• Review Archives
  • Caribbean Literary + Cultural Blogroll
  • Story Sundays
  • Charting Children’s Literature
  • Reading Challenges & Projects
  • Review Policy + Contact Form

Novel Niche: A Place for Books

~ Ruminations, reviews and recipes all cooked in a literary cauldron: al(most always) book reviews, all the time.

Novel Niche: A Place for Books

Tag Archives: Ciguapa

“Ciguapa” – Mario Ariza

24 Friday Aug 2018

Posted by Shivanee @ Novel Niche in Other Kinds of Men

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

A Speculative Poetry Reader, Ciguapa, Mario Ariza, Other Kinds of Men

3775585089_37e761b3c1_b

Image: Yellow feathers, posted at Flickr by Claire Dickson under a Creative Commons License.

The difference between what is horrendous and what is beautiful is only the defect of our own eyes, not what we regard.

In Mario Ariza’s “Ciguapa”, a woman offers cocaine, then tells her listener a story. The ciguapa is the character beneath the folkloric mat, revealed for tongue-dusting. Nocturnal, mountain-dwelling, with feet turned backwards, Dominican ciguapas make me hearken to Trinidadian douens/duennes, with a notable exception: douens are unbaptized children; ciguapas are human women. This puts them in a juxtapositional league with churiles, of Hindu origin, who are the spirits of pregnant woman who died during childbirth. Douen, ciguapa, churile: all orthodox instruction warns you to avoid them, as they are all ‘dangerous’, with varying degrees of vindictive malice beneath their straw hats, knotted in their long ropes of hair.

Ariza’s poem is speculative and stabilizing in particularly the ways I like. It aligns the folkloric real — the horror of the ciguapa we can imagine — with the immediate brutality of everyday living: its victims here are malnourished children, so hungry their parasitic worms are starved. I admire the capacity of what Ariza seeks to do here, vaulting horror against horror, embroidering our bare palms with many different ways to be scared.

The poem turns doubly speculative in the heavy vaguada rains: not only is there a ciguapa, but she is presented here as a lodestone, in a story of ancestral recall. The speaker accesses her through reflection on another self, another time: “women with their feet turned / backwards, vengeful Taina women with matted hair / and the thin moon in their obsidian teeth / drove my body in its past life away from its home”.

Think, then, of all the visitations wafting, stirred into the dark blood of your ancestry. How many spirits have stalked you in the dark, teeth so ready?

Read “Ciguapa” here.
Mario Ariza is executive editor of Sinking City Magazine, and an editorial fellow at The New Tropic.

bon voyage.jpgThis is the twenty-third installment of Other Kinds of Men, a speculative poetry reader in honour of Ursula K. Le Guin. Speculative writing, which encompasses the major genres of mythology, fantasy and science fiction, has often given voice to the most relentless and ungovernable urgencies of this age, and any other. Le Guin understood this: that to write about dragons, ice worlds and other seeming oddities was, in fact, to write into the messy, riotous complexity of ourselves. Here’s to dragons, and here’s to Ursula.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Tumblr
  • Twitter
  • More
  • LinkedIn
  • Reddit
  • Print
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Sheaves upon sheaves of novel musings straight to your mail!

Join 331 other followers

Novel Niche is Social!

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Goodreads

The Eternal TBR

Popular Perusals

  • "Birdshooting Season" - Olive Senior
    "Birdshooting Season" - Olive Senior
  • 39. Daughters of Empire by Lakshmi Persaud
    39. Daughters of Empire by Lakshmi Persaud
  • Story Sundays: "Winter Break" by Hilary Mantel
    Story Sundays: "Winter Break" by Hilary Mantel
  • A Week in Walcott • "Map of the New World"
    A Week in Walcott • "Map of the New World"
  • "My God, It's Full of Stars" - Tracy K. Smith
    "My God, It's Full of Stars" - Tracy K. Smith
  • "Place Name: Oracabessa" - Kei Miller
    "Place Name: Oracabessa" - Kei Miller
  • "Ode to Northern Alberta" - Billy-Ray Belcourt
    "Ode to Northern Alberta" - Billy-Ray Belcourt
  • "Why Whales Are Back in New York City" - Rajiv Mohabir
    "Why Whales Are Back in New York City" - Rajiv Mohabir
  • "The Madwoman as Rasta Medusa" - Shara McCallum
    "The Madwoman as Rasta Medusa" - Shara McCallum
  • A Week in Walcott • "Jean Rhys"
    A Week in Walcott • "Jean Rhys"

Currently Reading

Just Finished…

What S/H/(W)e Said

  • Revolutionary Mothering in Novel Niche - PM Press on Guest Review: Revolutionary Mothering: Love On The Front Lines
  • Almah LaVon Rice-Faina on Guest Review: Revolutionary Mothering: Love On The Front Lines
  • thecornocopiaallotment on “All Hallows” – Louise Glück
  • Shivanee @ Novel Niche on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • Andrew Blackman on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • “Mirror, Reflect Our Unknown Selves” – Tlotlo Tsamaase | Novel Niche: A Place for Books on “Daphne” – Roberto Rodriguez-Estrada
  • Shivanee @ Novel Niche on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • Andrew Blackman on “I Saw the Devil in the Cane Fields” – Shastra Deo
  • Andrew Blackman on “Can You Speak English?” – Natalie Wee
  • Steve @poetrykoan on “La Brea” – Andre Bagoo

Twitter Updates

  • @MalikasKitchen @VCapildeo @rrobinson72 @keimiller @NineArchesPress Jill! Absolutely loved Roger and Kei's newest c… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 2 hours ago
  • I have just ordered six books of poems and can now lie down in fields of joy for the rest of the day. 2 hours ago
  • @chikaunigwe A glance at this already tells me it will be incredibly powerful -- thank you so much for the recommendation, Chika! xx 3 hours ago
  • @icebox_clouds @CPhillipsPoet Thank you for these recommendations! I am looking forward to exploring them both. xx 3 hours ago
  • @RESHMARUIA Thank you for this lovely recommendation! I have Tishani's collection close to hand, and this is a beau… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 3 hours ago

New at Novel Niche

  • Dearly Departed: A Conversation with Anu Lakhan
  • “The Whistler” – A Mary Oliver Primer
  • “The Fish” – A Mary Oliver Primer
  • “Wild Geese” – A Mary Oliver Primer
  • “How to Fix a Dancer When it Breaks” – Genevieve DeGuzman

Categories

  • A Week in Walcott (7)
  • Bookends (24)
    • Author Interviews and Features (3)
    • Bocas Lit Fest (5)
    • Guest Blogs (2)
    • Literary Events (1)
    • Literary Letters (1)
    • Novel Gift Exchanges (4)
    • Reading Ruminations (2)
    • Yourself In Books (2)
  • Charting Children's Literature (4)
  • Give Feral Thanks – A Mary Oliver Primer (3)
  • Guest Reviews (6)
  • Here for the Unicorn Blood (29)
  • Miscellanities (1)
  • NetGalley (2)
  • Other Kinds of Men (26)
  • Puncheon and Vetiver (31)
  • Reading Challenges (11)
    • British Book Challenge 2011 (4)
    • Caribbean Writers Challenge 2011 (5)
  • Requested Reviews (4)
  • Reviews 2010 (9)
  • Reviews 2011 (16)
  • Reviews 2012 (17)
  • Reviews 2013 (3)
  • Reviews 2014 (3)
  • Reviews 2016 (1)
  • Story by Story Reading (1)
  • Story Sundays (14)
  • Trinidad Guardian Sunday Arts Section (8)

Archives

Novel Niche's Eighth Anniversary!April 23, 2018

Tagnificent!

20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth Alexandra Fuller Andre Bagoo A Queer POC Poetry Reader A Speculative Poetry Reader A Week in Walcott Bocas Lit Fest 2012 Bocas Lit Fest 2013 Brandon O'Brien British Book Challenge 2011 Caribbean Writers Challenge 2011 Carol Shields Catherynne M. Valente Charting Children's Literature Chatto & Windus Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Chronicle Books Cormac McCarthy Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné Derek Walcott Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight Feature/Interview Fiction Fruit of the Lemon Give Feral Thanks Gregory Maguire Guest Review Half of a Yellow Sun HarperCollins Here for the Unicorn Blood Is Just a Movie Jason McIntyre K. Jared Hosein Karen Lord Lisa Allen-Agostini Littletown Secrets Loretta Collins Klobah Mary Oliver Memoir Midnight in Your Arms Monique Roffey Morgan Kelly NaPoWriMo NetGalley Non-Fiction Novel Novel Gifts Olive Senior Other Kinds of Men Peepal Tree Press Picador Poetry Potbake Productions Puncheon and Vetiver Rajiv Mohabir Reading Ruminations Requested Review Review Rosamond S. King Shani Mootoo Shara McCallum Sherman Alexie Short Story Collection Simon & Schuster Sonia Farmer Stephen King Story Sunday The Allen Prize for Young Writers The Road Trinidad Guardian Sunday Arts Section Unless Vintage/Anchor Books Vintage Books Xiaolu Guo Yourself in Books

Header, divider and button images created by Danielle Boodoo-Fortuné.

Creative Commons License
This work by Shivanee Ramlochan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
%d bloggers like this: