Sarah's Anthology poems #16 -21

"I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed"  
Edna St. Vincent Millay     


I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find Your person fair,
and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn with pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.


  Interpreting Millay's poem is one I find to be about meaningless sex and about womanhood and a gender-based identity poem. Millay writes of a woman who is distant to her lover who she "... Shall remember you with love, or season" (line 11) as though not to be tied down in any way to anyone in a relationship. This subject summed up in verse one "I, being born a woman... ......." identifies the speaker and how the sexes differ and how her feelings can not let blame be on her due to her being a woman and wants to not keep contact with this other person who she doesn't want their past to be brought up and not wanting this to be a "reason For conversation when we meet again(lines 13-14)." The speaker hopes to end this "propinquity" and possibly regretting now putting the idea or "notions of my kind"(line 2)" in the man's head thinking they could have more than what they did have or what she wanted. The past and the future among the two(the speaker and the apostrophe="You" and "We") is no longer existent and no need to be spoken of goes along with my theme and so I include it for my anthology. The poem consists of one 14 line stanza that's end rhyming word pattern is in a ABBAABBACDCDC(D) format. This many words rhymed can be difficult to do while still having the writing make sense and Millay pulled it off and so I liked this and chose to use it in my comparison of other poem's in my anthology.



"DayStar"
by Rita Dove
(1952)

She wanted a little room for thinking:
but she saw diapers steaming on the line,
a doll slumped behind the door.
So she lugged a chair behind the garage
to sit out the children's naps.

Sometimes there were things to watch--
the pinched armor of a vanished cricket,
a floating maple leaf. Other days
she stared until she was assured
when she closed her eyes
she'd only see her own vivid blood.

She had an hour, at best, before Liza appeared
pouting from the top of the stairs.
And just what was mother doing
out back with the field mice? Why,

building a palace. Later
that night when Thomas rolled over and
lurched into her, she would open her eyes
and think of the place that was hers
for an hour--where
she was nothing,
pure nothing, in the middle of the day.


~ Dove, Rita. "Daystar" from Kennedy; Gloia, Dana's. An Introduction to Poetry Thirteenth Edition. pg.413-414. Textbook.


  I think that from the first verse, Dove's poem is about wishing and hoping for something and so "She wanted a little room for thinking(line 1)" since it seems she needs to get away from all the stress that is in her life and so she finds a place to rest and a "place that was hers(line 19)" where "she was nothing, pure nothing(lines 21-22)" due to her being everything for everyone else like a mother and a wife. The roles the speaker describes is one that many people who others are dependent on may feel the same or associated stressful emotions like she feels, in which she needs to be alone and escape from at times. This is a hope that is not all that rare and is not always figured in due to only thinking about the good to come rather than the consequences and the associated downfalls that accompany one's future goals and even life's unexpected occurrences. It is, for some unknown reason, in some human's nature to have something and want more or want something different and so this can be interpreted in how the speaker feels and thinks being apart of the aesthetic and anthology's theme. The poet's structure is not of what is rhyme or rhythm, but more of a narrative of events in some woman's daily life that might be an elegy with the tone more sad and depressing feeling empathetic for the speaker; and so the structure fits in with poetry although not of a typical poem.  




"The Prologue"
By: Anne Bradstreet

1

To sing of wars, of captains, and of kings,
Of cities founded, commonwealth begun,
For my mean pen are too superior things:
Or how they all, or each their dates have run
Let poets and historians set these forth,
My obscure lines shall not so dim their worth.

2

But when my wond'ring eyes and envious heart
Great Bartas sugared lines do but read o'er,
Fool I do grudge the Muses did not part
Twixt him and me that overfluent store;
A Bartas can do what a Bartas will
But simple I according to my skill.

3

From schoolboy's tongue no rhetoric we expect,
Nor yet a sweet consort from broken strings,
Nor perfect beauty where's a main defect;
My foolish, broken, blemished Muse so sings,
And this to mend, alas, no art is able,
"Cause nature made it so irreparable.

4

Nor can I, like that fluent sweet tongued Greek
Who lisped at first, in future times speak plain.
By art he gladly found what he did seek,
A full requital of his striving pain.
Art can do much, but this maxim's most sure:
A weak or wounded brain admits no cure.

5

I am obnoxious to each carping tongue
Who says my hand a needle better fits,
A poet's pen all scorn I should thus wrong,
For such despite they cast on female wits;
If what I do prove well, it won't advance,
They'll say it's stol'n, or else it was by chance.

6

But sure the antique Greeks were far more mild
Else of our sex, why feigned they those nine
And poesy made Calliope's own child;
So 'mongst the rest they placed the arts divine;
But this weak knot they will full soon untie,
The Greeks did nought, but play the fools and lie.

7

Let Greeks be Greeks, and women what they are
Men have precedency and still excel,
It is but vain unjustly to wage war;
Men can do best, and women know it well.
Preeminence in all and each is yours;
Yet grant some small acknowledgment of ours.

8

And oh ye high flown quills that soar the skies,
And ever with your prey still catch your praise,
If e'er you deign these lowly lines your eyes,
Give thyme or parsley wreath, I ask no bays;
This mean and unrefined ore of mine
Will make your glist'ring gold but more to shine.


~"The Prologue" 100 Essential American Poems.
edited by: Pockell, Leslie M. Thomas Dunne Books.
St. Martin's Press. 175 Fifth Ave, NY, 10010. pg.2-4. Book.


Bradstreet's poem about how women who are thought to be quiet and not able to speak their mind or be strong to express opinions, so as to write “The Prologue" with an angry tone while voicing for women who are treated as inferior to men in society. Bradstreet is describing the inclined roles that are said to be for women versus roles men are believed to have in a Puritan society such as in stanza 5 "I am obnoxious to each carping tongue(line 25), Who says my hand a needle better fits(line 26);" people object to women being intelligent and creative in writing and see the female sex as almost powerless(... "weak or wounded... .... ....") and in need of a man to be the hero and protector. Bradstreet infuriated about this idea and wanting to diminish it in societies whom this role was placed upon the female gender.

Minorities in history have been treated as inferior throughout earth's existence and these times of being unequal, it being race-wise or gender-wise, are the times people wished for change and so for the future these problems would be different allowing more opportunities for all people no matter their genetic and inborn characteristics that one can not help and should not have to prove or be ashamed of, since everyone is different and similar in ways. And so with a yearning for equality I see Bradstreet's poem fits in with my Anthology's theme.



"The Writer"

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

~ Wilbur, Richard. "The Writer" from Kennedy; Gloia, Dana's.An Introduction to Poetry Thirteenth Edition. pg.470-471. Textbook.



Wilbur's poem "The Writer" is setup in the first stanza in which he says, "My daughter is writing a story.(line 3)" and he being her father is proud and wants what pretty much all parents want for their kids, to express themselves, either it be artistically or in any way, and be able to do anything they want to that is in best interest for the child's future. The speaker is in first person point of view and seems to be checking up on the child, but ends up "pausing in the stairwell, hearing" as the daughter is writing and typing that he may encourage her to convey her thoughts and talents that she is doing in her writing and know that she needs to make it on her own through this journey called life. I don't know for sure but the dad may be even more enthusiastic about her writing since he may like that she is possibly following in his footsteps and he "wish(es) her a lucky passage(line 9)" and later on in the final stanza and last two lines wishes again and exclaims, "I wish What I wished you before, but harder(line 32-33)," that I consider part of my theme and for it's aesthetic in wishing for the future and present that his daughter's journey and the path she chooses is a good one. I like the wishing not for oneself all the time, but find the speaker to be more considerate in wishing the best for a loved one instead.

There is metaphor that Wilbur compares and looks back on the day that the room the daughter is doing her work was the same room that a bird("starling") had been trapped in before and was scared so the speaker could only open the window for the bird allowing the bird to be free but still the opening of the window to make known the path that the bird could follow through leaving the room such as the same can be said for his daughter who he can not control but help her on her way. The "window" is what opportunities await such as the quote, "Whenever a door closes, a window opens up," so there are times things don't work out, but there are also other things that could happen that can be just as good or better. The title being "The Writer" is a great metaphor and idea in which the daughter writes her own story having her own creativity in life's choices that she makes on her way through life this being why I also constituted this poem into my anthology’s theme plus it’s length that is noteworthy.



"The Mother"

Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.



I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches, and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.

 
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
 
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.


Gwendolyn's poem "The Mother" is ironic as with the title sounding to be about a woman who has had a baby, but from the start and first quote or epigraph, "Abortions will not let you forget" being foretelling of what the poem's theme really is. The poem is concerning the controversial subject of abortion and is in a format that is an apostrophe addressing the baby from the point of view of a woman who has had an abortion or varying number of abortions before. I like how the first line is using figurative language of personification in which 'abortions' have human abilities and has quality of "not letting you forget" what took place like an abortion can talk and remind you of what you did like sometimes kids knowing of what the parents did growing up end up using these things against them in how they were raised, which can be irony.


The irony of an abortion ending a babies life and yet the so said "baby" that was not born still is known to cause uneasiness in the remembering of those events that are difficult to deal with and emotionally burdening to have to think about for many woman.


I believe this poem goes well for my aesthetic in sense that the speaker seems to be distressed over what she has done and about the idea of abortions happening, which I think can show possibly having regret or just trying to clear her conscious more hoping for the past doings and rationale of her actions to be good enough for her and letting her move on from being distraught about the concept of abortions in general and whether it being a "crime... other than mine? " that makes for more contemplation by the reader of their ideas and opinion about abortion.




"THANATOPSIS"

by: William Cullen Bryant (1794-1878)

O him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language; for his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty, and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness, ere he is aware. When thoughts
Of the last bitter hour come like a blight
Over thy spirit, and sad images
Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,
And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,
Make thee to shudder and grow sick at heart;--
Go forth, under the open sky, and list
To Nature's teachings, while from all around--
Earth and her waters, and the depths of air--
Comes a still voice.--
Yet a few days, and thee
The all-beholding sun shall see no more
In all his course; nor yet in the cold ground,
Where thy pale form was laid with many tears,
Nor in the embrace of ocean, shall exist
Thy image. Earth, that nourished thee, shall claim
Thy growth, to be resolved to earth again,
And, lost each human trace, surrendering up
Thine individual being, shalt thou go
To mix for ever with the elements,
To be a brother to the insensible rock,
And to the sluggish clod, which the rude swain
Turns with his share, and treads upon. The oak
Shall send his roots abroad, and pierce thy mould.

Yet not to thine eternal resting-place
Shalt thou retire alone, nor couldst thou wish
Couch more magnificent. Thou shalt lie down
With patriarchs of the infant world--with kings,
The powerful of the earth--the wise, the good,
Fair forms, and hoary seers of ages past,
All in one mighty sepulchre. The hills
Rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,--the vales
Stretching in pensive quietness between;
The venerable woods; rivers that move
In majesty, and the complaining brooks
That make the meadows green; and, poured round all,
Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste,--
Are but the solemn decorations all
Of the great tomb of man. The golden sun,
The planets, all the infinite host of heaven,
Are shining on the sad abodes of death,
Through the still lapse of ages. All that tread
The globe are but a handful to the tribes
That slumber in its bosom.--Take the wings
Of morning, pierce the Barcan wilderness,
Or lose thyself in the continuous woods
Where rolls the Oregon and hears no sound
Save his own dashings--yet the dead are there:
And millions in those solitudes, since first
The flight of years began, have laid them down
In their last sleep--the dead reign there alone.
So shalt thou rest: and what if thou withdraw
In silence from the living, and no friend
Take note of thy departure? All that breathe
Will share thy destiny. The gay will laugh
When thou art gone, the solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come
And make their bed with thee. As the long train
Of ages glides away, the sons of men,
The youth in life's green spring, and he who goes
In the full strength of years, matron and maid,
The speechless babe, and the gray-headed man--
Shall one by one be gathered to thy side
By those who in their turn shall follow them.

So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain'd and soothed
By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams

~ Bryant, William Cullen. "Thanatopsis" 100 Essential American Poems.
edited by: Pockell, Leslie M. Thomas Dunne Books.
St. Martin's Press. 175 Fifth Ave, NY, 10010. pg.18-21. Book.


  The poem I chose for my anthology by Bryant is one quite lengthy being 82 lines long, but the speaker's idea tends to fit in with mine and the poem's setup and format is dissimilar in ways to those of other poems I have chosen. "Thanatopsis" means "mediation upon death" and so Bryant writes about death and looks at the aspects of it that makes it so the reader can take in mind that death should not be feared or represented as being terrible, but is what everyone faces and Bryant's view of what happens when we die is more of joining in an afterlife as souls. Death is sometimes unexpected and not always easy to experience, but one can only hope for death to be painless and so thinking of death as is if to "lie down to pleasant dreams(line 82)" and so life and then death are both normal and inevitable to occur, and with all the inequality in the world "death is the great equalizer" and all who die are not alone but end up together in death with others so it is not so frightening when considering it this way. The imagery and the symbolization's for death and life are amazingly represented throughout Bryant's poem and the overall notion about dying is fulfilled the various kinds of figurative language used that is even better for analyzing this poem and comparing it to others.