POETRY IN PROGRESS: "THE EX-WIFE BECOMES GALATEA" by EILEEN R. TABIOS

POETRY IN PROGRESS: "THE EX-WIFE BECOMES GALATEA"

"The Ex-Wife Becomes Galatea" by Eileen R. Tabios  

first appeared in The Classical Outlook 99.3 (2024), pp 193-194. 

Reprint permission is provided by CO.

The Classical Outlook (CO) is the leading publication for teachers of Latin, Greek, and the ancient Mediterranean world in schools, colleges, and universities. The official journal of The American Classical League, CO is edited by Philip Walsh. CO's Issue 99, No. 3 (2024) contains a Special Poetry Issue edited by Rachel Hadas. From her Introduction:

 

“Among the nearly fifty writers whose work is gathered here are a sculptor, a philosopher, many teachers and professors, a graduate student or two, and two undergraduates. They hail from many parts of the United States, from Canada, from the UK, and from South Africa. Many of them have translated from Greek or Latin or both; several of them tutor new arrivals in the United Sates in English. All of them, obviously, are poets. And all are lovers of the classics, enthusiasts whose work radiates the discoveries and surprises, the joys and connections, that classical literature, mythology, and art have continued to bestow for centuries—gifts that keep on giving now, in the twenty-first century, and that continue to be a source of personal enrichment and poetic inspiration.”

 

I dedicate my contribution below to The Classical Outlook to my parents who first raised me in Baguio City, Philippines in a house with bookshelves whose contents included Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey.

~~

The Ex-Wife Becomes Galatea

 

But it is unclear

what happened after you fell

from Pygmalion’s pedestal – 

Still, clarity is a constraint –

I refuse to say you broke –

Instead, you introduce yourself

here in Napa Valley, California

where we drink wine crafted

from grapevines surrounding us –

You raise the cabernet, swirling

the melted rubies within the glass –

You sniff, you sip, you smile –

You marvel at how “tobacco, licorice, 

incense emerge from the glass, 

followed by hints of white pepper 

and orange peel that add intrigue . . .” –

I raise the liquid of crushed skins,

sniff, sip, smile, and reply:

“Guide my brush as I paint you

shimmering within a gown

of golden sunlight” – I smile

as I drink more wine – I utter

the fate desired by many premature

wives: “Live well the life you wish

to live as you create yourself.”

“The Ex-Wife Becomes Galatea” reflects my decades-long interest in Galatea, the ivory sculpture carved by Pygmalion in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. As described by Ovid, Pygmalion fell in love with the sculpture and begged Aphrodite for Galatea to become his wife. Aphrodite agreed and transformed Galatea into a human being. Pygmalion then married her, and she came to bear a child named Paphos, either a daughter or son. In some versions, they also have another daughter, Metharme.

Falconet's 1763 sculpture Pygmalion and Galatea (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore)

I’ve often wondered about Galatea’s true nature as the myth ascribes her identity to be what Pygmalion chose for her. In Napa Valley where I live, my husband and I built a home that we call “Galatea” for ascribing a new life for her outside of Pygmalion’s desires. Because our home is devoted to art, poetry, and wine (with all three elements manifesting in the poem), naming our home Galatea was our way of suggesting that the true Galatea was someone who became interested in those pursuits. But those pursuits are symbolic examples; the point, the poem’s narrator shares, is simply the hope for Galatea to exercise her true interests and find her true self beyond Pygmalion’s determination – that the true Galatea was not the statue he’d carved then immediately brought into his home but what the woman wished to become. 

Nor is Galatea necessarily who the poem posits her to be, hence the narrator’s concession that Galatea be the one to “guide my brush” even as “I paint you” in order to privilege Galatea’s (rights to) self-determination. 

The poem’s diction also reflects the hope that as Galatea creates her desired self, she metaphorically becomes delicious wine from crushed grapes. Relatedly, I refer in the poem to red wine because red wine is made from dark-skinned grapes and I’d wished to introduce the notion of “crushed skins,” eliding the difference between grape and human skin, the latter being what she was under Pygmalion’s control. 

Lastly, in an insignificant but convenient gesture, the inserted wine tasting notes (by Antonio Galloni’s Vinous, November 2013) describe a real Napa Valley wine, in this case the marvelous 2003 Philip Togni cabernet which, after all, would please even the gods.

 

*****

Eileen Tabios has released books of poetry, fiction, essays, art and experimental prose from publishers around the world. Recent releases include the novel The Balikbayan Artist; an art monograph Drawing Six Directions; a poetry collection Because I Love You, I Become War; an autobiography, The Inventor; and a flash fiction collection collaboration with harry k stammer, Getting To One. Other books include a first novel DoveLion: A Fairy Tale for Our Times (2021) which was translated by Danton Remoto into Filipino as KalapatingLeon for a 2024 release from UST Publishing (University of Santo Tomas). More information is at https://eileenrtabios.com