“The Mind’s Ear: Belonging & The Voices of Women” reflects on how female figures in myth, scripture, and everyday life have guided me toward a deeper sense of home and self. Beginning with Odysseus’s dependence on Athena, Penelope, and other women in THE ODYSSEY the essay traces how inhabiting the voices of lesser-known characters like Eidothea and the biblical Hagar allows me to reimagine paternal absence, exile, and the precarious formation of my identity. Through close readings and persona poems—“Eidothea Grieving,” “Hagar in the Wilderness,” and a sonnet inspired by an overheard lament in an Istanbul hamam—my article shows how listening to women’s stories opens up empathy for refugees and the displaced, illuminates the complexity of desire, and reveals loneliness as a paradoxical site of spiritual intensity. These female presences, whether drawn from Homer, Genesis, or a contemporary Turkish bath, settle into the mind’s "ear," prompting me to explore how voice can turn marginal or silenced experiences into sources of imaginative power. Ultimately, my essay argues that attending to such voices not only enriches poetic practice but also offers a language in which a writer can finally feel a sense of belonging, even as identity itself remains protean and unstable.
https://weeklyhubris.com/the-minds-ear-belonging-the-voices-of-women/
The article explores how listening to the voices of women—from Homer’s Eidothea and Penelope to the biblical Hagar—has shaped my sense of belonging, identity, and home. It braids literary analysis with persona poems to show how these female figures help me as a writer to confront exile, paternal absence, and the fragility of selfhood.
Written by
Don Schofield
Born in Nevada and raised in California, Don Schofield is a graduate of CSU, Sacramento (MA, 1978) and University of Montana (MFA, 1980). A resident of Greece for over four decades, he has taught literature and creative writing at American, British and Greek universities, and traveled extensively throughout Europe, the Middle East and farther afield. Fluent in Greek, a citizen of both his homeland and his adopted country, he is the editor of the anthology Kindled Terraces: American Poets in Greece (Truman State University Press), and has published six books of poetry in the U.S., the first of which, Approximately Paradise (University Press of Florida), was a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award, and a more recent collection, In Lands Imagination Favors (Dos Madres Press), reached the final round for the Rubery Book Award (UK). His poems and translations have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and shortlisted for the Greek National Translation Award. He is a recipient of, among other accolades, the Allen Ginsberg Award (US) and the John D. Criticos Prize (UK). His most recent books are A Different Heaven: New and Selected Poems (Dos Madres Press), Wherever the Sweet Breeze Blows (Kelsay Books), a translation of a recent work by the noted Greek poet Liana Sakelliou, and From the Cyclops Cave: A Braided Memoir (Open Books). He lives with his companion Aleka in both Athens and Thessaloniki.
