"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.

"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.