There they sit, on a grassy knoll
Peering up to what is beyond
Stars freckle the sky, forming the
Constellations: Virgo, Leo.
Venus and Mars shine together,
There is little room between
There they sit, all alone, feeling
As if they do not belong there.
Discomfort, dysphoria, do
They even belong here? “Perhaps,
I would be better off floating
In space,” they think, feeling empty.
Softly, they close their eyes, trying
To imagine the space between
The planets, slowly feeling
At home. The emptiness disappears.
They don’t need to belong. They are.
Author’s Statement:
I chose to write a poem inspired by my OHP interview because poems mean a lot to both me and my interview partner. My two main inspirations for my poems are Sylvia Plath and Warsan Shire.
Sylvia Plath was a lesbian poet who wrote poems about the persecution of Jews in the Holocaust, as well as concentration camps (See “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy”). Her poems usually deal with her lack of romantic interest in men, her depression, suicidal tendencies, and also her familial issues between her, her mother, and her deceased father. She was integral to my journey to accept myself, and one of my favorite poets of all time.
Warsan Shire is a black poet who was born in Kenya, but now lives in Los Angeles. Her poems deal with gender, refugees, and toxic relationships. My interview partner introduced me to Shire and I’ve been entranced by her poems ever since. My interview partner has also found inspiration from Warsan Shire, painting a portrait inspired from Shire’s poems “For Women Who Are Difficult To Love” and “Intuition”.
I interviewed my interviewee in reference to the Holocaust due to the fact that gender played a huge role to the treatment of prisoners in concentration camps and death camps. A specific example of this was mentioned in our class by Dr. Jill Klein. She informed us about how, when women arrived in the camps, their heads were completely shorn. This was a drastic and unwanted change to their appearance that made the women feel like their identity was stolen from them. It was extremely demoralizing. Another change that was disastrous for the women victim’s identity was the effect of starvation on their body. They lost all curves and femininity of their body. This was extremely dehumanizing, because these women no longer appeared as the women they identified as.
Having lost a integral part of yourself such as gender identity is detrimental to one’s identity, their self-worth, and, as a whole, their mental health. When comparing my interviewee’s struggle with their gender, I see a lot of similarities between what they said, and what the Jews in camps said about their own loss of identity. I am going out of my way to state that, I am not comparing my interviewee’s suffering to the Jews’ suffering in the concentration camps. I am exclusively referring to their appearance and the effects of that appearance on their identity.
Dr. Klein mentioned how the women in the concentration camps felt “formless”, or that they appeared like a man when in the camps. This is because of the previously mentioned starvation that they had to endure. The loss of most, if not all, of their bodily fat rendered their form far less feminine than when they entered. My interviewee mentioned how their “goal body type is to be completely formless” (06:11). For them, the fact that they have feminine bodily features is similarly distressing to how these women victims felt losing these same features.
Dr. Klein also mentioned that these women victims often would skip meals in order to preserve their feminine identity. In the early to mid 1940s, it was not commonly known that starvation caused amenorrhea. Instead, the female victims in the camps believed the Nazis were poisoning their food in order to make them infertile. At this time, having children was a massive part of the feminine identity, and the idea of becoming sterile was like losing an integral piece of themselves. These women would often reject what little food they received in order to preserve their identity as a woman.
These tendencies towards harming oneself, intentionally or unintentionally, in an attempt to achieve or maintain a gender identity
When I authored this poem, I wanted to focus on themes of space, a feeling of not belonging, and loneliness. These were the main things I felt that my interview partner experienced with their struggles and the recurrent idea of “floating in space” (00:45) between genders. I wanted to convey that to my reader, so I went for a more literal interpretation. I chose to specifically mention Leo and Virgo, as those are constellations that have implied genders. Virgo representing a motherly woman, and Leo as a male lion. Similarly, Mars is a Roman symbol of masculinity, stemming from the god of war, and Venus is a symbol of femininity, coming from the Roman goddess of fertility and beauty.
Each line is 8 syllables, keeping with the theme of astronomy, as there are eight planets in our solar system. There are four stanzas, as there are four planets on either side of the asteroid belt. Eight is also my personal favorite number. I separated the very last line in order to give it more emphasis, as that’s the main point of the poem. That one doesn’t need to necessarily belong where they think they need to. It isn’t easy to accept that one may not meet the standards that they impose, but sometimes it can’t be helped.
The concept of floating carries with it a connotation of freedom. We can float from job to job, from idea to idea, and we can mentally escape commitment by floating from or between compartmentalization. In her poem, “Floating,” Jennifer Fraley cleverly uses the astral imagery of the universe to put on for the reader the display of the female and male genders of astronomical bodies– “Stars freckle the sky, forming the / Constellations: Virgo, Leo,” and their proximity– “Venus and Mars shine together, / There is little room between .” She conveys a sense of loneliness and disconnection, even within their closeness– “There they sit, all alone…” And then– “Discomfort, dysphoria, do / They even belong here?” Jennifer goes on to write about being “…better off floating / In space…feeling empty.” This begs the question: Is our identity in our bodies, or our gender? Does what we possess in our physical form (and whatever relationships come out of that fact) define us? Jennifer approaches this subject in her author’s statement, in relaying the atrocities of the Holocaust– atrocities that rendered women seemingly gender-less by way of their appearance: their heads shaved close and their bodies void of form, their feminine curves straightened to stick figures due to starvation, and consequently their monthly cycle interrupted with the condition of amenorrhea. Outside of their control, the women lost the looks that were born out of their feminine identity. They lost their husbands (and therefore, that relationship), they lost their children and they lost the notion of motherhood. On the other hand, within Jennifer’s narrative is an ironic juxtaposition as her interview partner struggles for control: in the self-imposed goal to become “completely formless” and to deny herself the curves of femininity– even to the point of physical harm. By restricting certain parts of her body, she tamps down any vestiges of roundness, suffering as she attempts to trap her soul beneath the grave of herself. But the souls– and identities– of those Holocaust women who died were not in the dirt graves or in the skeletons that were piled atop the cart and rolled into the fire. They have floated away from those bodies. And while in this life we might feel the need to float in space between perceived identities– no matter anyone’s standards, we are indeed uniquely, fearfully, and wonderfully made in God’s image. Jennifer’s poem comes to a positive conclusion: “They don’t need to belong. They are.” And Jennifer’s interview partner declares in her photo: “I am who I am. And I love myself!” And I can float with that.