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.
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Date: 2011-08-28 01:28 am (UTC)From: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.