Voyeur

For those who see Ensler's Vagina Monologues as unrefined at best or tittilating and stereotypically (sometimes militantly) feminist at worst, the "I Was There In The Room" poem-monologue is a challenge to whatever criticisms have been levelled at Eve or her works. The opening line, "I was there when her vagina opened," would sound ridiculous in the hands of anyone else. Silly or sophmoric, even. Honestly, using the word 'vagina' provokes laughing or horniness more often than "deep worship" (sorry, Eve), and when 'vagina' is thrown towards us bluntly and immediately and with such unabashed frequency in a poem the author introduces as a serious tribute to her granddaughter and mother-in-law, the chances of a typical college audience taking the poem seriously - or in 'good taste' - might be pretty low. However, between Ensler's totally straight intent and the artful language she uses, it'd be difficult to read "I Was There In The Room" as anything less than a honest, brazenly realistic tribute to birth and the orifice most of us come from.

Stark comparisons could be drawn between Ensler and Danticat here. Although Danticat only refers to sexuality in veiled ways, their styles are similar: the juxtapositioning of the beautiful against the ugly, humanity against inhumanity. I usually feel like great writing should be full of dualities, and Danticat and Ensler have mastered this art. I've never smiled, nor laughed, nor groaned, nor felt reactions get as painfully stuck in my throat as when I've read through Krik! Krak? and The Vagina Monologues. Shouldn't the best artwork provoke conflict as well as appeal to our sense of what is attractive? The fourth stanza, in particular, is full of these beautifully awkward moments. "I saw the colors of her vagina," begins Ensler, her tone brusque and stripped entirely of her usual humor. "Saw the bruised broken blue, the blistering tomato red, the gray pink, the dark; saw the blood like perspiration along the edges, saw the yellow, white liquid, the shit, the clots pushing out all the holes, pushing harder and harder." Like Allen Ginsberg years before her, these lines - Ensler's entire poem - beg to be howled aloud. Ensler was there when "her vagina changed from a shy sexual hole to an archaeological tunnel, a sacred vessel, a Venetian canal, a deep well with a tiny child stuck inside," and we are there, too. The linear structure is easily digestible; each stanza begans with the phrase "I", with last replacing "I" with "so can a vagina," repetition which involves the audience more and more as the poem is read further, whether the audience is a willing participant or a disgusted and reluctant voyeur - or perhaps more likely, both. What's more, the lines themselves leave little to interpretation, nor uses much in the way of obtuse words, and as a result it cuts itself into our brains and hearts and souls the moment they escape Ensler's mouth. There are no barriers between the poet and audience here. The poem is as immediate and as vulnerable as the act of giving birth itself.