Paul David Adkins’ La Doña la Llorona Joins the Worldly and Otherworldly
by Jubalee Penuliar
Could you love a ghost that drowns little children? After reading La Doña la Llorona, you may just surprise yourself.
Perhaps love is too strong of a word, but the ghost woman, la Llorona, detailed in this series of persona poems, will enchant readers into an eerie empathy for her vulnerabilities and desires, and even her vicious faults. In a sequence of portrait poems both by observers and by la Llorona herself, the reader sees the ghost as multi-faceted, at once violent and unrefined—“not a girl/ to bring home to your mother”—but also surprisingly self-conscious and reflective. La Llorona, like many, is a “misunderstood [woman],” subject to the scrutinizing gaze of others. About this, she says, “Even a ghost gets tired/ of stares.”
Though la Llorona lives in the spectral world, Paul David Adkins captures her in the natural one. Each poem is titled with anchoring facts of date and location, in both the U.S. and Mexico, spanning from 1975 to 2016. La Llorona would love her name on a Hollywood star, and is a student of pop culture. She observes and responds to current events in the form of rants and interviews: Marilyn Monroe, J. Lo, Winnie the Pooh, Tiger Woods’ wife, Jerry Springer, and even Donald Trump make cameo appearances, in a way that allows readers to identify la Llorona’s spectral experience with their daily one.
Adkins transcribes la Llorona’s voice into these poems. She lives on the page in mystery and heartbreak. She speaks through images that both wound and console:
Who am I
to ice a child?
But it was me
who doodled flowers
on the children’s cheeks
with that silver pen of frost,
lined their lips
with blue.
She speaks, knotting together sin and delight:
I’ve been hurt, and you
think I’m unique-
red droplet in the snow you mistake
for the bud of a peony.
If I’m a woman
wronged, then wrong with me
those wrongs further into something delicious,
something sinful as a caramel ribbon cinching a throat.
In this collection, la Llorona speaks, as Adkins promises she will, to “bring to us our lives, in all their brokenness, their glory, their reeking of vengeance and victimization.” At the end of this collection, we know la Llorona, but we also know a little bit more of ourselves, too.
Perhaps love is too strong of a word, but the ghost woman, la Llorona, detailed in this series of persona poems, will enchant readers into an eerie empathy for her vulnerabilities and desires, and even her vicious faults. In a sequence of portrait poems both by observers and by la Llorona herself, the reader sees the ghost as multi-faceted, at once violent and unrefined—“not a girl/ to bring home to your mother”—but also surprisingly self-conscious and reflective. La Llorona, like many, is a “misunderstood [woman],” subject to the scrutinizing gaze of others. About this, she says, “Even a ghost gets tired/ of stares.”
Though la Llorona lives in the spectral world, Paul David Adkins captures her in the natural one. Each poem is titled with anchoring facts of date and location, in both the U.S. and Mexico, spanning from 1975 to 2016. La Llorona would love her name on a Hollywood star, and is a student of pop culture. She observes and responds to current events in the form of rants and interviews: Marilyn Monroe, J. Lo, Winnie the Pooh, Tiger Woods’ wife, Jerry Springer, and even Donald Trump make cameo appearances, in a way that allows readers to identify la Llorona’s spectral experience with their daily one.
Adkins transcribes la Llorona’s voice into these poems. She lives on the page in mystery and heartbreak. She speaks through images that both wound and console:
Who am I
to ice a child?
But it was me
who doodled flowers
on the children’s cheeks
with that silver pen of frost,
lined their lips
with blue.
She speaks, knotting together sin and delight:
I’ve been hurt, and you
think I’m unique-
red droplet in the snow you mistake
for the bud of a peony.
If I’m a woman
wronged, then wrong with me
those wrongs further into something delicious,
something sinful as a caramel ribbon cinching a throat.
In this collection, la Llorona speaks, as Adkins promises she will, to “bring to us our lives, in all their brokenness, their glory, their reeking of vengeance and victimization.” At the end of this collection, we know la Llorona, but we also know a little bit more of ourselves, too.
