Marianne Press is proud to announce the release
of “the little red book,” the hard cover edition of
La Chanson de Pamé La Calmette.
105 pages.
Limited edition of 15.
Limited edition of 15.
100% cotton paper, covered with imported red silk;
hand sewn and hand bound exclusively by Marianne Press.
Marion Woodman
Author of CONSCIOUS FEMININITY
Congratulations on your book, La Chanson de Pamé La Calmette - "a result of ten years of questing the birth of the Feminine." What an immense journey you have made, spiritually and physically. I am profoundly moved by your book. You have dropped into your very depths and allowed its rhythms to dance on the pages. Your images are vital, transforming, into the body from the body.
Ann Yeomans
Archetypal Therapist
La Chanson de Pamé La Calmette is a very moving evocation of the deepest energies inside, and of beauty in the midst of inquisition, imbued with images of mysterious spirit. Pamé's voice has the authority of the classical and archetypal, as if goddesses still walk the earth. It's as though this poem has been unearthed after thousands of years of burial, yet it speaks of the trials and persecutions we face today in struggling for our soul's voice and longing
This epic poem is a personal odyssey framed by the poet's life in the French Pyrenees, New England, and Ireland - spanning ten years. It is an exploration of a feminine soul's transformation across time. Alternating between free verse and couplet rhyme, this intimate story will stimulate the inner journeys of both men and women - singing through the recesses of human struggle to the birth of new meaning for the individual and, therefore, the world.
EXCERPT
Introduction
La Chanson de Pamé La Calmette is extracted from the trilogy of books: GODDESSLANDS. These books span 10 years of a personal odyssey.
The caves and goddesslands (page 3) are the central location of this myth, situated in the French Pyrenees. For here, in actuality, were found Paleolithic stag drawings and other Celtic symbology. The minuscule ivory statuette of Vénus de Brassempouy (represented on the cover of this book), was discovered at the end of the 19th century in the French department of Landes in the Pyrenees. She is known to have been carved around 20,000 BC. Much later, during the Inquisition of the 13th century, many fleeing Cathars hid in Pyrenean caves.
The reader will find in the glossary further explanation of some words and terminology also derived from the context of the trilogy of books: GODDESSLANDS.
The books and the song of Pamé are her true story.
One
My name is Pamé La Calmette
And I was born in the valley of my ancestors.
The cool light of the moon and the moist spirits
Of the earth named me for the sake
Of the tiny hamlet from whose crèche I emerged.
My old name, they told me
Was washed away with the tide
And returned to the world of my fathers.
There, it would dissolve in the mystery of its own time,
Never to be known again.
I took my first breath in the twilight before the dawn.
The first sound I heard was the splashing of rain
Against ancient stones
And the rains were warm, as it was spring.
I then heard a murmured mooing
As I opened my eyes for the first time,
Looking into the eyes of a calf also born new
And what I saw was clear and good.
But unlike the calf, I could not ready stand,
I was weak with no one to carry me
Save the Earth and the Moon.
And so,
I waited for their strength.
And as I waited, I sensed the presence
Of my ancestors,
A host of women from the caves and goddesslands,
And they were crying,
And their tears were bitter.
They came into form naked and branded,
And their flesh was sore.
Some of their heads were bareshaven,
Others had hair singed at the edges;
Some tresses were matted with blood and with sweat;
And their eyes had been weeping
And their tears had been sweetened
By a beauty
Borne from the centuries
Of suffering to wisdom,
Of love unrequited,
The sorrow of Mother unheard.
And they formed a round table
With their rounded, soft bodies
Among the calves and their mothers
On the fragrant hay.
And for days (or for weeks, I'm not certain)
They told me their stories
Of persecution and power,
Of repression and fear;
Their spirals of depths and the risings
The fallings, the crashings, the cycles of change
The evictions from temples, the tortures;
The woe of their grief, the threads of their hope,
These stories spanned thousands of years.
I was young. I was weak.
I wanted to flee.
But I had not the strength
So, I stayed.
And I listened...obediently.
Contact the publisher at:
lacalmette@gmail.com
Limited, deluxe edition of 15
$75 plus shipping.
Contact the publisher at:
lacalmette@gmail.com
Limited, deluxe edition of 15
$75 plus shipping.
