They Struggled to be Heard
As Women's History Month comes to an end, we might consider the women who have offered us glimpses of history through their poetry. A poem can make us feel without telling us what to feel, or convey a vivid impression through a curious blend of the poet's heart and mind. Through the visions of poets, we are privileged to enter their worlds.
What might we learn from the poems of three women: one a slave, one a dissident, and one considered an eccentric?
We selected three women poets among many who had to struggle to be heard.
Phillis
Wheatley
Phillis
Wheatley, a slave in pre-Revolutionary War Boston,
caused a stir in white society when a book of her
poetry was published in England in 1753. At the time,
many whites considered blacks to be inferior. They
wondered how a girl brought from Africa at 8 years
of age could be reading Latin and writing fine poetry
in the style of the great English poets of the age
by the time she was 12.
Even though Wheatley lived with a family who recognized her talent, educated her, and promoted the publication of her work, the public was highly skeptical. Wheatley had to be examined by the governor of Massachusetts and a board of leading lawyers, ministers and prominent members of Boston society who finally attested, in a letter to the public, that she was capable of writing the poems.
This testimony sent shockwaves through the colonies because the assumption about the inferiority of blacks was brought into question. People believed that Africans were not fully human because they had no written literature. The fact that African literature followed an oral, rather than written, tradition was ignored.
|
Define Your Terms Neoclassical poetry: This style of poetry was inspired by the ancient Greeks and Romans. In the mid-18th century there was a resurgence of interest in the classics. Iambic pentameter: Iambic pentameter consists of lines that are exactly 10 syllables each. The syllables are grouped in pairs (known as feet), in which the second syllable is emphasized. Heroic couplet: This verse is made up of pairs of iambic lines that rhyme. Meter: Meter is an arrangement of language in which accented syllables occur at predictable intervals. |
Whether or not her poetry convinced people otherwise, Wheatley's writing was well received. It fit neatly into the neoclassical conventions of the day. There was a formal elegance and correctness in order and proportion, dignity and restraint.
Her poems followed a precise form of rhythm called iambic pentameter and rhyme known as the heroic couplet. In keeping with those traditions, her subjects were often drawn from Greek mythology or the Christian Bible.
Some people today say that Wheatley should have written about the African people. Others say that even though her poetry conforms to the Western European tradition, there is a politically subversive message that isn't initially evident.
Wheatley was the first American woman and the first black writer to publish a book in North America. Phillis was the name of the boat that brought her to America; Wheatley was her master's surname.
Read Phillis Wheatley's poem, "On Being Brought from Africa to America."
|
|
- Why
do you think certain words are set in italics?
- Phillis
was very religious, and apparently grateful to
be brought up in the Wheatley's devout household.
Does this poem suggest her gratitude, or does
it hint that whites might have a lot to learn?
- Identify specific words that support your answer.
Emily
Dickinson
Emily Dickinson lived in the nineteenth century and
was seen as an eccentric because she always wore white
and never left the grounds of her home. Her genius
as a writer went unrecognized for a long time. She
had a lengthy friendship and correspondence with Atlantic
Monthly magazine editor Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
to whom she had tentatively sent some of her work,
but he failed to recognize her considerable gift and
discouraged her from publication. Of the nearly 1,800
poems she wrote, very few were published during her
lifetime, and those were published anonymously.
|
Anonymity or Pseudonymity? Dickinson published her poems anonymously, but she was not the only woman writer who didn't use her name. George Eliot was a highly acclaimed woman writer who would not have been taken seriously had she used her real name, Marianne Evans. Taking a man's name as a pseudonym was critical to her success. Another woman writer who used a pseudonym was George Sand. A French writer who lived in the same time period as Eliot, Sand's real name was Amandine-Aurore-Lucile Dudevant. Dickinson kept a portrait of Eliot in her bedroom. |
Dickinson's genius lay partly in her innovative style, which defied 19th-century poetic conventions by avoiding regular rhyme and meter, and using unusual themes and metaphors (implied comparisons of things that are essentially unalike). She also used capital letters in unusual places and punctuated "oddly." The public couldn't accept it. Reviewers declared that her poetry had "a startling disregard for poetic laws." After her death, editors smoothed out the rhymes, regularized the meter, and substituted more conventional metaphors. They even eliminated whole stanzas.
Read her poem, "There is a pain..." (Because Dickinson did not title her poems, we identify them by their first lines.) Notice how "Swoon" and "Bone" have a similarity in sound but don't quite rhyme. This is the kind of "off rhyme" that is a trademark of Emily Dickinson's style. Read the poem, "I dwell in Possibility—"
|
There is a pain— There
is a pain—so utter— |
I dwell in Possibility— I
dwell in Possibility— Of
Chambers as the Cedars— Of
Visitors—the fairest— |
-
Compare
Dickinson's poems to Wheatley's. What is the difference
in poetic style?
- What is it about the nature of poetry that allowed Emily Dickinson to become such a distinctive voice?
Which of the comments about Dickinson's style mentioned above are apparent in these poems?
How does her punctuation, especially the long dashes, make us read the poems' rhythms? What is the subject of "I dwell in Possibility"? What is the "Possibility" she speaks of?
Dickinson did have one fan whose opinion dissented from the majority. William Dean Howells, one of the most prominent literary figures of the time, praised her innovation: "If nothing else should come out of our life but this strange poetry we should feel that in the work of Emily Dickinson, America, or New England rather, had made a distinctive addition to the literature of the world, and should not be left out of any record of it."
Anna
Akhmatova
Russian poet Anna Akhmatova lived through World War
I, the Russian Revolution, and World War II. Social
and political upheaval provided the background for
much of her life. Her husband was executed, and her
son imprisoned three times under Stalin's rule during
a period known as the Great Terror. She was officially
ostracized from the Union of Soviet Writers and forbidden
to publish any of her work. She suffered sickness
and poverty and lost friends and allies until she
felt thoroughly isolated. Akhmatova had many opportunities
to flee Russia, but she was preoccupied with a mission
to endure and bear witness to the strife in her country.
It is said that great poetry is often a response to total disaster. In her poems, personal emotions and memories merge with the momentous events of the time. Her writing was not popular with the Communist Party in part because she wanted to preserve the language and the history of her land through a straightforward style that was precise and authentic and clear, as opposed to the obscure, symbolic political poetry that was encouraged.
Read the following poem written by Anna Akhmatova in 1922.
I Am Not One of Those Who Left the Land
I am not one of those who left the land
to the mercy of its enemies.
Their flattery leaves me cold,
my songs are not for them to praise.
But I pity the exile's lot.
Like a felon, like a man half-dead,
dark is your path, wanderer;
wormwood infects your foreign bread.
But here, in the murk of conflagration,
where scarcely a friend is left to know,
we, the survivors, do not flinch
from anything, not from a single blow.
Surely the reckoning will be made
after the passing of this cloud.
We are the people without tears,
straighter than you...more proud...
-
What is
the tone of this poem?
- How does Akhmatova's poetry differ from that of Dickinson and Wheatley?
Do you sense pride? Bitterness? Strength?
What words or phrases or images help you to understand her sentiment?
Who is she speaking to?
Rhythmic
Patterns
Generally when we look at rhythm in poetry we think
in terms of two-syllable groups or three-syllable
groups. These groups of syllables are called feet
when they are in a line of poetry. The way the syllables
are emphasized within each foot determines the rhythm
of the poem and thus become the building blocks of
much of English poetry.
|
What's Your Beat? Look at the formulas for the four traditional rhythmic patterns described here. What rhythmic pattern does your name fit into? For example, some names that are iambic are Christine, Raquel, Louise.Lauren and Adam are trochaic. Which rhythmic pattern does Jennifer fit? Annabel? What is your beat? |
- An iambic
foot consists of two syllables with the stress,
or emphasis, on the second syllable. It might
be the most common rhythm because it imitates
the heartbeat: (ba boom. ba boom.)
The iamb is known as a rising foot because your
voice goes up as you say the second syllable.
In her book Poem Making: Ways to Begin Writing
Poetry, Myra Cohn Livingston gives this example
of iambic pentameter (and the examples of the
other rhythmic patterns that follow).
Note the iambic rhythm in this part of a poem by Lilian Moore, titled, "While You Were Chasing a Hat:"
The wind
that whirled
your hat
away
- Another
rising foot is the three-syllable anapest. This
time there are two unstressed syllables followed
by a stressed syllable. The anapest is often used
in limericks, as in the following verse:
When he went/ to the house/
and he knocked/ on the doorEach line is divided into two anapests.
- The
trochee is a two-syllable falling foot. Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha"
is written entirely in trochees. These are the
opening lines:
By the/ shores of/ Gitche/ Gumee
Stood the/ wigwam/ of No/komis
- The
dactyl, like the trochee, is a falling foot. But
like the anapest it has three syllables. Longfellow
wrote his poem "Evangeline" in dactyls:
This is the/ Forest prim/ evil. The/ murmuring/ pines and the/ hemlocks.
The last foot of line two is a trochee.
Poets aren't always consistent in their use of rhythm. In fact, they often alter the rhythms to create the effects they want to convey.
- How do the different rhythms help to establish the mood in poems?
-
Visit the
Poetry
Society of America.
- Read All of the Above (Barnard New Women Poets Series), by Dorothy Barresi.
