Books

There is a cupboard, faintly shining,
that once heard the voice of my great-aunts,
heard the voice of my grandfather,
heard my father’s voice—
and to their memory is still faithful.
Do not assume she is always silent,
for we talk....

There is also a wooden cuckoo.
I do not know why he no longer has a voice.
And I do not want to ask.
Perhaps it broke—the voice that once
was in his spring—quite simply,
like the voices of the dead.

There is an ancient buffet, as well,
scented with beeswax, preserves,
meat and bread and ripe pears.
He’s a loyal servant who understands 
he must never steal anything.

Many people have come to my house
who do not believe in these little souls.
Whenever a visitor comes in saying,
“How are you, Monsieur Jammes?”—
thinking I live alone—I smile.

—Francis Jammes, translated by Janine Canan

Beauty before you,
Beauty behind you,
Beauty above you,
Beauty below you.
Walk now with Beauty
and your way will be Beautiful.

あなたの前の美しさ、
あなたの後ろの美しさ、
あなたの上の美しさ、
あなたの下の美しさ。
さあ、美しさとともに歩きなさい。
すると、あなたの道は美しいものとなるでしょう。

Belleza frente a ti
Belleza tras de ti
Belleza sobre ti
Belleza debajo tuyo
Camina ahora con la Belleza a tu alrededor
y tu camino será hermoso.

We drive up to Grizzly Peak and wind along the top of the hills, overlooking the silver-blue bay, Mount Tamalpais and the Golden Gate. “I like that bridge,” Iris says solemnly. Walking to the house, she gravitates toward the cat seated on the mailbox, the golden harp by the door, the stones and shells strewn over tables and ledges—“A petrophile!” she exclaims—and pauses under Picasso’s pale blue portrait of lovely, thinking Dora Maar. Leaning over the huge Webster’s Third International Dictionary, she says, “I thought this was your Bible.”

“It is,” I reply, already in the kitchen.

—Janine Canan, from “A Visit from Iris Murdoch”

First of all, the title, Goddesses, Goddesses, boldly intimates that in our contemporary Age torn apart by adherents of warring Gods, we may expect to find here something unusual, culturally rare, and doubly spirited and pleasurable. As in much of her other work, Janine Canan manifests for her readers the presence of the Sacred Feminine, the “other” deity who has been so strictly suppressed from the domains of acceptable public discourse. And yet, as her work indicates, there are increasing numbers who are willing to call out the name of Goddess, seeking to make known, to share and to nurture a growing community among women and men who seek an alternative to the domineering male-centered religions of not only the modern era, but the past two and more thousand years in much of the West and the East.

Goddesses, Goddesses is about the celebration of the traditions of the Feminine Divine that stretch back into the earliest traces of human memory. It is also about cultural dimensions of life that interface with the spiritual or religious considerations of Canan’s search for her own life’s meaning. The contemporary Women’s Spirituality movement is very much about an embodied, Earth-based, Nature-embedded and relational sensibility and practice, and these values are to be found in this book of essays from the first to last page.

Many of these essays are about the friendships of this remarkable woman poet, author and psychiatrist, with an array of cultural luminaries, mostly of the late Twentieth Century. These include philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch; beat poet Diane Di Prima; mystical love-lyricist James Broughton; archaeologist and mythologer Marija Gimbutas; sarode player and teacher Ali Akbar Khan; lesbian poet Lynn Lonidier; early Twentieth Century German lyric poet Else Lasker-Schüler; the dazzling array of poets collected for her anthology, She Rises like the Sun: Invocations of the Goddess by Contemporary American Women Poets, including Maya Angelou, Susan Griffin, Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Audre Lorde, Mary Mackey, Paula Gunn Allen, Carol Lee Sanchez, May Sarton, and more; the Yaqui Indian poet Alma Villanueva; the “hugging saint of India,” avatar of Divine Mother and major philanthropist, Amma; and herself as poet and essayist. Canan offers us the gift of encountering these wonders of the human spirit, as if she had arranged a special party of her friends and invited us all to attend.

The Women’s Spirituality movement is also about women including ourselves in the story, in the bigger picture, and not always leaving ourselves until last, or neglected altogether. And this is perhaps the most intriguing part of the book—that Canan weaves her own personal-cultural-spiritual autobiography through the essays so as to allow us to come to know her, slowly, enjoyably, over the years, until we finally glimpse the shape and flow of her own lifetime of searching to affirm and honor the beauty of nature, the feminine, the use of language itself. As she interweaves her personal feelings, political events, and encounters with great minds of our times, she also mediates and midwives the deepening of self-knowledge and self-understanding of those of us who listen to her closely, as if in conversation with a good friend.

This book is not only a treasure-trove of stories about famous people from an avid admirer and literary portrait artist, and a moving memoir of a multi-faceted and talented woman poet and channeler of psychological wisdom, it is a treasure-trove of poetry and prose linked by the common threads of love of language and love of life. Whether Canan sings to us in prose or poetry, or recites for us the poetry of others, these two great loves of hers are poured onto every page for our pleasure and inspiration.

—Mara Keller, PhD

Director, Women’s Spirituality, Philosophy & Religion
California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco

Poet, psychiatrist, and award-winning author Janine Canan presents Goddesses, Goddesses, a memoir comprised of essays recounting her encounters with visionary writers and poets. Among the individual whose lives touched hers are Iris Murdoch, Else Lasker-Schuler, Marija Gimbutas, James Broughton, Diane Di Prima, Alma Villanueva, Ali Akbar Khan, Mata Amritanandamayi, and more. Poetic snippets written by these illuminating individuals intersperse the thoughtful discussion, fond memories, and moments of epiphany. An enlightening amalgam of reflections upon spirituality, feminism, the Great Mother, and the nature of love itself.

As she continued along the silvery Seine, she actually saw the Divine Mother dancing in her white gown, clinking her golden cymbals. My Millennium, She sang with a throaty laugh that rolled like the waves of the ocean, her superhuman eyes shining with love’s blissful honeyed light, her voice softly echoing in the minds of billions of living beings, My Millennium

—Janine Canan, from “My Millennium”

I loved Janine Canan’s Journeys With Justine. I’ve already sent it to my daughters and close friends. It’s a wonderful, witty, playful, yet penetrating inner travelogue of a brave young woman’s spiritual journey and the people she meets who are the catalysts of her realizations. Canan beautifully describes her inner processes each step of the way. 

I’m in love with Janine’s poetry, but in Justine she takes the reader with her and offers the actual Shakti filled experience. As you read Justine, you feel the divine touch of the scintillating Shakti yourself.

I have just read Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller and wonderful Eat, Pray, Love, and was totally startled when I found such synchronicity in the journeys and lives of these two women writers who live a continent apart from each other.

Hurrah to both of them for offering us a glimpse of the breakthrough in consciousness that we experience when we read Rumi or Hafiz.

—Carol Fabric, MFCC

Choose a path
that benefits others
and serve with selfless love.

The supreme Reality is Love—
this is the message Mother sends you
in the language of the heart.

—Amma

.....The divinely beautiful, dark Indian holy woman lovingly known by millions around the world as Amma, the Hugging Saint , Mother of Compassion, and Mata Amritanandamayi, Mother of Immortal Bliss , is one of the most extraordinary forces healing our planet today.

......Born in 1953, in a poor fishing village on the tropical coast of Kerala, South India, Amma's first sound is said to have been not a cry but a laugh. She was an intensely spiritual child who spontaneously meditated and composed songs to God. Though remarkably gifted, she had to leave school at age nine when her mother became ill, and she took over the care of the family. Joyful and energetic, Sudhamani, as she was called, worked from dawn till midnight to feed and clothe her brothers and sisters, and care for the animals. At night she poured out her heart in prayer and song and dance. Unable to bear seeing old people and children go hungry, she gave away family food and prosencephalon which she was harshly reprimanded and beaten. But her acts of compassion continued, until finally her family threw her out of the house.

......Under the coconut palms Sudhamani lived in ecstasy, conversing with Mother Sea, hugging the trees, kissing the flowers, and rarely sleeping, eating only the milk brought by a cow, the rice delivered by a dog, and the fish dropped into her lap by an eagle. At age twenty-two, she experienced a brilliantly luminous, spinning red globe approaching her; out of it emerged the glorious form of the Divine Mother, crowned and smiling with love. The young woman's whole being rushed toward Her vibrating with the mantra, Amma, Amma, Amma (Mother, Mother, Mother). From this time on, Amma saw everything as divine. Eventually, the Goddess reappeared and, dazzling like a thousand suns, merged into her totally, revealing the purpose of her life: to worship God in the hearts of all beings, and to relieve the suffering of humanity.

......Today Amma devotes every moment to loving and serving others. Several times a week, in cities around the world, she receives people for darshan, wearing a simple white sari, or on special occasions dressed as the Divine Mother in a gorgeous colorful sari and crown. All day and all night, Amma receives people by the thousands—sometimes tens of thousands—hugging and blessing each one individually, answering their questions and wiping away their tears. Regardless of a person's race, health, wealth, education, religion or lack of it—each is accepted with the same fierce motherly tenderness. So far, she has embraced over thirty million people.

......Out of her compassion Amma has created a vast network of charitable activities for the poor and suffering. In India she has established many innovative temples with female as well as male priests, and dozens of schools to further the integral development of creativity, academics and character. The Holy Mother has created colleges of medicine, pharmacology, engineering, management, and computer science, as well an outstanding vocational training center. Hospitals and clinics have been built, along with cancer and AIDS hospices, orphanages, and residences for the elderly. Amma and her foundation have established legal support for the poor, housing projects for the homeless, earthquake reconstruction for devastated villages, pensions for destitute women, rehabilitation for prostitutes, and large-scale food and clothing programs. She has inspired the creation of Center, the internationally renowned Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, giving state-of-the art treatment to the very poor, as well as Amrita Ayurvedic Research Center, specializing in traditional Indian medicine. She has inaugurated a spiritually oriented television station, and numerous spiritual centers around the world that teach the principles and practice of Universal Love , or Universal Motherhood .

......In this Age of Doubt, the miraculous life of Amma is a heart-rendingly inspirational example of real love, beauty, sacrifice, and consciousness. "The radiant smile and total sincerity in Amma's interaction with every single person, continuously for hours," wrote one of many stunned reporters, "is astounding; the experiences of this day will remain forever etched in my memory." So moved was the President of India by Amma's work that he donated most of his annual salary. Several North American cities have honored her with special commendations . She has been invited to address the Parliament of World Religions, and Interfaith Celebrations in honor of the United Nations 50 th Anniversary. At the United Nations she addressed the Millennium World Peace Summit of World Religious Leaders, and the Global Peace Initiative of Women Religious and Spiritual Leaders, where she received the Gandhi-King Award for Non-Violence.

......When Amma speaks—whether in public talks, interviews with the press, dialogues with students, personal letters, or hymns to God—it is generally in Malayalam, the beautiful mother tongue of the traditionally matriarchal Land of Kerala. Her words are transcribed and translated into English (as well as many other languages) by a variety of devoted followers, most frequently Swami Amritaswarupananda, the editor of a nine-volume series entitled Awaken, Children!: Dialogues with Sri Mata Amritanandamayi. From his books and others, from the M.A. Center magazine, Immortal Bliss, as well as the biographical video, River of Love, are derived the quotations in this book. Passages have been selected to represent Amma's core teachings, re-translated from the original translations, organized for accessibility and arranged for daily contemplation.

......Like her love, Amma's words flow directly from the heart. Her speech is direct; and just as she wastes not a moment when she acts, she wastes not a word when she speaks. Her words are profound, often piercing, and sometimes deceptively simple. A short passage may contain truth sufficient for a lifetime. In this confused and turbulent world of ours, agitated by fear and animosity, marked by self-centeredness and violence, and starved for the all-embracing wisdom of the Mother, Amma's words come as healing balm. Speaking directly to each of us as our own mother, as our teacher, and as the voice of our own higher Self, her words have the power to awaken, nurture and guide us toward that truth which already lives within us all. "Love is the supreme Reality," she writes, "this is the message Mother sends you in the language of the heart."

......Offered here with humility are the inspired teachings of a modern-day saint who will undoubtedly come to be known as one of the truly great spiritual leaders of all time, a woman whose life is the very incarnation of compassion. As Amma mothers the world, may we all learn to follow her extraordinary example of Love and Service.

—Janine Canan, MD

When in France, sing your desire
with your entire choir.
A mousse à l’amour
will send your coloratura even higher.

When in France, stay longer than you can—
lay your fortune on the wheel.
And let this incarnation sweeten
like a fat pink carnation.

—Janine Canan, from “When in France”

Janine Canan is a poet of questing imagination and seemingly endless originality. For over thirty years her poetry has appeared in magazines, anthologies, and in her ten published collections, beginning with in 1977 with Of Your Seed (Oyez: Berkeley) and ending with her incomparable Changing Woman (Scars: Chicago, 2000).

Now with the publication of In The Palace of Creation, her readers can for the first time experience the full range of her poetry in a single collection. Selected by poet and editor Susan Hahn, the poems in this volume bear witness to the evolution of Canan’s creative voice from 1969 to 1999.

Here the reader will find simple poems like "Before the Storm" which testify to Canan's enduring love of nature; metaphorically complex poems like "The Abandoned Garden" which are both erotic and sorrowful; poems like "Wild Music," modeled after the lyrics of the great Hindu mystical poet Mirabai, which reveal the most intimate depths of Canan's spiritual life; and poems like "At the Vulva Stone," written to the Great Goddess and ardently feminist while never ceasing to be sensuous and lyrical.

Sappho, Emily Dickinson, Anna Akhmatova, Carolyn Kizer, and Denise Levertov have influenced canan. The reader will find poems to all of them here as well as Canan's translations of poems by Else Lasker-Schüler, Marguerite Yourcenar, and Mirabai.

This is an unusually rich collection. Perhaps Canan herself best captures the spirit of it when she says in her long prose meditation "A Thought": "Beauty is created constantly everywhere . . . The whole is a splendid vast writhing joyous and suffering Serpent, shedding her skin as She wiggles along, perpetually revealing a new Self that rises from her own pure delight."

—Mary Mackey

—Mary Mackey

My heart is pouring itself out of me.
My heart is soaring toward you over thousands of miles.
My heart comes nearer and nearer.
My heart longs to enter...

Like ten fingers running over the keys,
like a powerful stream that has always been flowing,
like a flock of night-birds lit by the moon—
I am flying after my heart.....

—Janine Canan

Changing Woman is one of Janine Canan's newest books of poetry published in 2000—the other is a wonderful book of translations, Star in My Forehead: Selected Poems by Else Lasker-Schuler. In this review, I'll concentrate on Changing Woman . Poetically, it's divided into five sections, beginning with "In The Country of War" to the final "In The Mother's Heart". It's quite a journey—one that could only be made by a mature poet. From "In The Country of War": "Once the world was wild./ Mother drenched her darling boy in milk and honey./He built the house, the road, the car—and woman/made their home, their conversation during the long journey./Now he, for millennia worshipped with flowers and fire,/must retreat in silence, smoke and shame..../He gives his sons weapons and teaches them to kill./He imagines he is bigger than God.'

Then the poet enters the "Fathers' Night"—she encounters, wrestles, rages and warns us all in our new century of this deadly night we sleep and dream in...from "Radioactive": "Chernobyl, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Pakistan, Spokane Reservation, Three Mile Island—/radioactive forever./The feminization of everything/is required."

The path of transformation has begun to the "Journey to the Root" (third section)—here there's human love, joy, bliss, the erotic. And then, human pain, betrayal, loss of Paradise. Each poem guides the way like firm, well-made stepping stones in a lush, almost wild garden. As you pause after a poem (standing on a stone), you see the garden is well maintained, maybe a patch of wilderness there at the edge. This is one of the hallmarks of Canan's poetry: a well maintained, wild passion. She ends this series of poems with a wise song of despair, from "Epilogue": "I thought you were my Love,/but you were only a lesson../I thought you were my Goddess,/but you were only human."

In the short fourth section the poet takes refuge in the Goddess of this continent, Changing Woman—she enters the Native American myth-truth-ancient story of transformation: "Beauty before you,/Beauty behind you,/Beauty above you,/Beauty below you...."

And in the fifth and final section Canan reveals her hard-won transcendence—the culmination of her half century wisdom, attended by a newborn's heart (from "My Heart"): "My heart is pouring out of me./My heart is soaring toward you over thousands of miles.../like a flock of night birds lit by the moon-/I am flying after my heart." These poems, stepping stones, reveal a mystical part of the well maintained garden, probably once gated, guarded. Now, fully revealed. Each poem reveals a spiritual secret, and we are grateful. She sings, affirms and celebrates the divine feminine, the Goddess in us all.

At the far end of the garden, Changing Woman's garden, there's a soft grassy spot to sit in the twilight. Venus begins to appear in the quickly changing violet night sky. Read this poem, now...

A Poet's Journey

I was born chewing
on the spines
of my Mother's volcanic tits.

Shedding skins, cold
and embrous, I journeyed
through betrayal and love.

Surrendering into
Her molten Body, I entered
the heart of cosmic light.

—Alma Luz Villanueva, Kalliope, Summer, 2001

A woman buried herself in the garden.
Now out of a poppy field—roaring red,
tender pink, burnished green—she rises.
Mauve and blue trees enter her
as she spreads in the wide gold dusk.

—Janine Canan, from “Mysteries in the Garden”

Into my lap a great star will fall—
let us keep watch all night,

pray in the tongues
which are carved like harps.

Let us make peace with the night—
so much God overflowing.

—Else Lasker-Schüler, from “Atonement,”
   translated by Janine Canan

New Translations Catch Feeling of Else Lasker-Schüler's Poetry

These short, lyric poems are heartbreakingly beautiful examples of the work of a woman who ought to be much better known to Jewish readers. Born in the the Rhineland in 1869, Else Lasker-Schueler became first a painter and then a poet, often illustrating her own books. She was called the "greatest lyric poet of modern Germany" in the 1920s and won the prestigious Kleist Prize in 1932—at the age of 62.

Her early poems appear in two books, "Song of the Blessed" and "Hebrew Ballads." While written in German, they strongly reflect her Jewish heritage as well as her Expressionist style; in fact, she was part of that movement, which flourished in Berlin in the early years of the century.

By 1932, Lasker-Schueler had lost not only her parents and sister, but also her husband and only son. When she was struck by a Nazi with an iron bar—in the very year she had won the prize—she didn't even go home. Instead, she ran to the railway station and arrived penniless in Zurich. After she was arrested for vagrancy, the Swiss literary public organized benefits for her.

By 1939, Lasker-Schueler had moved to Jerusalem, whose fantastic image had been the dream of her childhood and the subject of her prayers and poems, but without an appreciative or understanding public, she was neglected. She died there in 1945.

Besides being an artist, she costumed herself as many characters as she went about her daily life. When reading her poems, she often dressed as "Prince Jussuf of Thebes" and accompanied herself with flute, harmonica, and bells.

The poems in this volume are printed with the original German on one side of the page and the English on the facing page. There have been earlier translations, but these seem to me to catch the music, rhythm, and mystical feeling of the original. Here is a poem written before 1920 from her book
Hebrew Ballads:

Sabaoth

God, I love you in your gown of roses
as you step from the garden, Sabaoth.
Oh my young God,
my Poet—lonely
I drank from your fragrance.

The first bloom of my blood
craved you, so come,
my sweet God,
my playmate God.
Your golden gate melts in my longing.

—Ruth Brin, American Jewish World , 9/2000

 I have
     to have faith our race with
     the end of the earth will turn out
     meaningfully...

—Lynn Lonidier, from “Rhyme of the Aged Mariness”

Poetry, that quintessential literary art form, has always expressed humanity’s current religious musings.  The poems in this anthology  constitute a new body of Western religious poetry. They announce the return of the Goddess and contribute to the creation of a new religious myth that revives a vast network of old ones. In this new poetry, women experience the timeless Goddess in themselves and the world, and address her as a potent spiritual and moral force. The morality for which She stands, and has always stood, is gratitude for the inexpressibly great gift of life. She is love of life, love for the planet on which we live, and love for all the beings that live upon it. Without this love, the human race cannot survive....

—Janine Canan, from “Introduction”

Earth body, brief spouse, what a strangely
inconvenient marriage. Yet you are my only
true support. And though you may never
fathom what I secretly am, may you—
who accepted the nature of existence itself—
stay with me in your lovely halo of death
till I depart, dearest Body, my slave, my queen.

          —Janine Canan, from “Dear Body”

Long ago I vowed to accompany this river to its end. I love this river that is like a silk ribbon laid across my heart. I never forget it. Its voice hums a little song in my blood. It rushes forward. I love to follow wherever it goes. It is the one I love the most.

—Janine Canan

...she looks
to the edge of vision

a gray
that grazes an azure blue

and yet the voice
is calling still

my daughter
my love

remember

—Janine Canan,  from “A Woman Is Walking Toward the Ocean”

Old Oak,

eye now closed for winter
that silently braids
your dream,

when the mists fall
you are there,
when the rains fall
you are there,
when the snows fall
you are there,

whenever someone steps near.

—Janine Canan, from “Your Pictures”

Your unborn head is pulsing,
pushing out. In a spray
your arms flop down,
you swim into air. A sleeper,
you wake, you stretch, you wail.
Beautiful breather, you pale.
From florid fish to flesh, your fluid skin
dries out to touch. Your eyes look round,
staggering widen. Your ears are
spiraling, your mouth untwists.
Oh, you are open now!

—Janine Canan, from “The Act”