Louise Bogan, "Women"

Louise Bogan is a poet I discovered when I was in college, in a Women's Studies course exploring the "F word"- feminism. We read this poem and discussed the choices that women make, how so many opportunities go by because women are going about the business of life and taking care of others. They cook, clean, love, and labor, and then what has life been? Have they let it go by? Has it been their own life? I think of my own grandmother, a vision of perfect domesticity- not a "wild" woman in the least. Did she long to feel the wind in her face or was she content "to eat dusty bread"?

As Louise Bogan herself has said, she wrote this poem in 1923 when she was 24 years old, and her views of gender improved with age. She was a trailblazer, giving silenced women a voice.

I love this poem because with its rhymed stanzas it is quite accessible and decipherable to all readers. But it avoids beyond sing-songy and trite. Its images are haunting and meaningful.

I have just seen "Wild" in the theatres, with Reese Witherspoon playing the title role of Cheryl Strayed. This is based on the memoir, Wild, that chronicles Cheryl's arduous and cathartic journey on the Pacific Coast Trail, finding peace and understanding after the death of her mother. It shows a woman with "wilderness" in her, in both literal and figurative ways. I highly recommend both the book (read it first!!!) and the movie.

Now enjoy the poem....

Women By Louise Bogan

Women have no wilderness in them,   

They are provident instead,   

Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts   

To eat dusty bread.   

They do not see cattle cropping red winter grass,   

They do not hear   

Snow water going down under culverts   

Shallow and clear.   

They wait, when they should turn to journeys,   

They stiffen, when they should bend.   

They use against themselves that benevolence   

To which no man is friend.   

They cannot think of so many crops to a field   

Or of clean wood cleft by an axe.   

Their love is an eager meaninglessness   

Too tense, or too lax.   

They hear in every whisper that speaks to them   

A shout and a cry.   

As like as not, when they take life over their door-sills   

They should let it go by.

 

 

Source: Body of this Death: Poems (1923)