women poets

1. WOMEN WRITING
POEMS
Laza saleem

2. The Woman in the
Ordinary
. Marge
Piercy

3. Marge Piercy’s Early Life
• Marge Piercy was born on March 31, 1936. She was
born and grew up in Detroit.
• Piercy's creativity was inspired by her mother's
curiosity and maternal grandmother's storytelling,
her political consciousness was forged by the
repressive social climate and economic disparities
she experienced during her formative years.
• Her family was influenced by the Great Depression.
Along with depression she had several health issues
due to which she turned towards reading and
discovered Simon de Beauvoir and certainly that
helped to inject the strong sense of feminist
outrage in her as a result of which she produced
great feminist works.

4. Marge Piercy’s Early Life
• She graduated from Mackenzie High School
becoming the first member of her family to
receive a college education. While at
Michigan she won Hopwood Awards in poetry
and fiction and became involved in radical
politics. In the University of Michigan, she co-
edited the literary magazine and became a
published writer for the first time. She earned
scholarships and awards, including a
fellowship to Northwestern to pursue her
master’s degree that she earned in 1958.

5. Marge Piercy’s Works
• Marge Piercy began writing poetry and fiction as a
teenager.
• She is now a Social activist, a Feminist and writer of
feministic fiction, poetry, and memoir.
• She is well known for examining women, relationships, and
emotions in new and provocative ways. Piercy's fiction and
poetry is a direct expression of her feminist and leftist
political commitments. In language that is alternately
realistic, didactic, and poetic, Piercy repeatedly draws
attention to the suffering of the socially persecuted—
women, the poor, racial minorities, lesbians—and the
mercenary ethics of their oppressors—the government,
corporations, technocrats, abusive men as well as
repressive gender roles.

6. The Woman In Ordinary
• In this poem Marge Piercy has written about body
image and women.
• She grew up in a time that was hard for women to
really flourish and do what they wished. The
suppression she experienced, had a huge impact on her
poetry.
• Throughout the poem we see that she is writing about
body image. This is a main theme in her poem this is
because how she was treated as a child.
• The other main theme is suppression of women. In her
time, women were seen as inferior to men. Marge
knew that this was very untrue, and that women had
and still have potential to do great things.
Main Theme

7. • The world is always expecting from woman that she
must change her body to be beautiful, basically to
look good for men. In her poem, Marge Piercy
attempts to enlighten the positivity of women who
are natural and unaltered, no matter how they are
perceived by others.
• The poem is about an ordinary women who is not
ordinary at all. Apparently she has ordinary looks
and this is what made her extraordinary.
The Woman In Ordinary
Main Theme

8. The Woman In Ordinary
Main Theme
• Marge Piercy uses many techniques to achieve the
overall message that a beautiful woman is a woman
who has substance and has not been altered by the
overly critical views within society. The perfect,
beautiful woman cannot be described in terms. All
women are beautiful and extraordinary. The societies
having limitation over beauty are actually the societies
that should be looked down upon.
• Piercy sets up a strong basis for beauty in a way that
includes all women. A woman is beautiful when she has
a natural born personality and body, rather than when
she has been manufactured by societies scorn to be
just another shell of the “perfect human being.”

9. The Woman In Ordinary
Language
This poem portrays a woman that is anything but
ordinary. In this poem Marge Piercy has used precise
diction in order to convey a personal image of one’s self
who is in fact not ordinary at all. It starts out by her
referring to woman as a “pudgy downcast girl”.
Referring a woman as “pudgy and downcast girl,” is
distressing because downcast and pudgy seems as she is
made fun of. To downcast is to look down on. She
continues to say, “she effaces herself under ripples of
conversation and debate,” which means a woman
distracts herself from the things she does not like about
herself. Then she used strong imagery to illuminate the
aspects of a woman that are deemed desirable and

10. The Woman In Ordinary
Language
The main use of imagery occurs in the raw description of
a woman, “The woman in the block of ivory soap / has
massive thighs that neigh, / great breasts that blare and
strong arms that trumpet”. The block of soap represents
cleanliness, since it has not been altered by the outside
world. This imagery allows the reader to picture an
ordinary, and unchanged woman with all of her features
preserved in cleanliness and purity. A woman need not
hide herself but instead should embrace her true body
and not alter it. She is beautiful and should never be
afraid to show her body.

11. The Woman In Ordinary
Language
She says she has “massive thighs neigh, great breast that
blare and strong arms,” which represents her strength
and how powerful she is. She is praising her
characteristics. Saying her thighs “neigh,” her breast
“blare,” and her arms “trumpet” all contribute to them
being loud. These things, are roaring to the ears. They
give a strong sound. This includes her uproariously
laughter. As the poem continues, she describes herself
as “the girl who imitates a Christmas card virgin with
glued hands, who fish for herself in other’s eyes.” By
doing so, she gives off the persona that she is still young
and finding herself. She is new at a lot of things and
trying to find her way.

12. The Woman In Ordinary
Language
• Furthermore, she says that she is as “peppery as
curry. A yam of a woman of butter and brass,
compounded of acid and sweet like a pineapple, like
a hand grenade set to explode, like goldenrod ready
to bloom.” By using these descriptive dictions, she is
saying that she has personality. There are many
aspects of her and they are full of life. You never
know what you are going to get with her. She sees
herself as someone that is full of life and
personality. She is ordinary for the world apparently
but the fact is She is not ordinary at all.

13. The Woman In Ordinary
Conclusion
With the great diction the poem tells of a healthy
and lively woman who is pent up inside of a fake shell
ready to show the world true beauty.
Piercy is comparing qualities of true woman to
natural elements. She is emphasizing the natural
beauty of a woman as certain positive images of
nature are used in poem to provide the reader with
an overwhelming sense of earthiness and goodness,
to juxtapose fake and material objects which society
has caused women to become. Using earthy words
such as “peppery as curry” gives the woman a lively
nature.

14. The Woman In Ordinary
Conclusion
This comparison nods to Piercy’s overall concept that
when a woman conforms to society’s standards she is
not as interesting or beautiful as someone who is free
of these constraints and has natural quirks and
personality. She draws connotations of springtime,
which is pleasant and desirable aspects of life. This
allows the reader to see that this natural life
blossoming from a woman and breaking free of the un-
beautiful shell; society, creates a positive change and
that women are beautiful when they are fresh and
new, like a flower bud, not when they are altered from
their original creation.

15. When I was Growing
Up ……………………………..
Nellie Wong.

16. Nellie Wong
Early Life
• Nellie was born in 1934,
• She was the first U.S.-born daughter of Chinese
immigrants.
• Nellie and her six siblings grew up in Oakland’s
Chinatown.
• Most of the Chinese immigrants there worked as
domestics, washing laundry, canning, sewing and
operating small herb and food stores.
• During World War II the Wong family worked in a
Berkeley grocery store. The detention of their Japanese
American neighbours had a profound impact on Nellie
and her developing understanding of racism against
Asian Americans.

17. Nellie Wong
Early Life
• After graduating from high school, Nellie went to
work as a secretary at Bethlehem Steel. In her mid
30s, Nellie returned to study.
• Meeting Radical Women and learning about history
as women, as working people, as people of colour,
as agents of change at San Francisco State in the
early ’70s was central to turning her life around.
• It was during this period of her life that Wong also
began creative writing.

18. Nellie Wong
Works
• Nellie Wong is now a widely published poet.
• In 1977 she published her first collection of poetry,
Dreams in Harrison Railroad Park.
The Death of Long Steam Lady (1986) and
Stolen Moments (1997).
• Her work has appeared in approximately 200
anthologies and publications. Excerpts from two of
her poems have been permanently installed as
public signs on San Francisco Railway. She has also
performed her work widely, including in Cuba and
China.

19. Nellie Wong
Works
• She has also edited books and worked in film.
(Mitsuye &Nellie)
• She is very active in feminist and socialist causes.
• Much of her poetry deal with these causes, as well
as with the Asian-American experience. She often
writes about the struggles and strength of her
family and other Asian Americans who confront
racism, and also exposes the sexism Chinese
American women confront, both from the
mainstream society and the Chinese American
community.

20. When I was Growing Up
I know now that once I longed to be white.
How? You ask.
Let me tell you the ways.
when I was growing up, people told me
I was dark and I believed my own darkness
in the mirror, in my soul, my own narrow vision.
when I was growing up, my sisters with fair
skin got praised
for their beauty and I fell
further, crushed between high walls.

21. When I was Growing Up
when I was growing up, I read magazines
and saw movies, blonde movie stars, white skin,
sensuous lips and to be elevated, to become
a woman, a desirable woman, I began to wear
imaginary pale skin.
when I was growing up, I was proud
of my English, my grammar, my spelling,
fitting into the group of smart children,
smart Chinese children, fitting in,
belonging, getting in line.

22. When I was Growing Up
when I was growing up and went to high school,
I discovered the rich white girls, a few yellow girls,
their imported cotton dresses, their cashmere sweaters,
their curly hair and I thought that I too should have
what these lucky girls had.
when I was growing up, I hungered
for American food, American styles
coded: white and even to me, a child
born of Chinese parents, being Chinese
was feeling foreign, was limiting,
was unAmerican.

23. When I was Growing Up
when I was growing up and a white man wanted
to take me out, I thought I was special,
an exotic gardenia, anxious to fit
the stereotype of an oriental chick
when I was growing up, I felt ashamed
of some yellow men, their small bones,
their frail bodies, their spitting
on the streets, their coughing,
their lying in sunless rooms
shooting themselves in the arms.

24. When I was Growing Up
when I was growing up, people would ask
If I were Filipino, Polynesian, Portuguese.
They named all colors except white, the shell
of my soul but not my rough dark skin.
when I was growing up, I felt dirty.
I thought that god
made white people clean
and no matter how much I bathed,
I could not change, I could not shed
my skin in the gray water.

25. When I was Growing Up
when I was growing up, I swore
I would run away to purple mountains,
houses by the sea with nothing over
my head, with space to breathe,
uncongested with yellow people in an area
called Chinatown, in an area I later
learned was a ghetto, one of many hearts
of Asian America.
I know now that once I longed to be white.
How many more ways? you ask.
Haven't I told you enough?

26. When I was Growing Up
Themes
• This is an autobiographical poem written in 1973.
• This poem examines contemporary, “mainstream”
views of beauty and sexuality and the speaker’s desire
to conform to those standards.
• This poem explores the themes of:
Exoticism,
Orientalism,
Sexuality,
Confession,
Escapism.
• The poem is very simple and have a conversational
tone with the reader.

27. When I was Growing Up
• This poem is about the narrator's own adjustment into
the dominant white culture, and a need to become
something she in fact isn't. It shows how society can
influence your identity, because the narrator wishes to
be white as it is the dominant culture and has
'privileges' with it. It shows how experiences and
interactions with others and society can influence your
identity.
• In this poem, the narrator lives in a society where she
struggles to find her own voice and fit in a cultural
majority. The persona in this poem could have
represented society at the time, a shallow society
persistent on looks, skin colour and beauty and not
focused on the inner beauty of women.

28. When I was Growing Up
• The first section deals with the experiences women
of color have as children and young adults and the
contribution these experiences have in creating
radicals. Nellie Wong’s poem describes her
desperation to be white-skinned. She discusses the
envy she had for her fairer-skinned sisters and her
attempts at assimilating into Western culture.

29. When I was Growing Up
• She tried to prove that she was not foreign, and, in
the process, she almost erased who she was. She
even did not like her own food, but was only hungry
for American food.
when I was growing up, I hungered
for American food, American styles
coded: white and even to me, a child
born of Chinese parents, being Chinese
was feeling foreign, was limiting,
was unAmerican.

30. When I was Growing Up
• The impact of society on the individual is discussed
that how society caused the people to lose their
identity.
• Patterns of imagery appear throughout the poem
Due to the white superiority and lavishness of their
lives , there was no identity of people of colour;
there was no life of the people who were not white.
In the white world there is a loss of personal
identity and there is pressure for everyone to be
the same and leading the same unreal life.

31. When I was Growing Up
• The poem shows that the narrator's life is also
controlled by what is happening around her. In the
poem, when Nellie was growing up, she was
surrounded by ideas forced upon her by society
that it was better to be fair, better to be white and
not yellow better not to wear anything that is un-
American.
• Her life was controlled by what goes on in the world
around her. She wanted to just run away to a place
where she could live freely without any congestion
of white people.

32. When I was Growing Up
• In this poem Wong reflects that how she faced
double suppression even from the white females.
Due to this suppression, Wong develops her desire to
be white, to be normal.
The negative stereotypical representations of Asian-
American women in Western popular culture
denied Nellie Wong the privilege to her identity. The
result of this patriarchal tool made Wong shameful of
her Chinese heritage. She felt ashamed of her own
people. She felt dirty for her darkness.In a society
that celebrates white beauty, she has slowly
learned to hate herself.

33. When I was Growing Up
By idealizing White traits, society elevates White
women, while lowering women of color, like Wong.
Women of color who are fortunate enough to pass
off as White or have more Western traits are more
appealing. This creates a desire to reject one’s
heritage, one’s foreign background. It
systematically white washes foreigners, pressuring
them to adopt Western ideas and behaviors.
However, no matter how much they try, it will
never be enough.

34. When I was Growing Up
Conclusion
• Nellie Wong's poem actually identifies the
invisibilization of racial issues in the second-wave
feminist movement. This poem advocates the
feminisms, feminism for women of colour. Some
feminists argue that we live in a post-
feminist society, that women have achieved
equality, but this poem still speaks great volumes
regarding the ways in which hegemonic femininity
is still perceived and people of various racial, sexual,
religious, class, socio-economic status are portrayed
as in Western popular culture and media.

35. When I was Growing Up
Conclusion
• The last section of the poem,
"I know now that once I longed to be white.
How many more ways? you ask.
Haven't I told you enough?"
Seems like addressing those feminists who think
that they have achieved their mission, that these
are the ways in which women of colour are still
facing male hegemony as well as suppression and a
sense of inferiority from white females.

36. Ironing Their
Clothes ……..
…………………………
x Julia Alvarez

37. Julia Alvarez
Early Life
• Julia Alvarez was born on March 27, 1950, in New
York City.
• She was raised in the Dominican Republic, but had
to leave the country when she was 10 years old; her
family had supported an unsuccessful attempt to
overthrow dictator Rafael Trujillo, and then fled to
Brooklyn, New York. Struggling at first to adapt to
her new home, Alvarez graduated from Middlebury
College in 1971, and went on to earn a master's
degree from Syracuse University in 1975.

38. Julia Alvarez
Works
• Published five novels, a book of essays, four
collections of poetry, four children's books, and two
works of adolescent fiction.
• How the García Girls Lost Their Accents, published
in 1991 is her first novel in which she explored the
cultural divide.
• Her second novel is In the Time of Butterflies,
published in 1994.
• Several more works of fiction have followed,
including Saving the World(2006).

39. Julia Alvarez
Works
• Alvarez has created books for children,
including The Secret Footprints(2000) and Tía Lola
Came to Visit Stay (2001), and a novel for young
adults, Before We Were Free (2002). She also writes
essays and poetry. Her latest volume of poetry, The
Woman I Kept to Myself, was published in 2004.
• The theme of being caught between two cultures
can be found throughout Alvarez's poetry and
fiction work.

40. Ironing Their Clothes
• In the poem, Ironing Their Clothes by Julia Alvarez,
the speaker is portrayed as a young child who
expresses unreturned love towards the family
through ironing their clothes. Despite her effort, the
family members do not respond with the same
amount of love and often her affections are
ignored.
my mother frowned,
a crease down each side of her mouth.
This is no time for love! But here
I could linger over her wrinkled bed jacket,

41. Ironing Their Clothes
• Alvarez initially develops the speaker’s action of
showing love towards her family members
through asserting cheerful metonymy and
imagery associated with the speaker’s detailed
ironing of family’s clothing.
• Alvarez currently desires to support her father by
ironing his shirts. She has ironed it with manners
and she “have made a boy out of that tired old
man”. In the poem, the tired man is her father
and by ironing his clothes she is hoping that she
can be helpful to her father.

42. Ironing Their Clothes
By providing explicit statements that describe the
family member’s harsh and empty response and
forms that do not exhibit detailed descriptions of
how did the members reacted to the speaker’s
kindness concludes that speaker’s way of showing
affection is being ignored. As in these lines ;
Here I could tickle
the underarms of my big sister's petticoat
or secretly pat the backside of her pajamas.

43. Ironing Their Clothes
• Alvarez is showing affection and love to her sister
but her affections are ignored as she warned her
not to muss
her fresh blouses, starched jumpers, and smocks,
Alvarez’s strong joyful tone is described throughout
the poem by her consistent action of showing
affection. Alvarez desires to reflect the truth that
also in actual families, children send unreciprocated
love to the family, however, it becomes easily
ignored due to their busy life.

44. Ironing Their Clothes
• This poem has less to do with clothing and more to
do with the lives of an immigrant family after
recently moving to a new country. The father's
labors are physical and most likely unskilled based
on the way she describes how his work has aged
him.The time she spends with her mother is busy,
yet satisfying. Alvarez cherishes the time she spends
with her. Many newly immigrant families have to
work very hard and there is little downtime. So even
if it is work, she still can enjoy the time she has with
her mother.

45. Ironing Their Clothes
• This poem is about family. About how a family
works together to stay together. And the fond
memories the author has about that time in her life.
• The chores she does, the washing, drying and
ironing to be specific, turn her into this keeper of
the family almost. Since Alvarez has defined her
family through the clothing metaphors, the act of
washing and pressing the clothing becomes one of
cleaning up and straightening out the family
members themselves.

46. Fearful Woman
……...……………………
Carolyn Kizer

47. Carolyn Kizer
Early Life
• Carolyn Kizer was born in Spokane, Washington on
(1925-2014)
• She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College, studied at
Columbia University as a fellow of the Chinese
government and, in 1946, became a graduate fellow at
the University of Washington.
• In 1948 she married Stimson Bullitt, by whom she had
three children; they divorced in 1954, and that same
year she began studying poetry.
• She served in Pakistan as literary specialist for the U.S.
State Department (1964–65)

48. Carolyn Kizer
Early Life
• Carolyn Kizer was born in Spokane, Washington on
(1925-2014)
• She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College,
studied at Columbia University as a fellow of the
Chinese government and, in 1946, became a
graduate fellow at the University of Washington.
• In 1948 she married Stimson Bullitt, by whom she
had three children; they divorced in 1954, and that
same year she began studying poetry.
• She served in Pakistan as literary specialist for the
U.S. State Department (1964–65)

49. Carolyn Kizer
Works
• In 1959, with two colleagues, she founded the
quarterly Poetry Northwest. Her first collection of
poems,
 The Grateful Garden, appeared in 1961.
• She received the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for Yin: New
Poems.
• Kizer’s published collections included
Knock upon Silence (1965),
Midnight Was My Cry (1971),
 Mermaids in the Basement: Poems for Women (1984),
The Nearness of You (1986),
and Harping On: Poems 1985–1995 (1996).

50. Fearful Woman
• The poem Fearful Woman is written as a
succession of couplets. In this poem each pair of
lines have its separate point.
• The rhyme and rhythm are beautifully giving the
poem a pleasing tone.
• In the poem, Kizer has used several poetic
techniques. These techniques help the reader to
get a deeper understanding of the poem and
make the reader think carefully of what message
she is trying to convey.

51. Fearful Woman
• Kizer uses rhyme,
‘But let’s go back to the
beginning
when sinners didn’t know that they were
sinning.’
to produce sounds appealing to the readers’
senses and make them focus on the message.
Rhyme is used with this phrase to make a
connection between the two lines and bring
focus to the overall meaning, where she wants to
take the readers to the incident of Adam and
Eve.

52. Fearful Woman
. In this poem, Kizer uses rhythm to describe the
thoughts that some men have of women,
‘An educated woman is a danger.
Lock up your mate! Keep a submissive stranger.’
These beliefs that educated women are a danger to
society are offensive. Also, the fact that men thought
they must have an obedient stranger with them,
enforces how they would not be able to live without
them. The rhythm in this phrase highlights the contrast
between who women are and that even though men
might not believe that ‘educated’ women should have
the same rights as them, men would not be able to do
the same things they do in life without them, they want
to keep them but locked.

53. Fearful Woman
• Imagery is used in this poem,
‘Like Darby’s Joan, content with church and Kinder,
not like that sainted Joan, burnt to a cinder’
to outline the difference between Darby’s Joan as a
kind person to the sainted Joan as an unkind
person. The imagery is used to give a picture to the
reader of these differences and to make them
understand how different they are.

54. Fearful Woman
• Kizer takes allusions from Greek mythology and
Christian literature. The allusion of Greek mythology
can be seen from the first until the sixth stanza.
In Greek mythology, Helen of Troy, also known as
Helen of Spartan was the daughter of Zeus and Leda,
she was considered to be the most beautiful woman in
the world. She was wanted by many Kings in Greece
that caused the Trojan War. The society blamed Helen
to cause the war. This allusion of the Trojan War
demonstrated that the society was looking for
someone responsible, they chose an easier target in
the society: the woman.

55. Fearful Woman
• The seventh until tenth stanzas are using the allusion of
Adam and Eve where the blame was also fall upon
woman. This allusion of Adam and Eve demonstrate
that woman was weak and easy to affected with sweet
words, woman thought to be the cause of the first sin
and blamed for making Adam (men) sinning.
• In ninth stanza, it illustrated the desire of Eve about
knowledge and then she is punished of her own
curiosity.
• In last four stanzas, it is illustrated that Darby's Joan
was submissive, she played the role that was given to
her by declaration of her sex, but Joan of Arc did not
play that role and therefore was burned.

56. Fearful Woman
• she doesn't end on a negative note, but an
empowering one. She uses ‘if’ instead of
‘when’ in
And if we do -I say it without animus-
It's not from you
we learned to be magnanimous.

57. Conclusion
• Overall, Kizer has used alludes to different instance of
female inferiority, due to man’s wrong ways.
• Several poetic techniques have helped to depict to the
reader the overall message being conveyed in this
poem and provide a deeper understanding of how
women were treated and thought of by some men.
• Kizer has demonstrated when women remains fearful,
men will continue to abuse their power, through
imagery and allusions. However, if women embrace
their magnanimous selves, they can get on top then
women can finally be in control of their own lives and
end the suffering.