| Title | : | Woman Without Shame: Poems |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0593534824 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780593534823 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 176 |
| Publication | : | First published September 13, 2022 |
| Awards | : | Goodreads Choice Award Poetry (2022) |
It has been twenty-eight years since Sandra Cisneros published a book of poetry. With dozens of never-before-seen poems, Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home--in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.
Woman Without Shame: Poems Reviews
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For my first selection for this years Latinx Heritage Month, I found a new collection of poems by Sandra Cisneros. Before she became a famous novelist, Cisneros got her start by writing poetry. She is still a poet and the poems in this collection waited over ten years before she got the courage to tackle them. Here, Cisneros tackles issues like ageism, older women’s self image, reverse immigration like she has done by moving to Mexico from Chicago, and various other themes that pop up. Poems are in English and Spanish and done either lightly or in powerful prose. I may not agree completely with the message she is sending, but as a woman who has enjoyed her writing over the years, I look up to her as she contemplates an older woman’s role in society, and know what I have to look forward to. These poems should not have sat in a shoe box for over ten years.
4 stars -
Trickster time arrived
while I slept.
It takes some getting used to.
I watch my transformation
bemused. Just as I once
watched myself alter into
my woman’s body. Watch
and marvel now as then.
Relieved to some degree.
Fascinated with where
I am and where I am
traveling.
Stepping On Skin from Woman Without Shame by Sandra Cisneros
Sandra Cisneros is famous for her novel A House on Mango Street. It’s been twenty-eight years since she published a book of poetry. The poems in Woman Without Shame are fierce, visceral, lyric, and even humorous. She reflects on her life from the vantage point of experience. It is gratifying to encounter poetry about a woman’s experience.
Canto for Woman of a Certain Age is hilarious, inspired by Dylan Thomas, raging against sensible white grannie underwear. She writes about Floaters, caused by the aging of the vitreous layer of the eye, and being told it’s harmless. (Perhaps, but I have so many it interferes with reading.) She wonders how Mrs. Gandhi reacted to her famous husband’s decision for celibacy.
As a Mexican American living in Mexico, she encounters the beauty of the ordinary and the horror of political and social evil. El Hombre begins with a girl’s death, “It’s her father’s debts./This is how they pay/Un Hombre who can’t pay.” Interspersed through the poem is the refrain,”Mandanos lux. Send us all light.” In To A–, she writes about narcos collecting protections from vendors and of the people who have disappeared. (My cousin married a Mexican and at retirement they moved to Mexico and built a beautiful hacienda. He was shot on the street.)
She recalls her youth. “We were all on the run in ’82,/Jumping to Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,”/The summer’s theme song.” She remembers lovers and sex.
In Woman Seeks Her Own Company, her self-portrait begins “Profession: Word Weaver,” and she concludes “Artistry: At sixty-five convinced/Just getting started.” I love the strength and affirmation of this insight.
At seventy, I understand Cisneros’ on so many levels. The changed body. (Oh, yes, in ’82 the men called out to me on the streets of Philadelphia.) The acceptance of the changes, not seeing aging as a declination, but a strength, understanding that one hones one’s art as a life long process.
Cisneros was a poet first, she writes in the Acknowledgements, and she has continued to write poetry. Woman Without Shame represents decades of unpublished work. These poems will be an inspiration to women, and hopefully inspire us all to be without shame.
Thanks to #AAKnopf for a free book. -
3.5
Some poems are better than others but none of them stood out to me as especially poignant. I preferred the poems in the last few sections to those in the front. Two standouts were “You better not put me in a poem” and “Woman seeks her own company.” -
4.5 stars. This enjoyable collection of poems was further enhanced by listening to the author read them. She is a wonderful reader who adds a feeling and playfulness throughout.
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Allow me to place this book on your radar.
TITLE: WOMAN WITHOUT SHAME
AUTHOR: Sandra Cisneros
PUB DATE: 09.13.2022 Now Available
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME and GOODREADS
A brave new collection of poems from Sandra Cisneros, the best-selling author of The House on Mango Street.
Woman Without Shame is a moving collection of songs, elegies, and declarations that chronicle her pilgrimage toward rebirth and the recognition of her prerogative as a woman artist. These bluntly honest and often humorous meditations on memory, desire, and the essential nature of love blaze a path toward self-awareness. For Cisneros, Woman Without Shame is the culmination of her search for home—in the Mexico of her ancestors and in her own heart.
THOUGHTS:
A triumphant return to poetry after 28 years, and I enjoyed every word of this amazing collection. I particularly enjoyed the bits about aging - handled with humor and wit, seeing ourselves as vintage and celebrating the aging body and the aches and pains that comes with it. Cisneros does not shy away from grit with mentions of both US and Mexico political issues, poverty, and what comes along with that is crime and violence. I loved that Cisneros included poems in Spanish in this collection as well as unapologetically celebrating the woman’s body and sexuality. -
Just the patron saint, Sandra Cisneros, erupting with freedom, delight, and honesty. A whole, true woman weaving laugh lines and hard years into words.
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i expected more with a title like this from cisneros.
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I admit that this book of poetry wasn’t for me. I picked it up out of nostalgia; in high school I heard the poet speak and read poetry from The House on Mango Street. This collection doesn’t resonate with me the way I hoped it would, but the poetry is still imaginative and reflective.
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Sandra Cisneros is quite a poet. I loved the honesty, the openness and the range of this book of poems covering her life. The mixture of Spanish in the poems and references to her ancestral roots also endeared me.
The poem I liked least was called “You Better not Put Me in a Poem,” but probably because of my lack of interest in sex with men. The poem is actually an amazingly written compendium of her sexual experiences, like nothing you’ve ever read. She never married and she is glad none of those relationships worked (she said in a New Yorker interview).
A woman on her own. Woman Without Shame.
There were so many poems I loved and could relate too. The book is a fantastic collection and Sandra Cisneros did indeed write them over her 67 years. Poems observing people, telling about her writing, her childhood and just about life. Here are the first two of Four Poems on Aging
Ménière’s
This loss of the
Right ear’s hearing,
No cross.
I only half listen
Anyhow.
Funny Bone
So much depends
Upon a staircase
Glazed with
Rainwater
Seven
Years
Ago.
A book very worth reading. Thank you Sandra Cisneros for the gift of your poems. I will never forget beauty and simplicity of A House on Mango Street. This book is very much like it. Highly recommend. -
How is this my first Cisneros???
*Logs into library account to place holds on all available* -
With her first volume of poetry in nearly thirty years, Sandra Cisneros does not disappoint. Woman Without Shame starts off extraordinary with a number of unforgettable pieces about her whimsical youth and the necessity of love. These themes continue with abundance in both long and short pieces that maintain their high quality of evocative and clever verses for over 150 pages.
As the title alludes to, instead of dwelling on the process of aging or on recollecting moments from youth that are barely less than shameful, she is euphoric with sharing her self-made love for her body and for her current place of contentment in life as she nears sixty. In reminiscing about her past, she views her experiences and choices as vital to arriving at the woman she now celebrates—someone free, untethered, and in pursuit of reverence with gratitude and joy without regrets.
She holds back no shame in sharing intimate memories of lust, desire, and carnal instinct. Mostly, however, the pieces in this book gather an account of her learning how to find the most fulfilling life, which she has determined relies on commitment to her art of writing and the exploration it affords her to appreciate her life’s journey as a wonder to celebrate. Any grief or setbacks are viewed as crossroads for decisions either to allow sadness to define you or learn how to grow from mistakes.
Often funny and always candid, these poems force us to reflect on how to attain the most out of life. Some of the pieces about lust and desire got repetitious, which is why the stronger ones seemed to appear at the outset when she first bares her unvarnished memories. Nonetheless, Woman Without Shame is a memorable book of poems that will not have you struggling with accessibility as you think about your own life and the choices that have led you to who you are. -
On my poetry BS right now thank u library books. First book of poetry from a Latina perspective and had a lot of references to Mexican culture which was interesting to read about. Honestly her confidence in her self, body, past, lovers etc was refreshing and fun
POTB:
At Fifty I Am Startled to Find
I Am in My Splendor
These days I admit
I am wide as a tule tree.
My underwear protests.
And yet,
I like myself best
without clothes when
I can admire myself
as God made me, still
divine as a maja.
Wide as a fertility goddess,
though infertile. I am,
as they say,
in decline. Teeth
worn down, eyes burning
yellow. Of belly
bountiful and flesh
beneficent I am. I am
silvering in crags
of crotch and brow.
Amusing.
I am a spectator at my own sport.
I am Venetian, decaying splendidly.
Am magnificent beyond measure.
Lady Pompadour roses exploding
before death. Not old.
Correction, aged.
Passé? I am but vintage.
Iam a woman of a delightful season.
El Cantarito, little brown jug of la Lotería.
Solid, stout, bottom planted
firmly and without a doubt,
filled to the brim I am.
I said the brim. -
“i believe what the generals need now / are the abuelita brigades armed with / chanclas to shame, swat, and spank / los meros machos del mundo / amen.”
SANDRA CISNEROS JUST GETS IT -
In this poetry collection, Cisneros explores themes of aging, grief, body representation, and romance. The poems are vivid, varied, and accessible, often humorous, and occasionally heartbreaking. Some read like incantations or prayers, and one is an extended reflection on the penises of former lovers. So, yes, quite a range of subject matter. My favorites include "Instructions for My Funeral," "Year of My Near Death," and "El Hombre," which repeats the refrain "Mándanos luz. Send us all light" over and over again. I also loved "When in Doubt." That title phrase is a formula I'm also fond of--and always trying to sneak into my writing.
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Not Sandra Cisneros being weirdly homo/biphobic... I also didn't think it was truly inspired poetry for the most part. There were some good lines and poems, but too many misses for me. It was especially mind-boggling to me in one poem where she asserted that the way to fix global violence was to get the abuelitas swatting people with the chancla to put them in their place or something... so I guess we are solving violence with a retributive attitude and stance?
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I just don't think I am the right audience for this book- the writing is beautiful, but I found myself getting lost and confused easily. Not rating because I don't want my ignorance to hurt the Author or deter others
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I overall enjoyed this poetry collection as it explored the depth, power, and vulnerability of womanhood and Latin culture. I just think some of the poems however didn't quite work, felt forced, or were trying too hard and were borderline cringe, and the collection sometimes felt uneven and didn't keep my attention the whole way through, but when the poems worked, they worked, and they were as beautiful as they were interesting and intense.
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I feel SEEN. This is a brilliant collection.
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I'm very glad that only my cat was around to hear my astoundingly terrible pronunciation when trying to read the Spanish-language poems out loud.
Listen, I can't do an accent of any kind to save my life. I am the anti-Streep. I'm pretty sure that when I'm reciting prayers or attending virtual services, God themselves is up there listening to my sorry ass Hebrew and being like "girl, stop".
This was a really moving collection, and I loved how well Cisneros blended astute observations with personal confessions and a bit of wicked humor. Many of the poems focus on her existence as an older woman and what that means for her body as well as her connection to it, and how the wider world views her and also how much less she cares about that now than at younger ages. There is also a lot about her heritage and the, let's say, thorny relationship between Mexico and the United States and between Mexicans and white Americans.
There were a number of poems that were speaking to or about a very specific person, and I liked how she formed those into a poetic structure, rather than just having it seem like a prose letter that she went through and hit the enter key a bunch of times. I also appreciated how she tackled some difficult topics, such as the tenuousness of life under a narco state. There were a few poems that fall into my "these are observations, not poems" category, but mostly I really connected with this one. Some of my favorites: Tea Dance, Provincetown, 1982; It Occurs to Me I Am the Creative/Destructive Goddess Coatlicue; Jarcería Shop; El Hombre; Te A--; and You Better Not Put Me in a Poem. -
4.5 rounded up to 5 - A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR NOMINEE: TIME AND GOODREADS
If you're a poetry-loving woman (particularly one struggling with grief, relationship drama, singlehood, poor body image, or aging), read this collection! (Not that men shouldn't read this too!) Cisneros powerfully articulates the feelings many women have had but been unable to put into words. Her amazing literary gifts and her kick-a## personality just emanate from the pages of this very entertaining collection.
I borrowed this book from the library, but midway through added it to my "want to purchase for my personal library" list.
WARNING: Do not start reading this late at night like I did. A likely side effect is reading-induced insomnia. I overslept because I stayed up too late drinking vino and reading this one. If a book can be "good company," this collection certainly was! It was like having a glass of wine and chatting late into the evening with one of my best girlfriends. -
The secret poems kept for the self which, finally, were flung to the sky like doves, or ravens, for the world to finally read. The best thing about growing older - who gives a rip?! 🐦⬛ ❤️ 🕊️ Read for Poetry with Pat.
At Fifty I Am Startled to Find I Am in My Splendor
K-Mart, San Antonio, Texas, 1986
Smith Super Market Taos New Mexico at the 15 items or less checkout line
In case of emergency
I should like to fall in love with a burro name Saturnino
Neither Señorita, nor Señora
A boy with a machine gun waves to me
Police blotter May 5, 2013 San Miguel de Allende
Four poems on aging
Instructions for vigiling the dying
God breaks the heart again and again until it stays open
Mrs. Gandhi
You better not put me in a poem -
This book started out a little slow, but the more I listened (audiobook), the more it began to delight me. I don’t know when I have enjoyed listening to a poet read this much. Cisneros has a way of reading with mischief and joy that I suspect doesn’t entirely translate in the written poems. I found myself laughing aloud or saying yes! as it went on. What a joy this was to experience. Her subject matter is the world, aging, past loves and lovers, family, and community. There were only a handful of poems that didn’t resonate with me. I’m definitely going to buy a print copy now to go back to.
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I really enjoyd this book of poems from Sandra Cisneros. Clearly as she is entering the winter of her life, she is reflecting, with happiness and sadness on the love and wisdom in her life. I take these poems as guides as since she is two decades my senior. Also, I love the bits that are particular to San Antonio, as she lived there for 29 years and it was my hometown.
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“I’ve died and risen
From the ash of my own
Hesitation. I’m creation.”
A lovely, addicting composition of self-love, sex and the exploration of aging. Instructions for Vigiling the Dying genuinely made my eyes mist. The poet’s poems on politics are cutting and heartbreaking. I adored seeing her playing with words and linguistics, and was especially delighted by her spotlighting the importance of small, calming pleasures.
“Look at the moon.
Write poetry.
Take you time, mija.
Take you time.” -
“Allow no Christian rituals for this bitch, but, if you like, you may invite a homeless dog to sing, or a witch woman to spit orange water and chant an Otomí prayer.”
yearning and heartfelt and angry, my favorites. -
I'm not so sure why I admire Cisneros so much, but I do. In descending order, here are the poems I enjoyed the most:
"Woman Seeks Her Own Company"
"You Better Not Put Me in a Poem"
"Year of My Near Death" and
"Smith's Supermarket, Taos, New Mexico, at the Fifteen-Items-or-Less Checkout Line" -
This is the 2nd book of poems that I have finished. I treasured these. The political ones were hard to read, full of sadness and it pulls you in. The poems about women and aging were beautiful and satisfying. Hard to explain. You have to read them! I read about 2-3 poems in a sitting.
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Couldn’t put this one down - so many highlights. Many of her poems spoke to me on such a personal level. Will be buying a copy so I can come back to it.
One of my favorite quotes -
“By ten, hot bath, lavender salts. Flannel buttoned to the neck. Am certain Rufina is not as happy as I am tonight, in bed with my love, a book.” -
The flower and the fruit am I.
Butterflies breathing life am I.
Resurrection and redemption am I.
Pie in the sky am I.
Kid and wise guy am I.
The still and the gale am I.
Fever and frustration am I.
The evening tide am I.
The soup without the fly am I.
The whole naranja am I. -
Highly recommend listening to the audiobook as Sandra herself narrated it. Love the references to San Miguel de Allende, where she currently resides. Beautiful words all around.
