by R.L. Lake

Created on: August 12, 2009

Poet and author Sandra Cisneros is probably most well-known for her story collections, The House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories, and her novel Caramelo. Loose Woman, Cisneros' third volume of poetry, is a collection of love poems divided into three sections, each of them addressed to the heart.

To understand the meaning behind some of these poems, it is essential to know a little about the poet's background. Cisneros was born and raised in the Midwest, to a Mexican father and a Mexican-American mother. The only daughter of seven children, she and her family lived alternately in Chicago and Mexico City, in poor neighborhoods where American culture became interspersed with her family's Mexican heritage. She grew up speaking both Spanish and English, and this is clearly reflected in her poems. There are bits of Spanish phrasing peppered throughout and one poem, "Amorcito Corazon," is written entirely in Spanish.

Loose Woman consists primarily of love poems; there are former lovers, would-be lovers, dead lovers. Women figure in a very minor way, usually as rivals or relatives, although there are several poems written to girlfriends, as demonstrated in "Black Lace Bra Kind of Woman".


Wachale! She's a black lace bra
kind of woman, the kind who serves
up suicide with every kamikaze
poured in the neon blue of evening.
A tease and a twirl. I've seen that
two-step girl in action. I've gambled bad
odds and sat shotgun when she rambled
her '59 Pontiac between the blurred
lines dividing sense from senselessness.

The language used to describe love, sex, and the body are very frank; some of the images seem intended to shock. Initially, there is a vague sense of crudeness or indecency. However, Cisneros is deliberately describing the smallest truths of life in a purposefully indelicate way. Certain words and images tend to be repeated and while some poems move at a frenetic pace, others are slower, more languid, like a walk in the park on a Sunday afternoon.

The images she employs are often fragmented; there is odd punctuation, a jolting, jangling sort of rhythm. There are references to classic works of art and pop culture in the space of a few lines and the poems take you from Mexico City to Laredo, Texas to Sarajevo to the south of France. These are poems written in the dead of night, when the mind is free to roam unchecked. They read like a mood swing, shifting from passionate to melancholic to wistful to angry. They reflect the passion of the poet, the way the mind moves from one thought to the next.

The title poem, "Loose Woman," is the last poem of the collection and it is at once a self-portrait and a statement of defiance. In it, Cisneros acknowledges how others see her and simultaneously rejects and accepts those assumptions. The world has mistaken her as a bitch, a beast, a macha, while she views herself as a fiercely independent and strong woman.

I'm an aim-well,
shoot-sharp,
sharp-tongued,
sharp-thinking,
fast-speaking,
foot-loose,
loose-tongued,
let-loose,
woman-on-the-loose
loose woman.
Beware, honey.

Cisneros at once embraces and redefines the notion of womanhood while creating a compelling lyricism in her writing. Through her writing, she is telling the world to watch out, stand back, don't get in my way. The poems contained within this collection demand to be read, again and again, as they embody the heart of the poet struggling to break free.

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