Nicole Homer's "Pandora's Box"

As part of my contribution to blog writing world, and so I don't lose these findings as I write them down, I am going to be posting some entries from school of literature and ideas that I find fascinating.  Some of these will be edited for content. 

Nicole Homer titled her poem “Pandora's Box” because like the mythical box of the Homerian era, this Pandora's box contains a secret that is feared. However, it is a mystery that is waiting to be discovered, while frightening, is also exciting. In the first stanza: “& the whole world feared/what Pandora kept in her box/& if they only knew/if they only knew/ it was only perfume/ & sweat inside.” The mystery people fear is not really a mystery at all.
 
At the first glance of the title, I thought the poem would be an epic like the Homer epic Iliad. However, the narrator is only describing Pandora's box with the first sentences how mysterious it is and at the same time intriguing. This poem is not an epic but a sensuous poem of a mysterious and loving woman, Pandora, possibly, of her perfume and sweat, that is sensuous enough to drive men crazy. As taken in the next stanza: “if they knew that they could have leaned close to it/ close enough to feel/ the wooden or steel or iron sides of it/ they could have smelled it/ the thick damp odor of desire/ & they could have been enchanted by it”, the mystery is about sexual, sensuous desire than an all powerful evil.
 
Sex has been a topic in many forms of literature and media. Sex is a mystery that has shocked and surprised and enthralled many people in America. It is a very misunderstood topic from history that any woman who was sensuous in her body and her demeanor was considered evil. That is the same comparison as the mythical and forbidden Pandora's Box: to contain something so painful and evil that it brings chaos to the world. Sex is forbidden topic in many parts of history as well. The thought of a woman's “thighs/taunt as a young boy's” or “her slender neck” and the smell “from every pore it seeps out” is taboo and unthinkable, but at the same time mysterious and exciting.
 
My mother was from a generation that did not talk about sex, so when I had questions about puberty and sexuality and women's health, I knew not to ask her because they were uncomfortable questions for her. Yet the more I never asked about these areas, the more curious I became, especially when it came time to have that big talk about sex. It was so hard to ask I finally had to consult a book about the subject. Like me, the poem shows how the more forbidden a subject or object is, the more tempting it becomes to an individual, like the serpent taunting Adam and Eve over the forbidden fruit.

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