Marks Fungibility In Linda Pastan's Poed By Linda Pastans

In exploring this poem the tone of the opening line – “Abortions will not let you forget” – can be viewed as regretful and as offering a kind of warning. As we move through the poem the tone of line four, might be called literally imaginative, as she say; “The singers and workers that never handled the air”. While in lines 5-6 the tone seems at first brutally honest and realistic and then affectionate and realistic. As she continues to lines 7-10, as well as in many lines of this poem, the mother expresses herself as a person who is fully familiar with all the small, subtle realities of parenting. She even expresses her attitudes toward her abortions even more complex.

Linda Pastan’s poem Marks is a short narrative many women will be able to identify with, as it addresses the tasks by which a stay at home mother is measured. Reduced to a mere extension of her “work,” or family, the female narrator describes in detail not only the domesticity that rules her life, but also the fact that her family has the audacity to assign grades to her efforts. Her husband instrumentalizes her by treating her not as a partner, but as a tool to satisfy his need for to be clothed and fed. He also exhibits fungibility over her in that she is interchangeable with other woman, rather than being her own unique person in the relationship. Finally, he grades his wife even on her performance in the bedroom, reducing her even further to body, vice an active participant in this most intimate facet of their lives. Fortunately, the wife’s self-esteem remains intact, despite her family’s best efforts to dislodge it. In her feminist poem Marks, Linda Pastan highlights the power a husband has over his wife as he subjects her to instrumentality, fungibility, and reduction to body, yet the woman’s inner strength refuses to bow to their systemic oppression.

"The Mother," by Gwendolyn Brooks, is a sorrowful, distressing poem about a mother who has experienced numerous abortions. While reading the poem, you can feel the pain, heartache, distress and grief she is feeling. She is both remorseful and regretful; nevertheless, she explains that she had no other alternative. It is a sentimental and heart wrenching poem where she talks about not being able to experience or do things with the children that she aborted -- things that people who have children often take for granted. Perhaps this poem is a reflection of what many women in society are feeling.

Mayo Angelou explains the reality between struggles and the beauty of overcoming them in her poem called “Woman Work”. This poem is about a mother, preferably, a single mother that has children that she takes care of. The poem starts off by saying, “I’ve got children to tend / The clothes to mend / The floor to mop / The food to shop / Then the chicken to fry / The baby to dry / I got company to feed / The garden to weed / I’ve got shirts to press /

Janie and her grandmother represent a culture of women that were stereotyped into a specific gender role, putting them as the last class in society. They received no compensation or respect for their services. Their work specifically benefited only those they worked for, and supported. Through compromising themselves in this way these women were subjected to even more maltreatment.

Many people describe the role as a mother and a wife as something that is to be welcomed, a natural stage for women. However for the narrator, it changed from something seemingly beautiful to “old foul, bad...” Motherhood to her is then what creative women were to other people during the 19th century. Creativity was natural for the narrator, unlike motherhood; it was part of her being. Motherhood however, was a prison of domestic

The first stanza of the poem the speaker starts out using the word “you”. By using second person point of view the speaker appears to speak directly to the reader. “You remember the children you got that you did not get” (Brooks 2), here the speaker uses the term “children” to refer to her aborted children, which also gives them an identity. Brooks uses throughout the poem the word “children” instead of “fetuses” which gives the speaker the image of motherhood and a person compared to inanimate object. These are the children she has lost. The speaker goes on throughout this stanza to express to the reader all the things “you” will never get to experience with your children because of the decision to have an abortion. “You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh, / Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye” (Brooks 9-10), here the author uses metaphors about food, “snack of them” and “gobbling mother-eye” to illustrate the speakers yearning for motherhood that will never be. This is the only time in the poem other than the title that Brooks will use the word “mother”, all else will be implied that the reader is a mother to

The poem talks from the children 's perspective. It impersonates a child who watches over the mother, "they say a measure of a good tortilla maker is if you can read a newspaper through it" (46). The speaker places herself as an outsider, by using the

Another useful tool in analyzing a poem is to identify poetic devices, meter, and a rhyme scheme. Through her deft use of extended metaphor, Bradstreet weaves an intricate web of parallels between parent and author and between child and book--both relationships of creator to creation. This use of metaphor allows the reader to relate emotionally to Bradstreet’s situation. In line seven, we see the uses of litotes, “At thy return my blushing was not small,” to express the depth of her embarrassment. She also uses metonymy in line eight to express her pain more clearly, “My rambling brat (in print) should mother call.” The simile used in line nine stresses her objection to the published work, “I cast thee by as one unfit for light.” Then in line 19, the poetic device of consonance is used which provides emphasis on her warning, “In this array ‘mongst vulgars may’st thou roam.” In this poem, through the use of personification and apostrophe Bradstreet conveys her feelings and emotions. Anne Bradstreet ensures her poem’s success by linking the triumph and tragedy of authorship with the pain and pleasure of creating and nurturing human life. The meter used is

In the poem, the mother gives the speaker many life lessons that all enhance the thesis. For example, “My mother taught me golden And held me up to see it. ”(5-6) Golden stands for success, and the speaker is being taught on how to be successful. Previously, the author mentions that the both of them were low to middle class people, and when the mother holds her child up to the higher class people for

Daystar by Rita Dove emphasizes gender roles and the expectations society has towards being a mother. It is often believed that mothers should assume responsibility for cooking, cleaning, tending to their demanding children and husbands. The poem illustrates the challenges women endure to live up to society’s expectations to be a fit mother and wife. As seen through the main character mothers have to make sacrifices that often puts everyone else’s happiness before their own. For example, the women in the poem desired to have time to herself but she couldn’t because she had endless chores and children to care for. Not having time to herself made her feel lost and unfulfilled.

In her poem, “Marks,” Pastan attempts to demonstrate her disapproval of the idea of being a “student.” Throughout the poem, Pastan uses the extended metaphor of being graded by her family as a way to show how women are forced to live as servants. Pastan communicates her aversion with a sarcastic tone that makes the reader slightly uncomfortable. Her words are sharp and concise while her last statement, “. . .. Wait ‘til they learn / I’m dropping out,” is startling and causes the reader to be shocked (line 11 – 12). Obviously, Pastan has no intention of leaving her family; rather, she loves them but wishes they would stop grading her on her chores. By making her poem harsh

In the poem "The Author to Her Book", we read about a mother who blames herself for her "ill-formed" offspring. Her offspring, or her son, as told in the story, is "...one unfit for light." By this- we can assume that the child is handicapped. We may assume this because the mother says he is ill-formed of her feeble brain; meaning mentally defective, or lacking intelligence. From this remark, we may think either she had child very young so it caused birth defects for her child, or perhaps she might of had a slight defect of her own and it was passed on to her son. Throughout the story, our main issue is the mother trying to do what she can to fix up her ill-formed child by cleaning him and attemptng to dress him nicer, but because of being poor, the mother can not help her. With that in mind, after reading this poem, we can label it with a theme of poverty due to lack of money, and raggedy clothes.

In this poem “Woman’s Work”, the mother is forced to do household cleaning which represents a domestic life and the impact of gender specific roles. This poem is written in the third person point of view. The speaker is the daughter of a mother who doesn’t work outside, but only inside of the house, and is forced to do household cleaning with her as she hears her friends playing outside in the street. Author Julia Alvarez uses imagery, simile, and alliteration to portray the meaning of the poem that women work harder than men.

The author uses devices such as high diction, irony, allusions and many imagery to get her message clear to the audience about the world and humanity. The audience can clearly get a sense of the irony used throughout the poem when everything the mother expects to and