"Hive Dancer"

I’ve known Edie Rylander and her poetry since 1980. She writes about rural life, nature and natural history, family, marriage, farming, American history and culture, even football (though I don’t think that Brett Favre poem has been published yet) in a style that is both elegant and earthy.

“Hive Dancer” (see previous post), from her book of the same name, magically combines self-expression with factual information about hives and bees. Rylander compares herself and her lifespan of 69 years to a worker bee, with a lifespan of 45 days, distinguishing herself from the queen bee, which lives “one to three years,” and the male drones, which die after mating or eventually get driven out of the hive by the workers. She then compares her own lifespan to that of a worker bee: “…day one…would be about equal/To year twenty for me”; “Middle-aged workers (ten to twenty-one days)”; and “The old worker bees/On average, days eighteen to forty-five).”

While she was born “helpless” the worker bee “Emerges full armed with stinger…Honeypot, wax glands, pollen basket.” In each stage of life the worker bee carries out useful functions maintaining the hive, nourishing the queen and the larvae, making honey and storing it, protecting the hive from disease, and finally, in its old age, adventuring, foraging, scouting, bringing home “The pollen, the water, the plant resin, the nectar,/Everything that feeds the hive,” and doing “the bee dance,/Showing distance and direction to food sources…” At age 69 Rylander celebrates her identity as “Old Tatterwings the hive dancer…Humming off in search of sweetness/Borne on the song of her wings.”

In this self-identification with the worker bee, Rylander explicitly separates herself from the queen bee, who “Kills her sister queens, drives Mom away,/Flies, mates, multiple times, comes home,” and lives out the rest of her fertile days “Laying eggs, laying eggs, laying eggs—“ As mother of three, Rylander might have justifiably identified with the fertile queen, but rejects the dominant role and chooses that of sustainer, nurturer, builder, protector, one of “the tough old girls,” the dancers who “bring the good stuff home.”

Culturally speaking, the queen might be associated with our glamorous fertility symbols--the Marilyns, the Raquels, the Brittanys, the Lindseys, the Angelinas--who compete among themselves for adoration from their fans, followers, and would-be mates. And while they luxuriate in the honeycomb of celebrity status, the everyday women go about their work at home, in fields and offices, classrooms and hospitals, stores and factories, driving trucks, flying planes, sustaining, nurturing, protecting, building and bringing “the good stuff home.” “Hive Dancer” consciously rejects the role of woman as beauty queen and embraces a larger vision of “women’s work.”

Appropriately, it does so in a style that is down to earth and colloquial at the same time that it is soaringly lyrical and elegant, both familiar and educated, tough and sweet. It combines mundane information about bees and hives with personal story, metaphor and myth. Queens, drones, and worker bees emerge as both natural facts and mythical beings.

Hive Dancer is one of three volumes of Rylander poetry, the other two being Dancing Back the Cranes and Dance with the Darker Sister. See Red Dragonfly Press http://www.reddragonflypress.org/reviews/3265.

Like a true dancer, this poet combines both muscle and magic.