COPLAS QUE LA POETA HIZO A SUS

PADRES: JUANA CASTRO’S LOS

CUERPOS OSCUROS

KAY PRITCHETT
University of Arkansas

Critics who have studied the literary portrayal of dementia and Alzheimer’s
disease—a recent yet substantial sub-genre of illness literature—have
discovered a number of patterns detectable in countless poems, narratives,
and films. In brief, these include: first, descriptions of common symptoms,
such as memory loss, confusion, irrational speech patterns, and physical
debilitation;1 second, the presence of a “composite” or “relational” speaker
who, in empathizing with the afflicted protagonist, assumes the sufferer’s
despair even as the speaker contemplates her or his own future decline and
death; third, the thematic pairing of dementia and death;2 and fourth–and most
encouraging–the recreation of the infirmed individual’s lost “personhood”
by means of a re-envisioning of identity.3 It is through the prism of these
patterns that I will examine Juana Castro’s Los cuerpos oscuros (2005).
Over the years, Castro, born in Villanueva de Córdoba in 1945 and
acknowledged as a major poet as well as a feminist and ardent defender of
the working class, discovers lyrical, even mythic configurations by which to
express mundane experience.4 In this regard, we discover, for example, that
in Narcisia (1986) she is able to revamp issues relevant to women’s liberation
by re-elaborating archetypal feminine identities drawn from ancient religion
and mythology. In Arte de cetrería (1989), she uses medieval Spanish texts on
falconry to explore the relationship of husband and wife. By way of contexts
such as these, she lifts ordinary topics into a realm that is both universal and
transcendent.
Perhaps her greatest challenge arrived with Los cuerpos oscuros—
winner of the XXI Premio Jaén de Poesía—a collection of forty-two poems
that conveys the agony of her parents’ mental and physical deterioration, in
rhythmic, semiotic verse, replete with images and symbols that resonate with
the conditions of their disease. The phrase “cuerpos oscuros,” for example,
references an astrophysical phenomenon, the destruction of stars that, having
lost their physical integrity, explode into dark matter, thus abandoning their
original light.5
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Although her particular style has more often than not conformed to a
symbolist aesthetic, in her own words, she has always been a “poet of
experience.” In her comments at the Premio de Jaén award ceremony, Castro
gave emphasis to the impact of dementia and Alzheimer’s on contemporary
life, saying: “‘la poesía tiene que ser testigo de esta época, de lo que sucede,
y lo que sucede es esto’” (Porras Márquez). In reference to Los cuerpos
oscuros, she stated:

[...] creo que un poeta siempre escribe de su experiencia. Luego, hay

que transformar esa experiencia en obra de arte. Pero, al final, es
experiencia. En el libro, unas veces se narra y otras se sacan fuera las
pasiones. Desciendo a lo más insondable, a lo más terrible del alma
humana. (Porras Márquez)

Out of the desolation of her parents’ illness–senile dementia in her

father’s case, Alzheimer’s disease, in her mother’s–Castro creates a book that
has been called “un demoledor y hermoso poemario donde sin sensiblerías
ni patetismos [...], [ella] construye un monumento a sus padres [...]” (Mora
11). These words of Vicente Luis Mora in his prologue to Castro’s volume La
extranjera (2006) appropriately place Los cuerpos oscuros within the tradition
of Jorge Manrique’s “Coplas a la muerte de su padre.” Castro’s initial poem
“Océanos” brings this connection to light. Just as the fifteenth-century poet,
on the occasion of his father’s death, looks at the transitory nature of human
existence, Castro, anticipating her parents’ death, hears the menacing sound
of the sea and recalls the symbolism of Manrique’s “mar”: “Con ellos oigo
el mar. / Oigo el mar y visito los huecos / De la sombra en sus labios” (9).
Death, clearly referenced by “mar,” preoccupies the speaker from the outset,
since she knows that her parents’ condition is “progressive and incurable”
(Burke, “Alzheimer’s Disease”). When in the poem’s first line, she writes,
“Con ellos oigo el mar,” the reader senses that she contemplates not only their
demise but hers as well. This melding of conditions and perspectives between
speaker and protagonist—in this case protagonists—is a commonplace of
Alzheimer’s literature, in which writers often become spokespersons for
those whose diminished cognitive abilities preclude writing and in many
cases coherent speech. The adoption of such a role applies especially when
the writer is also the caregiver, who, in describing the protagonist’s condition,
tends to cross into the psychic space of the protagonist. Creators of such
works often construct a composite identity that allows them to share in the
experience of the disease in a unique way.
Readers of Castro’s volume will note that, early on, her speaker
circumvents the detached position of spectator by recognizing that through
her involvement with her parents she, too, witnesses the approach of death. In
 Kay Pritchett 149

assuming such a stance, she avoids, moreover, the ethical issue of casting her
infirmed loved ones in the role of “object of her gaze” (Burke, “The Poetry of
Dementia” 61-62). In recent years this issue has become a matter of concern
for many who question the morality of an artistic treatment of individuals
unable to give their consent and often unable to speak for themselves (61).
Artists, then, in examining an illness that is a burgeoning component of
contemporary experience must choose to omit it from their province or accept
the challenge of discovering ways of representing the sufferers of dementia
without robbing them of their human qualities.
The portrayal of the old, decrepit, and infirmed has elicited different
responses from writers over time; and, sadly, a common reaction, even to
normal aging, has been to characterize individuals in this late stage of life
as less than human. Despite her well-deserved enlightened status, Simone
de Beauvoir, in her writings about old age, reveals her conviction that
decrepitude is a naturally aversive state and that human beings are unable to
react in any way other than revulsion.6 Such a view is easily encountered in
the works of some of our most eminent writers. We have to look no further
than Shakespeare or Garcilaso de la Vega to discover callous depictions of
old age. In As You Like It Shakespeare places the following words in the
mouth of the character Jaque:

Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. (2.7.143-70)

Garcilaso is a little kinder as he imagines his lover in old age:

coged de vuestra alegre primavera

el dulce fruto, antes que el tiempo airado
cubra de nieve la hermosa cumbre.

Marchitará la rosa el viento helado,

todo lo mudará la edad ligera,
por no hacer mudanza en su costumbre. (38)

In writing about her ailing parents, on occasion Castro also falls prey
to uncharitable portrayals that suggest her own revulsion, her own sense
that attractiveness and personhood have abandoned her parents altogether.
A change in perspective from empathetic speaker to detached spectator
occurs in “Océanos,” the poem mentioned above, as the initially “complex”
speaker (“Oigo con ellos el mar”) changes quickly into a “simple” speaker,
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who, in describing the other, says: “Oigo el mar y visito los huecos de la
sombra en sus labios” (9, my emphasis). The speaker portrays herself here
as a visitor to “huecos de la sombra” which reside not on her lips but theirs.
Then, parenthetically, she says: “(Pero no sé si tienen labios.)” (9). This
dehumanized vision of her parents–people without lips–continues in the lines
that follow:

Son grandes y son lentos como dos

proboscidios. Se caen
cada día cien veces de su tierna rodilla
zamba. (9)

Following this description, the poet inserts another common Alzheimer’s

trope as she recounts a scene in which she, as caregiver, physically positions
her parents. Having lost movement–an important feature of being human–
they have become stationary, like a plant or rock:

Yo les doy
de beber, les unto
de pomada y de aceite
la piel roja del coxis
y a las doce los pongo en el balcón. (9)

This objectification continues, as the poet describes the tongue of her

ceaselessly chattering father as “una lengua de trapo / y de esponja / y de
agua” (9). Toward the end of the poem, however, the speaker momentarily
abandons her stance as dehumanizing spectator and admits that this “sea,”
meaning this death, has touched her as well:

Y el mar entra y sale,

va desde su cuarto a la cocina,
y a mí me humedece
de color gris acero las muñecas. (9-10)

When she looks at her wrists and sees them stained a deathly gun-metal gray,
she believes that her parents’ decrepitude has begun to contaminate her own
body.7
When night falls and the speaker needs to reposition her helpless patients,
she puts them into “nidos,” in other words, not human beds but animal nests
(10). At the end of the poem, she says:
 Kay Pritchett 151

y me siento a escuchar.
Y el mar bate, despacio
–muy
despacio–
en sus vientres de tierra. (10)

In this final line of the poem, it becomes clear that, in the speaker’s
mind, death has penetrated the aging bodies and has begun to reclaim them
for the earth. As Kathleen Woodward explains in her article on common
attitudes toward decrepitude, “inertia verges dangerously on the inert” (53).
Woodward considers our basically narcissistic disposition responsible for
this need to see the aged and dying as belonging to a category different
from our own. She states: “If our vision is always narcissistic, as I suspect
it is, the gaze at the Other is self-protective. We deny humanity to that aged
person so as to preserve our own illusion of immortality” (55).8 Just as the
sea “entra y sale,” as Castro says in the above-quoted lines, the speaker’s
position with respect to her parents oscillates between narcissistic observer
and empathetic composite speaker. At the beginning of the poem she joins
with her protagonists in contemplating death, but at the end the experience of
constant caregiving provokes a self-protective reaction.
In “Océanos,” then, we discover three of the patterns I mentioned
previously as common to dementia literature: descriptions of the condition
of the disease; the use, if not prevalence of a composite or relational speaker,
and the thematic pairing of the illness with death. What we do not find in this
initial poem is a recreation of the afflicted individual’s lost “personhood”
by way of a re-envisioning of identity. This element follows soon, however,
for it is in the epigraph to the second section of the book, that the speaker
recovers from her initial outpouring of revulsion and distress and begins to
view the darkness of the turbulent mind as a facet of light, of clarity. Quoting
from María Lainà’s poem, she interjects between parts one and two:

Lo oscuro no es la luz
pero le pertenece
como la soledad no es el amor
y sin embargo lo mira de frente
con ojos bien abiertos. (11)

Suggestive of her own evolution as a caregiver, the speaker now focuses on

the wholeness of life, the yin and the yang, the Taoist union of opposites.
Light belongs to dark, and darkness to light; love belongs to solitude, and
solitude to love. From such belonging emerges knowledge of the opposite,
knowledge that is open-eyed and straight-thinking.
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Bolstered by this vision, the speaker continues her realistic depiction.

Pushing her emotions aside, she attempts to focus on the hardships of her
frail and confused parents. Nonetheless, she is unable to maintain a steady
mind-set, and her voice modulates between patient caregiver and impatient,
defensive daughter. There is a continual “in and out” of distance and empathy.
Whereas in “Los encerrados,” she describes, with great impatience, their
repetitive behavior:

Y leen y releen, una vez y otra vez,

tercos como funambulistas,
la cuenta de la luz, el testamento,
la invitación de boda de una sobrina nieta. (13)

in the poem that follows it, “Vigía,” she falls back into fearful concern for her
parents, whom she has left alone at night:

A coraza mi sueño: con vosotros expira.

Color de rosa y palo se esculpe vuestra boca
al calor de esta noche,
y me muero de espanto
porque sé que estáis solos,
porque rugen gaviotas de sofoco en el pecho
y hay gorriones sin lengua
estrellándose ciegos en la luna
de nieve del armario. (15)

The images of her dream suggest that the speaker has entered another stage in
her own individuation with reference to her parents’ condition. In learning to
accept the disease, she must dream about it, work out her fears and conflicts
through images. We also note in this description that she has switched from
the “ellos” of “Los encerrados” to “vosotros,” also denoting the change from
detached observer to empathic caregiver.
Another step toward the restoration of lost personhood is the granting
of voice to the other.9 In such works the writer gives up the role of author,
which he or she passes to the protagonist, and takes up the role of amanuensis
or scribe (Killick 106). This role change occurs in the poem “Calle Cruz de
Ventura,” where the poet allows her mother to tell in her own words about
her and her husband’s stressful search for their daughter’s house. In sentences
both lucid and confused, the mother recounts their wonderings through the
streets of Córdoba:
 Kay Pritchett 153

Llevamos ya dos horas

perdidos en la acera
de no sé qué avenida, preguntando
en porteros donde nadie conoce a nuestra hija.
El ascensor no estaba, y otra vez
nos cambiaron el cuadro de los números. (17)

It is in this poem where a particularly interesting pattern first emerges, since

the speaker, who has just heard her mother’s strange, nightmarish account
of disappearing elevators, changing street numbers, and so on, responds in
equally peculiar language. It is also here that the union of opposites, of light
and dark, begins to play out, given that the lucid poet has adopted the obscure
language of her mother. Her response to her parents is: “–Traéis cemento
detrás de las orejas. / Y arañados los pies de rascacielos” (17). Her mother
then responds:

Ayer, el autobús de las espinas blancas

(¿o fue hoy?)
nos llevó a la deriva
por vueltas y revueltas
de hormigón y de luces.
Y de pronto, en un brillo
del oscuro café, una mirada, esa malicia
inteligente y cómplice del agua
(del agua de los ríos que van a dar al mar):
la casa, el pueblo.
Nosotros, ya, Ventura 14. (17-18)

Opposites connect, as the dark speech of the bewildered mother coincides

with the deviated speech of the poet. Moreover, both have uttered Manrique’s
extended metaphor.10 Here, as in past volumes, Castro has used semiotic
language (“Traéis cemento detrás de las orejas” 17) in defiance of the
established codes of linguistic usage, which she finds to be defective.11
The images of the speaker’s dreams, her mother’s speech, the poet’s own
semiotic language jointly raise a crucial question concerning consciousness
and expression. Her mother, in a sense, becomes a symbol of the tongued
subject in general. What is implied is that, whether we are aware of it or
not, we are, indeed, confused, given that our words—which proceed from
established codes of linguistic usage—may be at variance with the “reality”
or “truth” that we believe them to represent.
John Killick states that the amanuensis who works with dementia patients
“is helped by the fact that the language of many people with dementia is
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unusually creative—it exploits the full range of linguistic possibilities, with

particular emphasis on new combinations of words, sound patterns and
figures of speech” (108). By way of example, he mentions one Alzheimer’s
patient’s description of himself as “a kind of quiet nobody” (105). Killick
mentions that Dr. Oliver Sacks, a neurologist, in his book An Anthropologist
on Mars, makes similar observations:

While one may be horrified by the ravages of developmental disorder

or disease, one may sometimes see them as creative too—for if they
destroy particular paths, particular ways of doing things, they may
force on it an unexpected growth and evolution. This other side of
development or disease is something I see, potentially in almost every
patient. (qt. in Killick 109)

What Castro’s above-cited poem implies is that she, composite speaker,

has encountered a connection between cognitive health and cognitive
impairment. With this realization, she restores personhood to her mother,
whom the reader now sees not only as a victim of Alzheimer’s but also as a
person able to get lost and find her way again and to narrate that misadventure
in an imaginative way. Castro’s poem, which in essence belongs to both her
and her mother, suggests that there is light in her mother’s darkness just as
there is darkness in her (Castro’s) light.
In conclusion, I would emphasize that there is efficacy in Castro’s
incorporation of both types of depictions: those in which the parents’
humanity is highlighted and those in which it is diminished. There is efficacy
as well in her portrayal of the speaker’s erratic view of her parents’ condition.
A realistic portrayal of the experiences of parents and daughter necessitates
negative imagery. By including such descriptions, the poet avoids glossing
over the overwhelming aspects of the illness to create an idealization of
what, in actual fact, is a terrible disease. Moreover, the speaker’s fluctuation
between approach and avoidance, empathy and self-protection reproduces a
common pattern of human behavior, and, thus, suggests what a person might
anticipate in dealing with diseases–or other problems–that have the capacity
to “contaminate” in one way or another. The poet learns about aging and
dying in this collection, just as she had done in her 1994 volume, No temerás,
about which Olvido García Valdés has made the following observation: “La
muerte, pues, la de lo que amamos, imagen de la nuestra propia, es vista
como alimento, a modo de humus nutricio que posibilita nuestro arraigo, nos
individualiza y nos permite crecer y conocer” (20). This firm grounding in
reality, experience, which Castro confirms (as mentioned at the beginning
of this essay), has been repeatedly maintained by critics who, to be sure,
probe the semiotic element but return to the real-world relevance of Castro’s
 Kay Pritchett 155

work. Sharon Keefe Ugalde has said, with particular reference to the poet’s
approach to feminine identity:

El punto de partida es la realidad histórica de la subyugación de las

mujeres. De ahí el círculo se abre hacia el imaginario, un mundo de
pasión, de placer, de violencia, dolor, divinidad y de amor, y se cierra
retornando a la realidad, donde coexiste con el desarraigo inicial
una lucidez adquirida en el viaje poético que propone un diálogo, en
palabras de Rosario Castellanos, sobre “otra manera de ser.”
(Sujeto femenino 13)

Castro’s important message is evolutionary for the human species, in

that it confirms that what may seem “natural” to our most primitive thinking
can be overcome through empathy and reason. As Tess Gallagher, poet and
Alzheimer’s caregiver, concludes:

Just as the best poetry depends on an intensity of empathy, so the best

caregiving requires an ability to feel with and for the one in need. The
poetry I love most makes me feel the condition of another. Descartes
predicated: “I think, therefore I am.” Buddhism, as I approach it,
exchanges this for: “I feel, therefore I am.” [...] It [poetry] often
teaches me how to leap beyond the seemingly insoluble quandaries of
situations. Poetry carries us to the extremes of sorrow and unexpected
joy, even as we search for meaning. (xx)
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WORKS CITED

Burke, Lucy. “Alzheimer’s Disease: Personhood and First Person

Testimony.” Paper. Department of English, Manchester Metropolitan
University, Manchester, England, 2007. Google Search. Web. 10 August
2011.

—. “The Poetry of Dementia: Art, Ethics and Alzheimer’s Disease in

Tony Harrison’s Black Daisies for the Bride.” Journal of Literary and
Cultural Disability Studies 1.1 (May 2007): 61-73. Google Search. Web.
10 August 2011.

Castro, Juana. Arte de cetrería. Huelva: Colección de Poesía “Juan Ramón

Jiménez,” 1989. Print.

—. La extranjera. Málaga: Centro de Ediciones de la Diputación Provincial

de Málaga, 2006. Print.

—. Los cuerpos oscuros. Madrid: Hiperión, 2005. Print.

—. Narcisia. Barcelona: Taifa, 1986. Print.

Gala, Candelas. “‘Este aroma de lilas resonando en la niebla.’ Los cuerpos

oscuros de Juana Castro.” Monographic Review / Revista Monográfica
26 (2010): 35-50. Print.

Gallagher, Tess. “Foreword.” Beyond Forgetting: Poetry and Prose about

Alzheimer’s Disease. Ed. Holly J. Hughes. Keny, OH: State U P, 2009.
xv-xxiv. Print.

García Valdés, Olvido. “Mundo, experiencia, lenguaje: El yo poético (un

coro de solistas).” Ínsula: Revista de Letras y Ciencias Humanas 630
(June 1999): 15-21. MLA International Bibliography. Ebsco. Web. 26
June 2011.
 Kay Pritchett 157

Helfgott, Esther Altshul. “Witnessing Alzheimer’s through Diary and Poem:

Dear Alzheimer’s, Why Did You Pick Our Sheltered Lives to Visit?”
Journal of Poetry Therapy: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Practice,
Theory, Research, and Education 22.4 (December 2009): 185-217. Print.

Herskovits, Elizabeth. “Struggling over Subjectivity: Debates about the

‘Self’ and Alzheimer’s.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly, New Series
9.2 (June 1995): 146-164. JSTOR. Web. 3 August 2011.

Keen, Suzanne. “A Theory of Narrative Empathy.” Narrative 14.3 (October

2006): 207-236. Ebsco. Web. 3 August 2011.

Killick, John. “A Matter of the Life and Death of the Mind: Creative
Writing and Dementia Sufferers.” The Self on the Page: Theory and
Practice of Creative Writing in Personal Development. Ed. Celia Hunt
and Fiona Sampson. 104-114. Print.

Mora, Vicente Luis. “Prologue.” La extranjera. Puerta del Mar, Málaga:

Centro de Ediciones de la Diputación de Málaga, 2006. 7-23. Print.

Moreno, Carmen. “Juana Castro y los cuerpos oscuros.” Diario de Cádiz

Digital. 21 September 2006. Web. 15 August 2011.

Persin, Margaret. “Mujer y ciudadanía: Los casos de Concha Zardoya y

Juana Castro.” Lectora: Revista de Dones i Textualitat 15 (2009): 117-
134. MLA International Bibliography. Ebsco. Web. 26 June 2011.

Porras Márquez, Antonio, “Entrega del Premio Solienses 2005.” Solienses:

Cultura en los Pedroches. 23 March 2006. 13 August 2011.

Shakespeare, William, and Cynthia Marshall. As You Like It. New York:
Cambridge U P, 2004. Print.

Ugalde, Sharon Keefe. “Introduction.” Sujeto femenino y palabra poética:

Estudios críticos de la poesía de Juana Castro. Ed. Sharon Keefe
Ugalde. Córdoba: Diputación de Córdoba, 2002. 12-21. Print.
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—. “The Frame, the Portrait, the Dance, and the (S)word: Salome in Juana
Castro’s No temerás.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 22.3
(Spring 1998): 497-509. MLA International Bibliography. Ebsco. Web.
June 26, 2011.

Vega, Garcilaso de la. “En tanto que de rosa y azucena.” Antología del
soneto clásico español (siglos XV-XVII). Ed. Arturo del Hoyo. Madrid:
Aguilar, 1963. 38. Print.

Woodward, Kathleen. “Instant Repulsion: Decrepitude, the Mirror Stage,

and the Literary Imagination.” Kenyon Review. Ebsco. Web. 3 August
2011.
 Kay Pritchett 159

NOTES

1
Kathleen Woodward’s article listed in the bibliography discusses how
writers historically have depicted the aged body. I have found her inventory
of negative images useful for my analysis of Castro’s portrayal of her
decrepit parents.
2
Gallager’s foreword to Beyond Forgetting provides a first-hand account
of becoming a “composite speaker” as a result of her experience as an
Alzheimer’s caregiver. She explains: “I believe we became a kind of
composite person. I supplied what she forgot, and she began to look to
me to do so. On her side of the giving, she would interject stories from
her childhood and mine, through which we came to know each other in
new ways. [...] As in the title of this collection of poems and prose by
writers who also accompanied their loved ones through Alzheimer’s, we
did something unexpected, Mother and I: we moved beyond forgetting”
(xvii). Later on she says: “Javelins of insight and concentrated recognitions
about the unadorned nature of that old cliché ‘being human’ came to me
daily in her company” (xvii). I also found insightful information about
the “relational self” in works by Lucy Burke, especially in her article
listed in the bibliography. Drawing upon Anne Davis-Basting’s work
with Alzheimer’s patients and philosopher Agnieszka Jaworska’s work on
Alzheimer’s and agency, Burke concludes that “[w]hat is needed [...] is
a notion of selfhood that does not rely on memory, but is based upon the
relational quality of the self” (69). She goes on to mention the importance
of shared culture as a stalwart to identity, pointing out that in Black
Daisies “[w]hat the women ‘are,’ the text suggests, is not reducible to their
losses, but something that emerges through an interaction with the shared
cultural forms that speak our experiences” (69). Elizabeth Herskovits
also weighs in on the relational self, attributing to the Alzheimer’s self
a kind of “unbecoming,” which caregivers, as witnesses to the process,
attempt to counterbalance not only by serving as agents (147) but also
by attempting to “disentangle” the self from cognitive ability (159).
“Unbecoming” resonates especially with Castro’s poem “Retorno,” in
which she says: “Pero acaba el viaje. / Y hay que ir hacia atrás / des-
aprendiendo nombres, / des-conociendo pájaros y trenes, / des-memoriando
calles, / rubores y palabras” (72-73). Herskovits, moreover, accuses the lay
media of creating a monster by way of “vividly disturbing images” (153).
In reaction to this dehumanizing image of the Alzheimer’s victim, others
have attempted “to engage in reparative work,” producing in turn “a wide
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range of representations and theories of a reconstituted self and a reframed

subjectivity of Alzheimer’s [...]” (159).
3
Elizabeth Herskovits has stated that “by re-visioning the self in
Alzheimer’s we (as a society and as individuals) can feel better about being
and becoming old” (148). In other words, the recreation of the victim’s self,
through poetry, for example, may be ultimately a narcissistic enterprise
designed (unintentionally) to provide us with a more positive view of
aging. Yet, there are others, such as Esther Altshul Helfgott, whose diary
and poetry, by way of their inclusion of both her experience as caregiver
and her husband’s experience as patient, suggest that the attempted act
of identity reconstruction may be principally altruistic. Suzanne Keen’s
study of empathy confirms, moreover, that literary texts can produce
scientifically observable empathy in readers. The empathy that Alzheimer’s
literature creates for the aged and the diseased counteracts in part existent
negative attitudes toward these phenomena. She mentions that “theorists,
novel critics, and reading specialists have already singled out a small set
of narrative techniques—such as the use of first person narration and the
interior representation of characters’ consciousness and emotional states—
as devices supporting character identification, contributing to empathetic
experiences, opening readers’ minds to others, changing attitudes, and even
predisposing readers to altruism” (213).
4
Sharon Keefe Ugalde addresses the superimposition of the symbolic on
the real in her article “The Frame, the Portrait, the Dance.” In No temerás,
as could be said of Castro’s other works, the poet, by straddling a line
between the testimonial and the symbolic, is able to inject a transcendent
quality into experiential writing (497).
5
Castro’s explanation of her title is cited in Carmen Moreno’s article
“Juana Castro y los cuerpos oscuros.” Candelas Gala gives a fuller
explanation of the meaning and symbolism of “cuerpos oscuros” by
referencing Stephen Hawking’s explanation of quantum black holes and
also by illuminating the image’s meaning within Castro’s text. Gala states,
in reference to the latter: “La imagen de los cuerpos oscuros para referirse
a los pacientes de Alzheimer dota a la enfermedad de una proyección
cósmica y universal, y responde a una tendencia muy característica en
la obra de Juana Castro de presentar paradigmas, modelos generales o
esencias construidos a partir de casos particulares” (37).
6
Simone de Beauvoir is one of the detractors of old age whom Kathleen
Woodward refers to in her above-mentioned study (44-48). Speaking
specifically of the de Beauvoir of The Coming of Age (1970), she states:
 Kay Pritchett 161

“Hers is a particularly sobering thesis-in part because it is advanced by a

political activist, a Marxist and feminist who all her life has believed that
changing the material conditions of social and economic life would change
the distribution of power” (44).
7
Candelas Gala suggests that the color of the speaker’s wrists alludes to
her sense of enslavement to her parents’ care, that is, a person in handcuffs
(39).
8
Herskovits agrees with Woodward regarding the selfish motives that may
underlie the desire of writers and others to bolster the notion of human
identity upon which Alzheimer’s impinges. “With the popularization
of Alzheimer’s,” she states, “the subjective experience of aging and of
‘senility’ have become increasingly horrific and monstrous; we are all
afraid of losing our minds as we grow old” (148).
9
The idea of speaking aloud in first person and telling one’s experience
is central to Castro’s understanding of human rights. Margaret Persin
makes the following observation in her study of the poet’s contribution to
the concept of citizenship: “Castro ofrece una visión de ciudadanía para
la mujer o para cualquier otra persona que tiene sus raíces en la dignidad
e igualdad, en el derecho de contar en voz alta y en primera persona su
experiencia, y con este acto, en el poder de habitar un espacio sin tener que
defenderse contra la comunidad hegemónica” (133). As noted by critics
mentioned throughout this essay, in the case of Alzheimer’s and dementia
patients, the restoration of voice is key to the reconstruction of identity
encroached upon by the disease.
10
In this poem, readers discover an example of the role of the “shared
cultural reference” of which Burke speaks in her critique of Harrison’s
Black Daisies (mentioned in endnote 2). In Castro’s poem, Manrique’s
Coplas remains of value to Castro’s mother, just as the popular song “Oh
You Beautiful Doll” continues to be valued by Maria, Kath, and Irene, the
dementia victims in Harrison’s book. She submits that “cultural practices
such as music and verse are presented as part of the ‘relational networks’
through which subjects are formed, media through which personhood is
realized, regardless of degrees of cognition or self-awareness. Forms such
as poetry [...] not only lend shape to, but continue the work of scripting
the self precisely at those points where the capacity to tell a life story is
diminished, materializing the subject of Alzheimer’s in relation to a far
wider discursive realm than that of biomedical discourse alone” (Burke,
“The Poetry of Dementia” 70).
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11
Sharon Keefe Ugalde, in the above-mentioned article, also discusses
Castro’s view of language as a set of arbitrary, self-referential signs (497).
Nonetheless, as the critic points out at the end of her study of No temerás,
the book remains “a literary performance that seduces, one that both
affirms and casts doubts on the author’s faith in language” (507).