She Walks in Beauty Read online

  With lies, you can double your existence.

  In an endless dream of introductory letters,

  The applicants sit in all their best clothes,

  Their ages against them, their loneliness

  Repeated many times. The managers walk around, choosing.

  You say you’ve done singing telegrams and balloon bouquets

  (you’ve done strip-o-grams, sold flowers at traffic lights).

  You’re a cake decorator, you’ve been to zoo school

  (you’re a weeper-at-weddings, you eat cat food).

  Welcome to the world of captivity.

  You were calm yesterday, and today you’re thinking,

  “In the days when I was calm.” You’d like

  To talk about your sex life. Singing your salesman’s song,

  You wave your thirteen letters “To Whom It May Concern,”

  Every one a masterpiece.

  Fooling a man is a full-time job.

  You’ve had a good day? You’ve found something?

  The world needs you right away.

  The loneliness repeats itself.

  You chart the progress of your fellow novices

  Who stand around as astonished as slaves

  Delivered in a day. They aren’t moving up,

  But they’re saying “You bet.”

  They call the boss The Enemy.

  Whatever makes every beginning a sad one

  Suggests that somewhere there is something else for you.

  Your boss is a terrorist; you like him.

  Reading the impressions on his note pad,

  You can’t help certain hopes.

  Sitting in the switchboard glow,

  Connected by the movements of your hands and arms,

  You’re a shaky presence among solid things.

  You don’t get a glimpse of his heart of gold,

  But you hear things he’d never tell anyone:

  He spent his youth dreaming of being a thief;

  He is where others ought to be;

  People should be ashamed of their luck and proud of their trouble.

  At noon you sneak out and eat a stale moon pie

  From a filling-station jar. You take gloves to the tramps

  Who stand around trash-can fires thanking God

  They aren’t tramps. You shake their hands.

  The job is impossible, but the enemy,

  Meaning your heart, is calm.

  That typewriter has not got his eyes or arms:

  If you accept its offer, it won’t embrace you, yet it offers

  Itself more than he does. It won’t mind

  If you fall asleep in a rush at your desk

  Repeating to yourself, “I am asleep,” or that

  you can’t tell in this atmosphere

  The difference between sweat and tears.

  You know what all the world knows: time was invented

  So workdays could come to a close.

  The women on the electric train

  Shift their weight in the direction of the men.

  The men stare off, every one for himself,

  Every departure a sad one.

  You’re not the same person they regarded impatiently

  Over the pencil sharpener: you’ve escaped.

  You have to lean against the window frame and laugh.

  Cherishing bits of evidence of how strange you are,

  You pass through glowing rectangles of town and country.

  You think of knights, town criers, jesters.

  You can see the world in the last light

  Laid out like a checkerboard, and you can live.

  So you’re an agent, adjuster, accommodator

  With a wish to take the movements of your arms elsewhere.

  Have faith in your doubts.

  Your vocation is to feel

  Less despair about despair.

  You’ll be there until you leave.

  Defining Worlds

  G. Y. BAXTER

  Some would say I chose work

  They don’t know—it may have chosen me

  I’m a working mother

  A woman named Sally

  Takes care of my baby

  Tiny and confused

  I can’t stay to help

  Happy, in fragments

  Fleeting, stolen leisure . . .

  That time we all paused

  To celebrate

  A broken BlackBerry

  And hectic mornings

  And sick days

  And school plays

  And school’s out

  And staying late

  Running

  Running between two worlds

  Passing

  Passing years

  Tears enough to drown me

  But I swim

  Because mommy must be strong

  To live the lesson

  I chose to teach her

  How to define herself

  And she

  Letting slide

  The forgotten holiday concert

  The endless conference call

  She is already strong

  First with elaborate drawings

  in bright markers

  Determined, she scribbles

  She is proud of me

  Then one day

  The greeting-card moment

  She wants to be just like her mother

  And I wonder

  Who wouldn’t choose that?

  What’s That Smell in the Kitchen?

  MARGE PIERCY

  All over America women are burning dinners.

  It’s lambchops in Peoria; it’s haddock

  in Providence; it’s steak in Chicago

  tofu delight in Big Sur; red

  rice and beans in Dallas.

  All over America women are burning

  food they’re supposed to bring with calico

  smile on platters glittering like wax.

  Anger sputters in her brainpan, confined

  but spewing out missiles of hot fat.

  Carbonized despair presses like a clinker

  from a barbecue against the back of her eyes.

  If she wants to grill anything, it’s

  her husband spitted over a slow fire.

  If she wants to serve him anything

  it’s a dead rat with a bomb in its belly

  ticking like the heart of an insomniac.

  Her life is cooked and digested,

  nothing but leftovers in Tupperware.

  Look, she says, once I was roast duck

  on your platter with parsley but now I am Spam.

  Burning dinner is not incompetence but war.

  Father Grumble

  FOLK SONG

  There was an old man who lived in the wood

  As you can plainly see,

  Who said he could do more work in one day

  Than his wife could do in three.

  “If this be true,” the old woman said,

  “Why, this you must allow:

  You must do my work for one day

  While I go drive the plow.

  “And you must milk the Tiny cow

  For fear she will go dry,

  And you must feed the little pigs

  That are within the sty.

  “And you must watch the speckled hen

  Lest she should lay astray,

  And you must wind the reel of yarn

  That I spun yesterday.”

  The old woman took the staff in her hand

  And went to drive the plow,

  The old man took the pail in his hand

  And went to milk the cow.

  But Tiny hitched and Tiny flitched,

  And Tiny cocked her nose,

  And Tiny gave the old man such a kick

  That the blood ran down to his hose.

  It’s “Hey, my good cow!” and “Ho, my good cow!”

  And, “Now, my good cow, stand still!

  If ever I milk this cow a
gain,

  ’Twill be against my will.”

  But Tiny hitched and Tiny flitched,

  And Tiny cocked her nose,

  And Tiny gave the old man such a kick

  That the blood ran down to his hose.

  And when he had milked the Tiny cow

  For fear she would go dry,

  Why then he fed the little pigs

  That are within the sty.

  And then he watched the speckled hen

  Lest she should lay astray,

  But he forgot the reel of yarn

  His wife spun yesterday.

  He swore by all the stars in the sky

  And all the leaves on the tree

  His wife could do more work in one day

  Than he could do in three.

  He swore by all the leaves on the tree

  And all the stars in heaven

  That his wife could do more work in one day

  Than he could do in seven.

  Epitaph

  ANONYMOUS

  (Said to have been once found in Bushey Churchyard, Hertfordshire)

  Here lies a poor woman who always was tired,

  For she lived in a place where help wasn’t hired,

  Her last words on earth were, “Dear friends, I am going,

  Where washing ain’t done nor cooking nor sewing,

  And everything there is exact to my wishes,

  For there they don’t eat, there’s no washing of dishes,

  I’ll be where loud anthems will always be ringing

  (But having no voice, I’ll be out of the singing).

  Don’t mourn for me now, don’t grieve for me never,

  For I’m going to do nothing for ever and ever.”

  BEAUTY, CLOTHES, AND THINGS OF THIS WORLD

  MY GRANDMOTHERS were the most correct and elegant women I have ever known. They always wore lipstick and perfume, they carried a handbag, even around the house, and they always dressed for dinner. Although they never broke a sweat, they were also athletic and adventurous. They were both coquettes.

  My mother became famous for creating her own style, but she learned a lot from her mother. She admired her mother’s sense of self-discipline and understatement, but ever since they fought about her wedding dress, she steered my grandmother’s critical comments away from her appearance, and toward the length of my brother’s hair, the social deterioration of fashion in general, and my summer wardrobe in particular.

  On my father’s side, none of my aunts took after their fashionable mother—they preferred to dress like their brothers. So my grandmother took an interest in what her granddaughters were wearing instead. She loved dressing up in the same Lilly Pulitzer shift as my cousin Kathleen, and she always told us how important it was to keep your figure no matter how many children you had. She was proud that she had worn the same dress to meet the King of England in 1939 and to my father’s Inaugural Ball in 1960. She taught us to stand sideways with our elbows out when we were being photographed, so as to show off our waists. She had her work cut out for her, as we spent most of our time in her kitchen, making fudge and eating her special sugar cookies, resulting in waists that no angled elbows could hide.

  Grandma was always happy to see us, and told us how pretty we looked—except once. My cousin Maria and I went shopping one afternoon when we were visiting her in Florida. Maria convinced me that I looked incredibly glamorous in a hospital-green linen bomber jacket with puffy sleeves. I was excited about my new and daring look—until Grandma saw it. She had an unmatched ability to cut to the heart of the matter in the nicest possible way. Her reaction to the green fiasco was “That’s lovely, dear. But in my day, we tried to buy things that suited us.”

  Those words echo through my mind whenever I stand in front of a mirror unsure if I am looking at the New Me or just a wildly unflattering experiment. As girls and young women, we all go through many phases, depending on how we feel about ourselves and our bodies. We try to dress like people we admire, the most popular girls in the class, or celebrities of the moment. It takes time to figure out our own conception of beauty—both outer and inner, and often we return to the images of beauty that we formed in our youth, transformed through our lifetime of experience. Thinking about my grandmothers now, I understand that it was their faith, bravery, curiosity, and humor, as well as their fashionable hats, that made them beautiful.

  I thought this book should include poems that explore women’s complicated relationship with beauty, and our attachments to objects that help us feel and look more attractive. The way we present ourselves to the world, our changing sense of self, the pleasure of feeling pretty, the pain of feeling self-conscious, and the freedom that comes with accepting yourself are all important parts of being a woman.

  Shakespeare’s description of Cleopatra is one of the most extravagant in all of literature. He makes an explicit connection between beauty and power, describing the elaborate pageantry of Cleopatra’s golden barge, her breathtaking loveliness, and the royal authority of her seductive voice. At a time when kings and pharaohs were believed to have divine attributes, and women were powerless and almost nonexistent in the historical record, Cleopatra was truly a wonder of the world.

  In contrast, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem “The Rhodora” contains the observation, “Beauty is its own excuse for being.” Writing about a flower hidden in the woods, Emerson ponders the mystery of nature and the existence of effortless beauty. Other poems examine the efforts women go to in order to be beautiful. In “What Do Women Want?” and “Cosmetics Do No Good,” the poets describe the irresistible appeal of clothes and makeup.

  One of the most surprising poems is “Face Lift” by Sylvia Plath. Written in 1961, well before the explosion of cosmetic surgery, the poem describes the clinical aspects of the procedure. The level of detail is similar to poems in which Plath describes her own shock treatments and hospitalization for mental illness. Interestingly, in the poem she evokes Cleopatra lying naked on her barge, as the patient is wheeled down the hospital corridor into the operating room.

  In “The Catch” by Richard Wilbur and “Delight in Disorder” by Robert Herrick, male poets writing three hundred years apart describe the impact of what women wear. Richard Wilbur describes how mystified he feels watching a woman try on a new dress in the mirror. And in “Patterns,” Amy Lowell explores the ways in which women rely on clothes to distract us from events we cannot control.

  The last word belongs to Marianne Moore, whose complicated poem “Roses Only” ends with the memorable line, “your thorns are the best part of you.”

  Antony and Cleopatra, II, ii, 191–232

  WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

  Enobarbus:

  . . . The barge she sat in, like a burnish’d throne

  Burn’d on the water: the poop was beaten gold;

  Purple the sails, and so perfumed that

  The winds were love-sick with them; the oars were silver,

  Which to the tune of flutes kept stroke, and made

  The water which they beat to follow faster,

  As amorous of their strokes. For her own person,

  It beggar’d all description: she did lie

  In her pavilion—cloth of gold, of tissue—

  O’er-picturing that Venus where we see

  The fancy outwork nature. On each side her,

  Stood pretty dimpled boys, like smiling Cupids,

  With divers-colour’d fans, whose wind did seem

  To glow the delicate cheeks which they did cool,

  And what they undid did.

  Agrippa: O, rare for Antony!

  Enobarbus:

  Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides,

  So many mermaids, tended her i’ the eyes,

  And made their bends adornings. At the helm

  A seeming mermaid steers: the silken tackle

  Swell with the touches of those flower-soft hands,

  That yarely frame the office. From the barge

  A stra
nge invisible perfume hits the sense

  Of the adjacent wharfs. The city cast

  Her people out upon her; and Antony,

  Enthron’d i’ the market-place, did sit alone,

  Whistling to the air; which, but for vacancy,

  Had gone to gaze on Cleopatra too,

  And made a gap in nature.

  Agrippa: Rare Egyptian!

  Enobarbus:

  Upon her landing, Antony sent to her,

  Invited her to supper: she replied,

  It should be better he became her guest,

  Which she entreated: our courteous Antony,

  Whom ne’er the word of ‘No’ woman heard speak,

  Being barber’d ten times o’er, goes to the feast;

  And for his ordinary, pays his heart,

  For what his eyes eat only.

  Agrippa: Royal wench!

  She made great Cæsar lay his sword to bed;

  He plough’d her, and she cropp’d.

  Enobarbus: I saw her once

  Hop forty paces through the public street,

  And having lost her breath, she spoke, and panted,

  That she did make defect perfection,

  And, breathless, power breathe forth.

  What Do Women Want?

  KIM ADDONIZIO

  I want a red dress.

  I want it flimsy and cheap,

  I want it too tight, I want to wear it

  until someone tears it off me.

  I want it sleeveless and backless,

  this dress, so no one has to guess

  what’s underneath. I want to walk down

  the street past Thrifty’s and the hardware store

  with all those keys glittering in the window,

  past Mr. and Mrs. Wong selling day-old

  donuts in their café, past the Guerra brothers

  slinging pigs from the truck and onto the dolly,

  hoisting the slick snouts over their shoulders.

  I want to walk like I’m the only

  woman on earth and I can have my pick.

  I want that red dress bad.