Poem of the Week: "Women" by Adrienne Rich

"Women" By Adrienne Rich

My three sisters are sitting
on rocks of black obsidian.
For the first time, in this light, I can see who they are.

My first sister is sewing her costume for the procession.
She is going as the Transparent lady
and all her nerves will be visible.

My second sister is also sewing,
at the seam over her heart which has never healed entirely,
At last, she hopes, this tightness in her chest will ease.

My third sister is gazing
at a dark-red crust spreading westward far out on the sea.
Her stockings are torn but she is beautiful.

I had a test today in Modern Poetry and what I love about this poem is how broken it shows women. It shows what men have done to women and it causes men to sympathize and then look at themselves in the "black obsidian." It's subtle yet extremely critical. However, it isn't hopeless, the last line ends on a sense of empowerment and resolution.

Link:
Adrienne Rich on Wikipedia

Poem of the Week: “‘When you see millions of the mouthless dead’” by Charles Hamilton Sorley

‘When you see millions of the mouthless dead’ by Charles Hamilton Sorley

When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto,
"Yet many a better one has died before."
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

Charles Hamilton Sorley is not a well-known poet out of World War I, but he was considered very influential to other WWI poets like Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Own. Sorley was one of the first to show what life was really like in the trenches instead of the romanticizing that was going on when the war first started. The chilling thing about this poem is that it was found on his person when he was killed in 1915.

Link:
Charles Hamilton Sorley on wikipedia

Poem of the Week: “Sailing to Byzantium” by W.B. Yeats

I’d like to start another weekly column, Poem of the Week. I write so much myself it was really a shame that I haven't read a lot of poetry, but lately I’ve started to discover quite a bit (taking a modern poetry class doesn’t hurt). So every week I’ll put up a new poem and say a few words about. Hope you enjoy!



"Sailing to Byzantium” by W.B. Yeats

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

I’m guessing you noticed the glaring reference that Cormac McCarthy took for his novel that became this year’s Oscar winner via the Coen Brothers.

This poem was published later in his life (Published in The Tower in 1928) and shows Yeats expressing the desire to transcend humanity and become his art, ever eternal. Well, I’m studying him at school, so he got his wish?

I think most artists in general have this desire, I know I do.

Link:
W.B. Yeats on wikipedia