Pro Femina (excerpts)
Carolyn Kizer
image from poetry foundation website
While men have politely debated free will, we have howled for it,
Howl still, pacing the centuries, tragedy heroines.****
But we need dependency, cosseting, and well-treatment.
So do men sometimes. Why don’t they admit it?
We will be cows for a while, because babies howl for us,
Be kittens or bitches, who want to eat grass now and then
For the sake of our health. But the role of pastoral heroine
Is not permanent, Jack. We want to get back to the meeting.*****
I will speak about women of letters, for I’m in the racket.
Our biggest successes to date? Old maids to a woman.
And our saddest conspicuous failures? The married spinsters
On loan to the husbands they treated like surrogate fathers.
Think of that crew of self-pitiers, not-very-distant,
Who carried the torch for themselves and got first-degree burns.
Or the sad sonneteers, toast-and-teasdales we loved at thirteen;
Middle-aged virgins seducing the puerile anthologists
Through lust-of-the-mind; barbiturate-drenched Camilles
With continuous periods, murmuring softly on sofas
When poetry wasn’t a craft but a sickly effluvium,
The air thick with incense, musk, and emotional blackmail.***
But we’re emerging from all that, more or less,
Except for some ladylike laggards and Quarterly priestesses
Who flog men for fun, and kick women to maim competition.
Now, if we struggle abnormally, we may almost seem normal;
If we submerge our self-pity in disciplined industry;
If we stand up and be hated, and swear not to sleep with editors;
If we regard ourselves formally, respecting our true limitations
Without making an unseemly show of trying to unfreeze our assets;
Keeping our heads and our pride while remaining unmarried;
And if wedded, kill guilt in its tracks when we stack up the dishes
And defect to the typewriter. And if mothers, believe in the luck of our children,
Whom we forbid to devour us, whom we shall not devour,
And the luck of our husbands and lovers, who keep free women.
YES.
It's that time of the month again. So I am feeling stuckness.
You know, stuckness, sitting still for hours, not knowing what I want, wanting something. After suffering through this comme ci comme ca behaviour, decide to go to bed and lie in bed for hours mind spinning full of ideas. "Should I get up and write that down? No you decided to go to bed, stick with that decision."
This morning I was so annoyed by my inner monologue I looked up uterus + poems in Google, to replace my inner whine with some verse, and found this wonderful site;
and then found this poem :
Excerpt above. I know reading poetry is not the standard way one prepares for a lunch meeting, nevertheless I hope it helps.
