Women in Art and Poetry - 2

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"Daystar" by former poet-laureate Rita Dove pairs up nicely with "Aunt Hannah." Everyone I know has heard, or spoken, thoughts similar to the speaker (named Beulah). "Daystar" comes from Rita Dove's 1986 book Thomas and Beulah.

"DayStar" By Rita Dove | Bukisa.com

I cannot find an online version of Adrienne Rich's "Woman-Right" (see my note at end about copyright), but I hope everyone will try to locate it. A short poem, it strikes me as a perfect companion to the painting "Burnt Out," above. The images and actions in the poem more or less outline widely accepted differences in the mindsets of women and men (for one thing, we men like to measure). Now that science has verified some of these contrasts--admittedly in broad, sweeping, stereotyping terms--Rich seems prescient (her poem from the mid-1970s predates, I think, later scientific announcements about male and female brains).

In the potential pathology about what's at stake in gender conflicts, Marge Piercy's "The Friend" takes things up a notch. How extreme is her exaggeration--in a metaphorical effort to make a point, don't you think? And why title the poem "The Friend"?
The Friend by Marge Piercy

Just yesterday at this site, we saw three reputable poems by three reputable poets, all modern males, perceiving women in a way that seems well-intentioned. In fact, Richard Wilbur's "Piazza di Spagna" seems to me a kind of apotheosis of the girl in Rome. Even so, might each poem justifiably be called an objectification of a woman?

And are today's three poems--all by women--more accurate than the men's poems in their portrait of American women, at least as they were prior to about 1990?

I realize that these questions invite misleading stereotypes and distortions; whatever Dove, Rich, and Piercy are saying, there will be exceptions by the dozen. But might it be instructive to discuss with someone of the other gender the character, the extent, and the purpose of any hyperbole you find here? Do these six poems and four nineteenth century American paintings (two on Dec. 1, plus today's) describe the core of any gap that remains between the genders? Six poems and four old paintings won't say it all, but are they speaking something like a truth? A kernel?

It's the holiday season. Be gentle.

(Again, by the way, if someone knows how I can resolve my worries about copyright issues, please let me know. Feeling obliged to put only links in my posts, rather than entire poems, unless the author is long dead, seems a rinky-dink game that only fourth-tier lawyers and bitter, bitter authors or their descendants would want to play. But I'm not going to waste my time engaging with them. And what is fair use anyway? It's not as if I'm passing these off as my work. Are they afraid I'll make millions off their or their granparents'? work? If a few of my readers buy a book by one of the poets I cite, how is that poet damaged? Litigious America is disgusting. Happy Holidays. Make sure those mittens you buy are properly copyrighted.).

Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Heritage

I’m pretty sure it’s not cool to like nineteenth American art, but in my last two visits to the art museum, I wandered into those rooms and was taken by much of what I saw. More and more often in looking at history, I think, “These are my ancestors. What do we have in common?”

My sense of connection also arises partly because of Hawthorne’s story, “Ethan Brand,” which has popped up in conversation a couple of times lately; his unflattering portrait of New England villagers intrigues me.

Ethan Brand left his town eighteen years before the story begins. Now he’s back, and the town’s atwitter about his return. We learn that he left in order to discover “The Unpardonable Sin,” and, guess what, he found it. It’s the sin of pride that causes someone to set himself apart from, and therefore above, “the brotherhood of man.” By seeking the Unpardonable Sin, Ethan Brand commits it. He knows it, and says he would do it again.

Labeling the seeker, the rebel, the iconoclast an “unpardonable” sinner—that sounds like a pretty democratic and reasonable value system, right? But when we meet Ethan Brand’s fellow citizens, we’d consider lighting out for the territory too. They tend to be drunk, ugly, and uninteresting, except that they’re sort of weird, sort of a traveling circus that doesn’t travel.

So are we supposed to identify with the arrogant “intellectual” and title character, who says he's not repentant for his self-imposed exile, which amounts to self-exaltation? Are we up to it, that kind of defiance, solitude, and acceptance of responsibility? Or should we see ourselves as one of the tedious, unattractive Everymen of the village? At least the motley crew in the town square have each other—right? Is that what we’re supposed to say, out of a sense of modesty and a need for others, a sense of ourselves as herd animals? The townsfolk are the only alternatives to Ethan Brand in the world of the story; so to play fair, those are our choices.

“Ethan Brand” is my favorite Hawthorne story, along with “My Kinsman, Major Molineaux.” I think both pieces ask more complex and subtle questions than most of his work does.

So when I saw the paintings, which are roughly contemporary with Hawthorne, I couldn’t help but see the rag-tag bumpkins of those two stories, or the pious folks of Salem who render Young Goodman Brown an isolated cynic in one of Hawthorne’s other famous stories.

If the humans in these paintings are our norm, the best or only prospects for fellowship, how do we respond? To which male would you hand over your daughter? Which female looks like the best candidate for interesting talk over coffee? Or is coffee not the point? If these are our predecessors, who are we?

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