{"id":27282,"date":"2008-03-19T11:45:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-19T11:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27282"},"modified":"2024-03-14T13:18:32","modified_gmt":"2024-03-14T05:18:32","slug":"the-virtues-of-sin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/articles\/2008\/03\/the-virtues-of-sin\/","title":{"rendered":"The Virtues of Sin"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

In Bernice Chauly’s small but substantial collection\nof poetry and prose, The Book of Sins<\/em>,\nwords indeed rage forth from the page, and they do so with a searing yet\nunembellished forcefulness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s hard not to note, first and foremost, the urgent,\npounding rhythm to some of the lines in this collection. In This Love<\/em>, she writes “And she in\nher silence prayed that it would stop, that he would stop that he would realize\nthat it was enough, that it was enough.” Each phrase crashes with a sort\nof drumbeat intensity. Each phrase hits directly at a nerve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other poems are distinguished by a stark immediacy.\n“Sweet Jesus, she cannot breathe” starts off the piece entitled Haze<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other instances, words are staggered as if they are\nbeing exhaled bit by bit: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"When your husband leaves you 
and your daughter of two
asks you
not to cry mama
not to
cry
mama

You just do\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The brevity of the poems signals a conviction in her\nown words. In several of the poems, it is this economy of language that gives\nrise to a greater degree of meaning and exegetical possibilities. As she writes\nin Meaning<\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"The world is full of metaphors 
and I am one of them.\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
A distinctly female voice emerges from this book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is a voice that is, at times, victimized, as in This Love<\/em> quoted above, or bitterly\ndisenchanted (“What difference will tonight make\/on this street of sin\/we\nstill spread our legs for money”), or militant:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"And so she died
 for the cause
And so she blew herself up 
for the cause\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Taken together, these particular poems exude a\nsomewhat predictable brand of old school feminist angst: sisters, we have\nsuffered for too long, let us take up arms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in some instances, she lets this go, and gives way\nto a female voice that is more voluptuous and more at ease with red lipstick —\nthe implication is that feminism need not preclude femininity:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Let me wear
my silks and makeup
\u2026
make my entry
like a lady\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes, however, that female voice becomes more\nsubliminal: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Plunging into
red depths, emerging 
from many births

Dreaming through lifetimes 
eating of roses, dark
wood and cactuses\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
To me, those words, from the poem entitled Like He Once Said<\/em>…, are a richer\nexpression of the female than all references to virgins, mothers and\nprostitutes combined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bernice is not absolved of certain literary\nindulgences — poems that sound like confessionals (“I drink too much\nnow\/I cry all too much now”), or those that revel in their own melancholy\n(“Art is pain and pain is art”). Even the juxtaposition of carnality\nand religion — some of the chapters are named after a number of the Seven\nDeadly Sins (Pride, Gluttony, Lust) — is somewhat expected. But often, she\ngives her words enough color and enough truth to keep us with her, so that when\nshe writes “and as the children slept I drank wine, smoked\/while pounding\npencils into powder on paper”, what comes across is not poetic affectation\nbut words spoken in confidence. The strength of this book is that she sounds\nlike she has lived these words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At times, she crosses the threshold between poignance\nand misty-eyed sentimentality. Poems that touch on social issues, in\nparticular, tend to lack the shades of meaning and the contemplative tone that\ndistinguish some of her other pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Penan<\/em> her\nrestraint on romanticism and nostalgia is minimal: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"To you
ancient father of the mystic land
I bear no good news, yet
the flicker of hope in your eyes 
tells of your pride
as we journey into Bakun.\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
The strongest works in the book are the poems that\nsound less polemical, and more personal, when anger and heartbreak are\nexpressed more as a sigh than as a rant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some poems derive their texture from details\n(“the swing\/you brought from the house\/in Taiping -\/it was white\nthen”). Others are striking for their intimacy: “Between\nsheets\/between breaths\/between skins\/That sometimes\/met in secret” reads like\nan entry to a diary that someone has hidden under a clean white pillow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there are the pieces are marked by a willingness\nto deal squarely with ambivalence — one theme that emerges on several\noccasions is the state of being torn between motherhood on one hand (“I\nfeed them both from a bowl of rice”), and on the other, the realization\nthat that entails giving up a degree of personal freedom:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"I now know

Why birth is a wing 

And my child

A chain.\"<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
It would have been too easy if she dwelled merely on\nher maternal instincts. Traditionalists might scold her for it, but it says a\nlot about her honesty as a writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The themes that bind most of the works in the\ncollection – life and death, love and heartbreak, the religious and the profane\n– all seem to coincide seamlessly in what is perhaps the most powerful piece in\nthe book, the only poem that makes up the section titled Forgiveness. What\nbegins with memories of her mother and her childhood (“in the garden of my\nyouth\/that garden\/your garden”) unfolds into a description of her mother’s\nillness (“Breathe Mother\/just breathe”) and, finally, her passing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\"Let go Mother 
it is time to greet
the self that still remains 
that which life has maimed
in death, will recover.\" <\/pre>\n\n\n\n
~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n
First Published: 19.03.2008 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Bernice Chauly’s small but substantial collection of poetry and prose, The Book of Sins, words indeed rage forth from the page, and they do so with a searing yet unembellished forcefulness. It’s hard not to note, first and foremost, the urgent, pounding rhythm to some of the lines in this collection. In This Love, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3541,3569],"tags":[1761,264,539,538,3733,49],"language":[7523],"writer":[7613],"class_list":["post-27282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-literature","category-review","tag-bernice-chauly","tag-book","tag-literature","tag-poetry","tag-prose","tag-review","language-english","writer-gabrielle-low"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27282"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27282\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38985,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27282\/revisions\/38985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27282"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27282"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}