Ego Tripping

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1968

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

Patriarchal Figures in World Religions

The speaker refers to herself as a royal divinity, and in the second stanza, she equates herself with the Olympian gods as she sips “nectar” (Line 9) while sitting with Allah, the God of Islam. This casual depiction of an encounter between friends suggests that the speaker is an also an equal to Allah, especially as she is seated on her queen’s throne as they share a beverage.

Later in the poem, she identifies herself with powerful male figures of the Christian religion like Noah, a patriarch of the Bible’s Old Testament, and Jesus, God’s son and the Christian savior of all humanity. The speaker, not Noah, who is credited as the savior of the world’s animals thanks to his ark, gives her son an elephant for his third birthday. The speaker transforms herself into Jesus, and as a result, “all men intone my loving name” (Line 32). These references to important Judeo-Christian men accentuate the speaker’s exaggerated sense of importance as she feels entitled to “[a]ll praises” (Line 33) that Christians offer in celebration of God and Jesus.

The speaker’s identification with male Christian spiritual leaders and with Allah contrasts with her earthly concerns, like the natural wonders discussed below, and her irreverent use of slang to describe herself. Instead of describing herself in terms of moral goodness, she describes herself as “bad” (Line 7), which is a compliment in contemporary colloquial terms. As well, she describes herself as “so hip even my errors are correct” (Line 42), which defies the infallibility of Jesus and other male representatives of God.

Natural Wonders

The speaker takes credit for many of nature’s wonders, and her female body is the specific characteristic that enables her to declare that she is responsible for the existence of widespread and valuable natural resources.

The speaker’s femaleness is first characterized by the tears she sheds while enduring the pain of childbirth, which only women can experience; these tears, the essence of the speaker’s power as a woman, become “the nile” (Line 14), which is the longest river in Africa and, possibly, in the world.

Later in the poem, the speaker discusses her bodily functions, all of which result in awe-inspiring natural phenomena. Her “bowels” (Line 36) do not produce waste matter, but the element of uranium, without which the world would not have nuclear power. The dust that piles when she files her nails are valuable jewels, and the drainage from her nose when she has a cold becomes “oil to the arab world” (Line 41). The hair that thins on her head as she ages becomes the “gold” (Line 45) that appears on three different continents. This catalog of resources that originate in the speaker’s female body indicate that of all the natural wonders of the world, she is the most remarkable wonder of all.

Fertility and Childbirth

In the first lines of the poem, the speaker mentions the motif of fertility and childbirth, drawing attention to the essential role of women in the continuation of the human race. The speaker begins the poem with a direct reference to the occasion of her own birth, followed by a mention of “the fertile crescent” (Line 2), a region in the Middle East in which many early human civilizations existed and, for a time, flourished. The proximity of the speaker’s mention of her own birth to the location of a place where human beings developed civilization suggests that the speaker may have made some contribution to human civilization herself.

Later in the poem, the speaker refers to the tears she shed while giving birth to her daughter, describing her human response to a profoundly painful physical experience. She credits these tears as having “created the nile” (Line 14), the life-sustaining river that is the longest in the continent of Africa. Without the pain of the speaker’s experience with childbirth, the river would never have come into existence, much like humanity, in general, would never be able to carry on existing without women.