Poetry - Anne Bradstreet and Adrienne Rich
Anne Bradstreet and Adrienne Rich are two of the most important female poets in the American literature, their writing sharing some common features as well. Their poetry seems to be made according to Adrienne Rich's definition of poetry: " I believe that poems are made of words and the breathing between them: that is the medium. I believe as well that poetry isn't language in the abstract but language as in: I want to learn your language. You need more than one language to get by in this city. To learn a language is to earn a soul. She is teaching English as a second language." (Rich)1 As Rich emphasized in her article poetry is not made merely of the strands of words form it, but also of the breathing they leave between them, that is, the rhythm, the music, the life and pulse of the words. Words and language are not abstract objects arranged in a certain pattern, they are entities that have a life of their own.Adrienne Rich is a feminist poet, as her poetry profusely demonstrates it. The poems Aunt Jennifer's Tigers and Living in Sin speak about a male oppressed world, and about the conflict between the aesthetic world, the world of poetic imagination and, at the opposite pole, the daily common life in which the female poet
Moreover, in Blake's poetry the tiger represents the mystery of creation, both divine and artistic. ) that morning lightso coldly delineate the scraps of last night's cheese and three sepulchral bottles;" ( Rich, 495)The woman's perception of these seemingly innocent details and objects is the same as looking at them through the cold morning light, when everything seems oppressive, cumbersome and imperfect. " (Rich)Significantly, the poet chose the work of embroidery to symbolize the woman's intellectual world, precisely because the embroidery is one of the oldest and most specific tasks for a woman, a work that men do not commonly engage in. The marriage is obviously hindering the imagination and the creative powers of a woman. To the atmosphere of oppression contribute still other elements, like the residues from dinner which create a feeling of utter dislike and discomfort, almost grime and terrifying: "(. The milkman's or the daylight's "steps" suggest an unwelcome intrusion, that may be that of the male in the intimate world of the female. All three poems are very assertive in their meaning as well as in their form, and every time we discern the feminine voice asserting its identity in front of the world of men, as well as in front of the social world. The studio, the furniture, the taps are all elements of the household, the symbolic space where marriage life happens. At the same time, Rich suggests that the sin is actually the lack of love in the marriage. The reader immediately senses the frustration transmitted by the poem, and caused by the conflict between Aunt Jennifer's married life and her aesthetic life. The rhyme of the poem is tight and pressing, intended to suggest the feminine world of Aunt Jennifer oppressed by the male husband, or by the married life that dominates and restrains her freedom. " ( Rich)The Past Perfect of the verb in the first line already announces the fact that the hopes of the woman were not fulfilled in the marriage. )" (Rich )In fact, the word "heresy" might bring another feminist touch to the poem, since it points only to the type of guilt that is engendered by social prejudice, according to which the woman is supposed to find perfect and complete satisfaction only in her married life and in the duties associated with it. However, the poem concludes with the triumph of the aesthetic over the ordinary life, since the tigers remain still prancing "proud and unafraid" after Aunt Jennifer's death. It is something that belongs to the feminine world, in a male- female delimited universe.
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