57. Other Mothers (Angela Alaimo O'Donnell)
Sobre "la imaginación católica"
En Estados Unidos hay todo un mundo de conferencias, estudios, discusiones, seminarios, cursos, celebraciones, etc., alrededor de “the Catholic imagination”. Cuando llegué a la universidad había un grupo de “Contemporary Catholic Writers”, liderado por una doctoranda del departamento de inglés, que me abrió ese mundo, del que he podido beber estos años. Hace dos años hubo una conferencia que disfruté especialmente en la Universidad de Dallas y el pasado otoño la Gran-Conferencia-Anual de la Universidad de Notre Dame—hay quienes la llaman “Catholic Woodstock”—fue precisamente sobre este tema: “Ever Ancient, Ever New:
On Catholic Imagination”. La conferencia de Judith Wolfe me pareció especialmente magistral, un adelanto del libro que acaba que publicar: The Theological Imagination: Perception and Interpretation in Life, Art, and Faith.
Angela Alaimo O'Donnell es directora del “Curran Center for American Catholic Studies” en la Universidad de Fordham y estudiosa de Flannery O’Connor, así que ha reflexionado bastante sobre el tema y suele ser uno de los referentes en este mundo.
En un artículo, “Seeing Catholicly: Poetry and the Catholic Imagination”, O’Donnell habla de una “incarnational awareness” en la poesía católica, que define de la siguiente manera:
What defines a Catholic poet and Catholic poetry cannot be readily summed up in terms of content or technique; instead, Catholic poetry reflects and embodies a particular disposition towards the world. It is corporeal, perhaps even bloody-minded, in its insistence upon an embodied, incarnate faith; it is grim in its acknowledgment of the presence and power of real evil in the world; and it is ultimately hopeful in its assertion of the meaning of suffering and in its persistent search for God even when God seems to be absent.
O’Donnell, además, es una poeta excelente. Este es uno de los poemas que leyó en la Notre Dame Fall Conference.
OTHER MOTHERS
Angela Alaimo O'Donnell
Other girls’ mothers sold Avon, Bee-line, Tupperware.
My mother took lovers. Young ones. Dark ones. True ones.
The kind that came back, parked their cars in the drive,
and slept in our house night after night after night.
Other girls’ mothers wore aprons, baked bread.
My mother slipped on stockings, stepped into heels, and went to work
late evenings while we’d lie half-awake in our beds.
We’d hope for peanuts, chips, mints, small signs she’d remembered us.
Other girls’ mothers didn’t like my mother,
grew green-eyed in the grocery, cold-shouldered us at Mass
where she’d stay in the pew, marooned, at Communion,
her black mantilla shadowing her black eyes.
Other girls’ mothers liked their daughters,
asked them questions, listened for replies.
My mother would have thought them amusing
had she thought of other mothers at all.