Lorna Goodison in the Context of Feminist Criticism

.L/orna goodison has said that the title-poem of her second vol ume, I Am Becoming My Mother, has two levels of meaning. At both these levels the poem bears out or throws light on certain consid erations of feminist literary criticism. I propose, by examining the poem, and Goodison's poetry in general, in relation to these consid erations, to indicate aspects of the poem(s) which might otherwise be overlooked, and at the same time, to bring into relief some of the problems attaching to feminist criticism — problems of which feminist critics have themselves shown awareness at one time or another. Feminist criticism proves to be a fertile context in which to ap preciate Goodison's work. As it were intuitively, she articulates some of the concerns, impulses and tropes which have been identified by feminist critics as characteristic of women's writing. At the same time, the variousness and nuance of her sensibility and vision prevent her work from fitting easily into some of the generalizations of feminist criticism. In this regard, the disjunction may in some instances be germane to the issue of the need for a black feminist criticism and even,