The poem “You Are Not Just a Woman, You Are a Longing” by Croatian poet Ankica Anchie is a powerful synthesis of emotion, the feminine figure, and existential mystery. This is not merely a depiction of romantic feeling—it is a metaphysical hymn, a poetic manifesto in which woman is presented as a divine archetype, an experience that transcends the confines of language.
The poem’s structure is lyrical, yet it carries epic dimensions through its emotional and semantic intensity. Anchie crafts a lyrical subject who experiences love as a cosmic-spiritual upheaval, where woman is not “the other,” but the very essence of being—the force that reshapes reality and self-awareness.
Poetic Imagery: A Cosmos of Metaphors
The central figure—woman—is rendered through an astonishing series of metaphors that transcend appearance or social role, elevating her to a deeply symbolic plane:
“You are not a woman – you are a longing”
“You are a flame that never dies out”
“You are a storm that carries my world”
“Your hands are sails with which I sail toward my own destruction”
These metaphors are not decorative—they are structural elements of the poem’s inner universe. Woman emerges as hurricane, as voice, as light, as both destruction and rebirth. She is simultaneously the beginning and the end, the source of feeling and its annihilation.
This metaphorical outpouring creates a poetic cosmos where there are no clear boundaries between emotion, nature, and cosmogony. A smile becomes a universe; a touch, a seismic tremor; a glance, a mirror of eternity.
Style and Rhythm: A Narrative of Total Feeling
Anchie’s style is lyrico-epic, emotionally charged, and composed in a free-flowing poetic form that avoids classical constraints. It follows the inner rhythm of passion. The repeated motif—“You are not a woman – you are…”—functions like a ritualistic refrain, imbuing the poem with a mystical cadence.
The language is dense with antithesis:
“light and darkness,” “turmoil and peace,” “destruction and salvation”—
These reflect the internal conflict of the lyrical subject, who simultaneously loves and loses, who experiences woman as both hope and fatality.
Theme: Love as Total Experience, Woman as Myth
At its core, the poem constructs an archetype of woman that transcends societal, erotic, or sentimental roles. She is neither a concrete individual nor a mere object of desire—she is myth, mystery, cosmic presence. She is a longing that defies definition, a feeling without beginning or end, not to be explained—but to be lived.
In doing so, Anchie places the poem within an ontological dimension: love becomes the only possible path to understanding being. The poem does not speak of a feeling; it speaks of the existential state of being in love—a state that transforms the lover into something “other,” something beyond the self.
Conclusion
“You Are Not Just a Woman, You Are a Longing” is a poem that transcends the limits of personal poetry, entering the realm of universal poetics. It is a poetic narrative of love as a radical inversion of all we think we know about the self and the other. Through a visionary style, powerful metaphors, and a profoundly intimate voice, Ankica Anchie delivers one of the most poignant and profound poetic expressions of love, womanhood, and being itself.
