Journal Entry, Thursday October 11
I spent my morning in court today to complete a law class requirement that I observe an actual Arbitration Proceeding. Today as luck would have it I was able to observe the “Three Poems proceedings”. Brooks, Angelou, and Castellanos, through their poems, present their testimony on womanhood to the arbitrator the Honorable Lens2cents.
When Castellanos, who is the last to testify, concludes her testimony, Lens2cents says we will adjourn for 30 minutes and when I return I’ll render my decision.About 28 minutes later Lens2cents reenters the court room and begins to deliberate saying “that after careful review I believe we have all learned some important new things about the female experience from the poems of these three women. In “The Mother,” Ms. Brooks is successfully able to convey the very intense emotional reaction many women encounter after having an abortion, something I had never really considered. Even more amazing is that Ms. Brooks wrote “The Mother” in 1945, almost three decades before abortion was legalized and the risks of such a procedure were infinitely more perilous. The expression of love she emotes for her unborn children is heartbreaking. It also made me reflect and remember that women in those days had very little freedom of choice in terms of their life expectations.As for Ms. Angelou’s poem and her theme that no one can make it alone clearly serves to reinforce the differences in the way men and women perceive love and express their emotional needs. I found it of particular interest when she discusses millionaires, who seem to have it all, but in reality their wives run around on them, their children are depressed, and they too, are ultimately very alone. I do believe that a common misconception among men is that if they have enough money all of their problems will disappear.Finally, while I found Miss Castellanos’ poem to be the most challenging for me, it was certainly clear that her tone was disturbing. She did invoke my sorrow for her, and she was successful in persuading me that she must be leading a very isolated life, and that she has very little trust in people. Additionally I believe she succeeded in making a very compelling argument that her pain cannot be shared, and that man is an animal of solitude.
Therefore after carefully reviewing the evidence, I must find that the assignment to read the three poems definitely served to provide us all with a better understanding and appreciation for the many struggles women have faced in the past, and still, to some degree, face today.
Poetry
The Mother
by Gwendolyn Brooks
Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?--
Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.
From A Street in Bronzeville by Gwendolyn Brooks, published by Harper & Brothers. © 1945 by Gwendolyn Brooks. Used with permission. All rights reserved
Alone
by Maya Angelou
Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don't believe I'm wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They've got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.
Destiny
by Rosario Castellanos
Destiny
We kill what we love. What’s left
Was never alive.
No one else is close. What is forgotten,
What else is absent or less, hurts no one else.
We kill what we love. Enough of drawing a choked breath
Through someone else’s lung!
There is not air enough for both of us. And the earth will not hold
Both our bodies
And our ration of hope is small
And pain cannot be shared.
Man is an animal of solitudes,
A deer that bleeds as it flees
With an arrow in its side.
Ah, but hatred with its insomniac
Glass eyes; its attitude
Of menace and repose.
The deer goes to drink and a tiger
Is reflected in the water.
The deer drinks the water and the image. And becomes
-before he is devoured – (accomplice, fascinated)
his enemy.
We give life only to what we hate.
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1 comment:
Len,
I really liked your journal entry formation. I was very impressed with your research regarding the legalization of abortion versus the release of the poem. I agree with your view on the lives of men with lots of money and I too, found Castellanos poem quite challenging to decipher. Happy to hear these poems by women enlightened you.
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