Julia de Burgos ( 1914 – 1953)
Julia de Burgos, born in Carolina, in 1914 and died in 1953. Julia is a strong feminist. She has mostly written about women’s empowerment in her literary creations. This poem depicts how women are burdened with patriarchal ideologies from the past. She urges the women to detach themselves from the past so as to locate their identity within. The poem also deals on Gender discrimination and social inequality between men and women.
The poet is against the male dominant society. She wants women’s freedom. She doesn’t want to follow the path made by in the patriarchal society. She wants to break the chain that has tied women from the long past. She wants to make a new route for all women. And she starts a revolution and she is able to reach her goal of liberation.
She was disturbed by the old guards ( the male members of the patriarchal society). Those old guards were the people who were conservative and narrow-minded. They didn’t want women to come in front line and enjoy their rights and freedom. Still she ignored the obstacles and worked hard to reach to her destination.
She was unpinned from her society because she had started a revolution against her male dominant society. She was leading a revolution. Her struggle and determination helped her to cross the barriers to reach her destination.
Though she achieved her goal still she felt insecure. The male dominant society had given a lot of sufferings to her. The route was different. In her new route, she saw freedom for the women. There was justice and right for the women. She was able to bring the balance between the new route and the women’s life. She realized that she lived her own life of freedom and dignity.
In the last stanza, she is expressing her happiness for being success in her attempt. How a flower blooms in a difficult land structure, in the same way, despite of hurdles she was able to bring happiness in the life of women.
The women are moving safely towards liberation through the path the poet created for them. For her this attempt and strength, she is admiring herself.
The miserable and painful conditions of women urged her to combat against the male dominant society and she was success but still she found herself following the norms created by the male dominant society. The poet is waiting for dignity and reputation in her society.
In this poem, the existing theme is: male domination, feminism, the search for identity, freedom, rebellious feeling, struggle and status for women in a male dominant society.
Refrain in the poem is the repetition of same or multiple lines in different stanzas which is used to give focus to the main point of the poem.
* The lines in the first stanza
‘I wanted to be like men wanted me to be:
an attempt at life;
a game of hide and seek with my being.
But I was made of nows, ‘
these lines are repeated in the last stanza.
The poet has used ‘free verse’ style in her poem so that there is no any particular rhyming pattern to give a lyrical tone to the poem.
THE POEM
I Was My Own Route
I wanted to be like men wanted me to be:
an attempt of life;
a game of hide and seek with my being.
But I was made of nows,
and my feet level on the promissory earth
would not accept walking backwards
and went forward, forward,
mocking the ashes to reach the kiss
of new paths.
At each advancing step on my route forward
my back was ripped by the desperate flapping wings
of the old guard.
But the branch was unpinned forever,
and at each new whiplash my look
separated more and more and more from the distant
familiar horizons;
and my face took the expansion that came from within,
the defined expression that hinted at a feeling of intimate liberation;
a feeling that surged from the balance between my life
and truth of the kiss of the new paths.
Already my course now set in the present,
I felt myself a blossom of all the soil of the earth,
of the soils without history, of the soils without a future,
of the soil always soil without edges of all the men and all the epochs.
And I was all in me as was life in me…
I wanted to belike men wanted me to be:
an attempt at life;
a game of hide and seek with my being.
But I was made of nows; when the heralds announced me
at the regal parage of the old guard,
the desire to follow men warped in me,
and the homage was left waiting for me…
