Tongue

Abstract

Tongue begins with Ovid's Philomela. Instead of presenting the female as a body with a gaping, empty mouth, Tongue presents notions of speech. Tongue moves through mythological poems that perform Odysseus's wanderings as a means by which a speaker understands "home" to be the human body, and the psyche's relationship to that body. Influenced by the way in which James Joyce's chapters of Ulysses perform episodes of Homer's myth--in language that does not try to match up a single "Cyclops" or "Circe" figure--Tongue subverts gender expectations and moves through myth, music, and subconscious narrative leaps. For these poems do not seek to present a single narrative, but to use mythology as mirrors reflecting story fragments common to a speaker, a woman, and experiences of "home." What are myths but transcriptions? The tongue is a fleshy and flexible organ.