Audre Lorde's poem Who said it was Simple is anything but simple, it is very compacted with metaphors. Audre’s life was complicated; she was a mother, feminist, and lesbian, because of this she was criticized for her writing. Her response just like and activist was to repost shading light on her sexuality and how it made her who she was. In the first stanza of her poem Who said it was Simple she states:
There are so many roots to the tree of anger that sometimes the branches shatter before they bear. This stanza has a lot to unpack. The roots of trees are strong and they essentially keep the tree alive, to me the roots of the tree is representing a person and their beliefs. Being underground most of the roots are covered by dirt, in some cases, bits may come out into the light but what you’d like to keep to yourself would stay hidden. The tree and branches are the person may show to the outside world. What I find important is her word choice when she says “sometimes the branches shatter” (line 2) shatter is an interesting choice. Shatter is more of a violent choice rather than crack or splinter. Knowing she is speaking of a “tree of anger” the word shatter makes me believe there was a violent outlash. Audre uses another interesting line within her poem. “[T]he ladies neither notice nor reject/the slightler pleasures of their slavery.” (lines 10 and 11) this was interesting to unpack. She is speaking of women being slaves to their husbands or even just males in general. The “slightler pleasures of their slavery” would represent the man of the house bringing home money or at times something nice for the woman of the house. In which case these “gifts” make their captivity slightly more bearable in the household. I believe these lines are to make women mad, almost as a trigger to realize that the men in their life are mistreating them and them living for the slightest pleasure is no way to live. She is trying to make women think about their home lives and think if they are happy where they are.
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Life at war is a beautiful poem written in 1966 during the Vietnam War. Denise Levertov shows both the effects of war but also humanity as a whole. She speaks of natural things in the world such as birds chirping and beautiful spider webs. She does a really good job at making the reader comfortable with all the beautiful things such as the nature of the birds and then flips the poem on the edge and go into the darkness of the war. Denise flips her poem into the darkness of the war right after she describes nature as being so beautiful, she goes into the next stanza speaking of babies dying with breast milk coming out of their mouths. The gruesome images she paints for us is to really make you realize how war really affects not only adults but also our children. She goes into other harsh images in her poem such as “flesh burning in Vietnam” (lines 38 and 39). Her poem, in my opinion, could really speak about wars in general and not just Vietnam. She is really able to show the destruction in general that happens in most if not all wars. I believe the goal of her poem is to really make people think and possibly feel regret for supporting this war. I believe she speaks of the babies affected and all the gruesome images just to pull at your heart and make you develop feelings over what she is talking about. If this was her goal I’d say that she succeeded with flying colors. This poem pulls you into her direct opinion of the war and what she believed the effects on humankind were. Denise’s writing really made me think about the war that we are in now as well our past wars, and think about if they were really our war to fight and the destruction that we have helped make. There are definitely wars that we are participated in that were our wars to fight such as the Civil War and our war on Independence. But there have been wars in the past that we just joined in and never saw the outcome of, this makes me wonder if they were really worth the destruction that we caused. The Streetcar Named Desire was originally published in 1947 before any woman rights activists really came out on to the streets. Tennessee Williams seems to be shedding light on how women were being treated at this time. Williams did not sugar coat his writing in this text, he was able to talk about different types of violence such as both physical and mental abuse.
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