"The Victims" by Sharon Olds

Sharon Olds teaches poetry workshops at the University of New York’s Graduate Creative Writing Program. She was invited in 2005 by the First Lady, Laura Bush, to the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

When Mother divorced you, we were glad. She took it and
took it in silence, all those years and then
kicked you out, suddenly, and her
kids loved it. Then you were fired, and we
grinned inside, the way people grinned when
Nixon's helicopter lifted off the South
Lawn for the last time. We were tickled
to think of your office taken away,
your secretaries taken away,
your lunches with three double bourbons,
your pencils, your reams of paper. Would they take your
suits back, too, those dark
carcasses hung in your closet, and the black
noses of your shoes with their large pores?
She had taught us to take it, to hate you and take it
until we pricked with her for your
annihilation, Father. Now I
pass the bums in doorways, the white
slugs of their bodies gleaming through slits in their
suits of compressed silt, the stained
flippers of their hands, the underwater
fire of their eyes, ships gone down with the
lanterns lit, and I wonder who took it and
took it from them in silence until they had
given it all away and had nothing

left but this.
Olds writes about divorce from the perspective of an adult reminiscing about her past. The father of the family frequented work and was rarely home; his lack of interaction with his family was constantly endured by the mother, who “took it and/ took it in silence.” The mother “taught [them] to take it, to hate [the father], and take it until [they] pricked with her for [his] annihilation. The narrator is angry and upset at her father, believing herself to be the victim, however, when we return to the present the narrator questions her once eternal conviction as she passes “the bums in doorways.” The poem has continuous form with no rhyme or meter. The lines are also broken without formal grouping or fixed pattern. This gives the reader the impression that the narrator’s thoughts flow with little control as she travels back and forth from the past and present trying to cope with her past anger and current realization and consideration. Throughout the first part of the poem, the narrator refers to her father as “you” coldly, however she acknowledges him as her “Father” in line 17. This sudden shift is not separated by lines and stanzas; it was in the middle of the line, which gives the impression that the movement of the poem and the narrator’s thoughts are constantly drifting with her sudden discernment. Due to this shift in tone, the definition of victim also shifts from the mother and children to the father. In her adulthood, she realizes that the father was a victim of societal expectations and the tone changes from disdainful to sympathetic.

"The Sick Rose" by William Blake

William Blake was an English painter, poet, and print maker that lived during the mid-eighteenth through early nineteenth century.  He was considered one of the 100 greatest Britons of all time. 

O Rose thou art sick.
The invisible worm,
That flies in the night
In the howling storm:
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy:
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

Traditionally the rose has been a symbolic representation of love, beauty, and romance. The worm, as its antithesis, represents death, decay, and uncleanliness. The “invisible worm/ that flies in the night” is a metaphor for the dastardliness of society in its attempt to fill our minds and ergo the rose with ideals that are anything but true love. The ability of the worm to be invisible and flight embodies the secretive and unexpected nature of false love and temptation, as worms do not have either of these abilities. The “howling storm” suggests that in our darkest times, these false ideals of love tempt us and corrupt us even more so. The worm finds the rose’s natural flower bed, which is the juxtaposition of lover’s bed. The worm is destroying the life of the rose with “his dark secret love,” which is significant because worms in nature tend to help plants grow by increasing the amount of air and water that the seeps into the soil and hence the rose. However, this worm is slowly killing the rose, who is unbeknownst to the worm’s plot. Roses recognize neither their beauty nor whether or not they are dying. In this way, true love is also dwindling away in the presence of the worm. The rose and love are sick and dying. It has been tainted by the false ideals of true love produced by the worm and therefore society. The innocent rose clings to whatever it is able to due to its trusting nature, which can be compared to our youths’ tendencies for hopeless romanticism. As a warning to the temptations of society, Blake writes this poem in order to caution its youth against societal ideals of false and superficial love.

"The Golf Links Lie So Near the Mill" by Sarah Cleghorn

Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn was a poet known for her association to the American Naturalist literary movement. Typically didactic in nature, her poetry illustrated her views on political and social principles.

The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.

The “laboring children [of the mill] can look out/ And see the men at play.” We, as a society that has long since abolished the use of child labor, typically picture the adult being the hard working character and the children as those who frolic about without a care in the world. However, she describes the children laboring and the men at play “almost every day.” The entire message is dependent on the final word. Initially, the audience believes that the poem would end with the men at work; Cleghorn led us to believe that the entire poem was dramatic irony. However, the word “play” transformed the entire poem using situational irony, as we believed that the poem would end with the men working diligently instead of the children. This juxtaposition between the two generations also compares the upper and lower classes. Golf is a Scottish game typically associated as a game intended for the wealthy. Golf links, the oldest style of golf course, are contrasted with the mill, which is typically characterized as a workplace for the poor. With just one word, Cleghorn also juxtaposes the audience’s expectation with reality. We expected the world to be as gentle and carefree, which is what we wanted to see. But Cleghorn brings to light the issue of child labor through her use of irony which is finalized by the last word of the poem. Although the context of Cleghorn’s message was aimed at the American society of the time, her message can still be used today and be aimed at third world countries that still use such barbaric techniques.

"To a Daughter Leaving Home" by Linda Pastan

Linda Pastan is an American poet famous for writing shorts poems on topics such as family life, motherhood, loss, and the fragility of life and relationships. She is of Jewish decent and was Poet Laureate of Maryland: a poet designated by the government the write poems on special occasions and events.

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye.

Although the mother is reminiscing on the incident in the present, the story takes the reader back to the past “when [she] taught [her daughter]/ at eight to ride a bicycle.” She helped the daughter by ‘lopping along/ beside” her. She was surprised as the daughter “pulled/ ahead down the curved/ path of the park” and didn’t crash. This is significant as the bicycle path represents the daughter’s journey through life. The mother teaches and helps the daughter throughout her childhood life as she “wobbled” through it similar to how she did while riding the bicycle. The curved path represents the mysterious and unknown outcomes of life: the future. Life doesn’t always travel along a predicted path, just as how the daughter took the curved path which surprised her mother. The mother worried as she “sprinted to catch up” to her daughter. This is compared to how mothers are concerned about every aspect of their children’s lives that they cannot foresee. It represents the mother feeling left behind as the daughter grows up on her journey as the mother failed to catch up to her daughter whose hair was flapping behind her “like/ a handkerchief waving/ goodbye.” The memory of the incident allows readers to picture a girl riding her bicycle as she matures into a woman right before our eyes to the present time, which is similar to how the mother feels. The reader infers that the mother was a loving one who continues to worry and care about her daughter even as she “grew/ smaller, more breakable/ with distance” along the path of life.

"She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways" by William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth was born on April 7, 1770 and is greatly renowned as an English Romantic poet. He and Samuel Taylor Coleridge are accredited with launching the Romantic Age in English Literature with their publication of Lyrical Ballads in 1798.

She dwelt among the untrodden ways

         Beside the springs of Dove,

A Maid whom there were none to praise

         And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone

         Half hidden from the eye!

—Fair as a star, when only one

         Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know

         When Lucy ceased to be;

But she is in her grave, and, oh,

         The difference to me!

The nature of the speaker of this poem, who has recently lost a loved one, is revealed through the narrator’s elegiac tone. The poem doubles as a eulogy that honors the life of Lucy who was “half hidden from the eye.” She was a woman who “dwelt among the untrodden ways.” She was known and love by few yet the narrator was one of the people that saw beauty in her and her loneliness. Her life was known to few yet was described as beautiful by the narrator which suggests that the narrator places great value in the simplicity found in life. He compares her to “a violet by a mossy stone,” suggesting his ability to see the hidden beauties of the world. He is grieving for her death yet still remembers the beauty that she exhibited in her life which reflects the narrator’s ability. We can see that the narrator is visibly shaken by her death as he exclaims “oh/ the difference to me!” This sentimentality describes the narrator’s empathy towards Lucy who, as the title suggests, walked a road traveled by no other. Her isolation in her life is matched only by the isolation of the narrator now in her death. The little information given to the reader about Lucy also serves to isolate the reader from the poem in order to make the reader empathize with the narrator. Her death is symbolic of the end result of isolation and serves as a lesson: an implication to not indulge in solitude.

"Barbie Doll" by Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy was born on March 31, 1936 in Detroit, Michigan. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees at the University of Michigan and Northwestern University respectively. She is also the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a historical fiction novel set during WWII.

This girlchild was born as usual 
and presented dolls that did pee-pee and miniature GE stoves and irons and wee lipsticks the color of cherry candy. Then in the magic of puberty, a classmate said: You have a great big nose and fat legs. 

She was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity. She went to and fro apologizing. Everyone saw a fat nose on thick legs. 

She was advised to play coy, exhorted to come on hearty, exercise, diet, smile and wheedle. Her good nature wore out like a fan belt. So she cut off her nose and her legs and offered them up. 

In the casket displayed on satin she lay with the undertaker's cosmetics painted on, a turned-up putty nose, dressed in a pink and white nightie. Doesn't she look pretty? everyone said. Consummation at last. To every woman a happy ending.

In this poem, Piercy compares the ordinary woman, a “girlchild…born as usual,” to a Barbie doll. Her tone is initially amiable and jovial as she mentions that the child “was healthy, tested intelligent, possessed strong arms and back, abundant sexual drive and manual dexterity.” She compliments her characteristics and in doing so compares her to the dolls that the girl was given as a child. She ironically refers to puberty as magic as she mentions a classmate making fun of the girl. In this moment, as the girl hits puberty, the poem changes as well. The tone becomes acerbic, which is displayed my Piercy’s frequent use of vulgarity in her description of the girl’s “fat nose on thick legs” and how she later cuts them off. The girl resulted to changing her “exercise, diet, smile and wheedle” yet even through all of this “her good nature wore out.” We see that Piercy the author has her own formulated opinion at this point on the girl’s decisions and societal tendencies. Piercy is saying that no matter how much she changed her outward appearance, it did nothing for how she felt about herself; instead, it made it worse as she eventually ended up in a casket. The girl’s death is ironic as she is finally viewed as pretty, which can be compared to the version of her when she was just born, in the eyes of society. However, Piercy’s true intentions were to mock societal views on the importance of beauty and self-pity cynically. Through this character, she explains that beauty is dependent on how we think of ourselves more so than how others think of us. Anything we do about our outward appearance will only be temporary. Ergo, the girl’s pity was self-imposed and in turn did nothing but to put her in a casket being admired by those that did not truly care for her and likely put her there in the first place. Piercy accurately captures the arbitrary nature of society by comparing a girl to dolls, who have had countless of designs and models throughout history and change according to societal views on beauty. 

"Constantly Risking Absurdity" by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born on March 24, 1919 in Bronxville, New York. He lived with his two college friends on Little Whale Boat Island in Casco Bay, Maine which gave him a love for the sea. His interests in writing and entertainment began after World War II. 

Constantly risking absurdity

                                             and death

            whenever he performs

                                        above the heads

                                                            of his audience

   the poet like an acrobat

                                 climbs on rime

                                          to a high wire of his own making

and balancing on eyebeams

                                     above a sea of faces

             paces his way

                               to the other side of day

    performing entrechats

                               and sleight-of-foot tricks

and other high theatrics

                               and all without mistaking

                     any thing

                               for what it may not be

       For he's the super realist

                                     who must perforce perceive

                   taut truth

                                 before the taking of each stance or step

in his supposed advance

                                  toward that still higher perch

where Beauty stands and waits

                                     with gravity

                                                to start her death-defying leap

      And he

             a little charleychaplin man

                                           who may or may not catch

               her fair eternal form

                                     spreadeagled in the empty air

                  of existence

Ferlinghetti compares the poet to an acrobat, who are those that perform for other's entertainment and risk their own lives, in his poem, "Constantly Risking Absurdity." Ferlinghetti argues, through his comparison, that entertainment in the form of a circus is not unlike the entertainment that stems from poetry or more accurately the creation of poetry. The poet who artistically synthesizes his own structure of poetry is an acrobat, who whimsically climbs to a high wire of his own making. A poet that fails to capture the audience with his intricate tricks and theatrics falls on his way to the other side like an acrobat who fails to entertain his audience and falls from grace. The structure of the poem, which is separated by stresses, compares to the wild yet graceful performance of an acrobat. The beauty of a poem is dependent on the poet, like a charleychaplin man, who may or may not accurately express his message. The audience does not know how the act will continue or end, all the while acknowledging the genius of the acrobat. The suspense held by an audience that watches as an acrobat perform is mirrored by our own suspense as to how Ferlinghetti will express his ideals through his poem. In this way, we the readers are the audience. We judge what we can perceive, similar to an audience that does not accurately see the entire performance of an acrobat simply because they are too far away from his art. The audience captures their image of the acrobat according to how they perceive it as we understand poetry depending on how we analyze it.