns, was published by Antrim House Books in 2015 and her writing appears in several publications, including Orion, Taproot, Gastronomica, The Hopper, Pilgrimage, About Place Journal, and Poetry Northwest.

Author: Jessica Gigot Tags: poetry reviews Category: Book Reviews July 2, 2020

You might also like:

Giant Steps: Fifty poets reflect on the Apollo 11 moon landing and beyond
Giant Steps: Fifty poets reflect on the Apollo 11 moon landing and beyond, reviewed by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
Out of Emptied Cups - Anne Casey poetry
out of emptied cups by Anne Casey, reviewed by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro
The Joyous Science - Maxim Amelin
The Joyous Silence, Selected Poems by Maxim Amelin, trans. by Derek Mong and Anne O. Fisher, reviewed by Elias Siqueiros
Where Night and Day Become One: The French Poems / A Selection 1983-2017 by Steve Dalachinsky
The Exile Illuminated as the Native Returned: Steve Dalachinsky’s Where Night and Day Become One: The French Poems / A Selection 1983-2017

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I accept the Privacy Policy

 

DONATE TO BLACK LIVES MATTER

BLACK LIVES MATTER

The EM newsletter

Receive fresh poetry, reviews, essays, art, and literary news every Wednesday!


Empty Mirror

Established in 2000 and edited by Denise Enck, Empty Mirror is an online literary magazine that publishes new work each Friday.

Each week EM features several poems each by one or two poets; reviews; critical essays; visual art; and personal essays.

Subscribe Submissions Support

Recent features

  • My Father’s Map
  • On Waiting
  • Seeing Las Meninas in Madrid, 1994
  • Visual poems from 23 Bodhisattvas by Chris Stephenson
  • Historical Punctum: Reading Natasha Trethewey’s Bellocq’s Ophelia and Native Guard Through the Lens of Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida
  • Panic In The Rear-View Mirror: Exploring The Work of Richard Siken and Ann Gale
  • “Art has side effects,” I said.

Books

Biblio
© 2000–2023 D. Enck / Empty Mirror.
Copyright of all content remains with its authors.
Privacy Policy · Privacy Tools · FTC disclosures