The Chance of Life

[monk222]

I was waiting for my zombie novel to come in and found refuge again in Robert Pinsky’s anthology of poems, and thought I’d share a snatch from a longer poem. Though this one is a little tricky.

The poet is a man but he is writing from a woman’s perspective and, as it is about one’s sexuality, it can be problemsome, for instance, is he writing fairly? Moreover, it’s a bit dated, as the poet died in the mid-sixties. How many young girls wish for a husband today? But it caught my fancy.

_ _ _

When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I’d wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children. Now that I’m old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car

See me. It bewilders me he doesn’t see me.
For so many years
I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me
And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me,
the eyes of strangers!
And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

Imaginings within my imagining,
I too have taken
The chance of life.

-- “Next Day” by Randall Jarrell (1914-1965)

Comments

[miss-next.livejournal.com]

I don't think he's writing fairly. Being the object of other people's "vile imaginings" is not a compliment, and not something any woman would truly wish for if she thought enough about it to write a poem.

I read an interesting article recently about the visibility, or otherwise, of women. Put simply, most women have an appalling choice (and many, through having unusually attractive or unattractive looks, don't even have that): to be visible and attract unwelcome attention, or to be simply invisible. I mean, that is a massive oversimplification, but it's certainly true on one level - when the woman is among strangers. When she's among people she knows, she may have a strong enough personality to override that.

I am actually more than happy to be invisible among strangers; I'm an introvert, as you know. For many women, however, it tends to generate an uncomfortable set of mixed feelings, and I don't think this poem really captures those.

[hardblue.livejournal.com]

At the risk of being old-fashion and even called a sexist, I think this gets at the difference between men and women, that women are more sex-object and men are aroused by availability, and it can make for a rough fit with our ideal of equality.

As for the particulars of the poem, one has to focus, I think, on the fact that she has become one of the invisible women through her aging, and although women can find sexual attention tiresome, I don’t think it’s unusual to hear of women kind of missing that when it is gone.

Though, more particularly yet, with respect to the ‘vile imaginings’, maybe this is where the poet does cheat a little. I am sure that he is right when it comes to male imaginings, as a general rule, and he brings that out in his poem, though a woman, particularly a woman back in the 50s and 60s might not be as conversant with that dark aspect of male psychosexuality.

And, to be perfectly clear, I read that part of the poem - of her holding the men’s flesh within her flesh and their vile imaginings within her imagining - as relating that she had a pretty active sex life, that she is speaking of intercourse. She is not just talking about being the object of lustful gazes. And, looking back at it, now that she has become one of the invisible people, she rather misses that sexuality, all the more for having apparently been a pretty sexually active person.