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Elizabeth Kirkpatrick-Vrenios’ award-winning chapbook, Special Delivery, was published in 2016, her second, Empty the Ocean with a Thimble in 2021, and her third, Concerto for an Empty Frame by Kelsay Books in 2023. Nominated four times for a Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of Net, she has poems published in numerous anthologies and journals. A Professor Emerita from American University, she has performed as a singing artist across Europe and the United States, and is editor of the Writers of the Mendocino Coast Anthology.
Author’s Backstory: Naamah is identified in Genesis as the daughter of Lamech, sister of Tubal-Cain and wife of Noah (Genesis 4:22). She is often conflated with Naamah of the Zohar, one of the first women to seduce the Grigori and give birth to Nephilim.
This poem was meant to depict Naamah as an antithesis to the concept of Noah (the bringer of life through pairing of the male and female of species). She is regulated to being a gatherer of seeds but is bursting with seed herself, sensuous, voluptuous, and lustful, and seeks out a lesbian coupling with Naomi – her companion and lover. The flood waters fill her dreams heightening her lust. I wanted to depict Naamah’s voluptuous heterosexual nature, which is ripe, ready for childbirth, yet having a homosexual longing for Naomi, an antithetical viewpoint to the archetype pairing of male and female of the Ark.
She views the raven’s eye as a keen one. So keen in fact that when the rain abates, she urges Noah to send it out to look for dry land.
The poem is written in two separate columns in an irregular pattern meant to depict the waters that overtake her internal thoughts as well as the world outside the Arc. Both columns can be read together as well as separately.
Editor’s Notes and/or Image Credit: “Naamah” is a contrapuntal or cleave poem. It provides an intriguing (and bold) indirect juxtaposition of the two persons with the name, Lamech, that are mentioned in the Bible, and the curious supposition that Naamah is Noah’s wife.
From ‘Wives aboard Noah’s Ark’ [Wikipedia] there are at least 15 different names for Noah’s wife.
One of those is Naamah, taken from the medieval midrash Book of Jasher, but there are many other sources that disagree and postulate their own analyses. However, the confusion very likely arises from the fact that there are several names that are the same within the two completely different genealogies involving the name Lamech. One proceeds through a notorious “wicked” line of Cain, and the other through the priestly line of Seth, which is likely the line of Noah, who was righteous in God’s eyes. See additional discussion under ‘Lamech (Father of Noah)’ and in particular, the genealogy tree [Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamech_(father_of_Noah)].
As input to the Microsoft Designer: “abstract Naamah loving Noah in the rain,” the output contains some surreal symbolism that alludes to the “world” flood.
