Brief Notes on Kelly's "The Orchard" + Artemis Mythos

When I first read through the title poem of Brigit Pegeen Kelly's The Orchard, I had a difficult time keeping up/analyzing it, as has been expressed my many of my classmates at this point (which made me breathe SUCH a sigh of relief, y'all don't even know). I feel like I just hadn't spent enough time with it, because when we started doing group work and dissecting it piece by piece, we all agreed that an hour of groupwork couldn't possibly do it justice. However, it was super helpful, and I loved hearing everyone's insights! I jotted a few things down in my notebook as I was going over it again. I feel like we have spoken quite a bit about stream of consciousness, dreams vs. reality (both in class and on the blog; I know I've definitely commented on it) and the references to mythology and fertility. I commented briefly to my group that the dogs and does (okay, sidenote: Merriam-Webster says that the plural of "doe" can be either "doe" or "does," but "does" just looks awkward so I'm going to use doe as plural) brought to mind an image of Artemis. I vaguely recalled Artemis having her hunting hounds and also turning Actaeon into a stag, so I went home and did some more research to see if my memory served me correctly. I then realized that Pan gifted Artemis seven dogs, and they were sacrificed to her on Thrace. Deer were her sacred animal. Artemis is the virgin huntress, which is an interesting juxtaposition of purity and destruction. In different accounts and translations of myths surrounding Artemis, her hounds were referred to as either dogs or wolves. She is associated with childbirth and fertility as well as fiercely protecting herself and other women. When Actaeon commits an unforgivable transgression, he is turned into a stag, and devoured by her hounds. With all of the dog/doe imagery in this poem, now I can't divorce the myth from this poem. I made the (likely tenuous) connection between the dog in the poem eating a doe, and how much it troubled Kelly. It seems like she has committed transgressions within herself, and she is hunting herself, but instead of watching someone else get turned into a stag, it turns out to be a doe: a creature that she, the huntress, held sacred. When the dog came toward the doe, I got chills; Actaeon also had dogs in the myth, and he committed the transgression of watching her while she was naked. When the doe did not immediately fight back in this poem and began to get devoured, it turned my reading of the poem into a much more feminine one. Another stretch-- the blood everywhere, the trees shedding blood, it felt terrifying, powerful, and menstrual at times, especially as she is biting into the apple (associated, of course, with Eve's downfall) the size of a child's hand, and how she originally attempts to use the apple as an experiment to see if those devouring her will disappear. The apple, however, morphs in her mind to being something holy rather than something rotten, which actually made this poem feel almost hopeful in the end rather than morose. It was reading like a reverse-Artemis, a woman trying to ward off her demons and failing, until she takes back the feminine and makes it something bruised, but whole.