Women's Work
 

Women's Work


Twelve dollars took the box of antique lace
and linens, as the hasty gavel fell.
Later at home unpacking, she can tell
she got a bargain: finely crocheted place
mats, quaint embroidered guest towels, napkins, heaps
of doilies, table runners -- all hand-done.
A woman's work of hours contrived each one
only to wrap and pack away for keeps.
The auctioneer had sketched a few brief clues:
a country homestead, maybe a trousseau
left in a trunk a century ago.
And after all, they're much too good to use.
She smoothes away the wrinkles, lays the best
on top, and stores them in her cedar chest.



Comments:

Competent, but this poem does not really attempt much.

Women’s Work

The title of this beautiful sonnet immediately brought to mind a proverb my grandmother often repeated: “A man may work from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done.” However, the title is not “A Woman’s Work”, but “Women’s Work”. And that makes all the difference in our subsequent understanding.

The very first word, Twelve, was not chosen, I believe, simply to accommodate the meter. “Ten” also would have sufficed. The number twelve, however, is overloaded with symbolism, appearing 189 times in the Bible alone. But it also has cosmic significance, the day being divided into two 12-hour periods, day and night, the year being divided into 12 months. It also refers to the creative capacity, borne out by the handiwork of the woman who fashioned the doilies and other items. The fact that there are “heaps” of them, too, lends an important insight into the life of the woman, of women. The reader may well imagine a variety of likely scenarios as to why the linens were left in a trunk, unused, a century ago. But bottom line is, they are dashed hopes, but more importantly women’s undervalued aspirations and ambitions which, even a century later, still fall to the “hasty gavel”, the ultimate symbol of power and authority.

Much to like here. I would suggest a hyphen after place- so that "mats" doesn't come as a clunky surprise. I like the idea, as suggested, of "twelve dollars" and twelve hours in the day. I think the close works fine as is, there is some suggestion of the woman shutting up something of herself (as there is a suggestion of smoothing her own wrinkles) or her past in the box--the "hope chest". I suppose it isn't done to make revision suggestions at this stage, but I think an even better close, just moving the line right AFTER the tidy couplet, would be, "And after all, they're much too good to use," which seems, in a way, the essential line. It would open this up rather than closing it, at least sonically. But enjoyed this very much.

Alicia's hyphen in a good suggestion. I very much admire the fine attention to detail, but I find the enjambments rather strained and out of keeping with the tone.

Innocent and fresh. The enjambment of 5/6 worries me.
I like the sympathetic view of what was women's often underestimated artistic expression and the associated list of delicate articles that end up in the cedar chest.
Quietly pleasing.
Janet

I think this is very nice, particularly because it has such an interesting attitude toward 'Women's work'.
At first one might think the buyer was looking to grab up an antique find -a collector more interested in feeding her collection than in the actual past. But as the poem progresses, I find the subtle connection between the generations of women -the appreciation of an anonymous art and the decision to pass it down to an upcoming generation -very touching. Then, in looking back over the poem, I can see how the man's gavel, the so-called bargain, the 'too good to use' idea reinforce how little things have changed.
I like revising my expectations of a poem. Well done.
thanks, Dee

I enjoyed this, particularly the circularity of the implication in the close.

What Dee said. And what David said about circularity.

And if some readers miss the point, and dismiss the poem on superficial grounds, well, that's even more circularity.

p.s. I do like the suggestion to move L12 to the end.

This sonnet seems, expanding on it circularity, to be self-referential enough to serve as a sort of subtle ars poetica.

Most of all I am struck by its use of the metaphor of time: not only in terms of the obvious trope of antiquity, of the haunting quality of what has endured in secret, "left in a trunk a century ago"--but the contrast of "the hasty gavel" and the auctioneer's "few brief clues" with "a woman's work of hours", hours exponentially increased by that century ago . There is an unbearable poignancy to me in the relationship between that brief auction and the sea of time upon which it floats, between the abrupt rap of that gavel reverberating like a moment's punctuation mark and the vast parentheses that contain its relative inconsequence. Even the circumstances of those brief clues, the homestead, the trousseau become dwarfed by the continuum of 'the art'.

OK, I'll confess, the trope seems a little timeworn to me. But hey that's the good thing about this bake-off: it demands that one take a closer look at that which one might have only skimmed otherwise due to one's personal habits of vision. Come to think of it, that is one definition of poetry itself.

Nemo

There is much I like about this sonnet, but it has four major stumbling blocks for me.

I hang up on place / mats and not even a hyphen will save it for me.

I hang up on TROUsseau and aGO.

I hang up on the past, then present tenses ("Twelve dollars took", "she can tell")

I hang up on (and this may be all my fault) "hand-done" when I am expecting "hand-made". Possibly it is a regionalism, possibly it is standard and I am an ignorant lout.

I think too that the poet could have squeezed more out of the poem than is here, but that is not fair, because then I am interfering with the poet's plan and using my own.

I'm not sure how to interpret the closure, and that is most certainly my fault. On the one hand, I appreciate that handiwork was a creative outlet for many women who had few ways to express their artistic talents (from lace-making to hair-weaving).

On the other hand, I come from a long line of country women who kept doilies and elaborately embroidered gewgaws and doodads in chests because they were too fine to use. I have seen these items taken up and displayed in a circle of kinswomen and then returned to the cedar chest. These women also kept fine parlors which no one ever entered, except perhaps the preacher man on Christmas Eve or a pale missionary just home from China or Africa. Other rooms, one step down on the scale of fineness, were inhabited only when Company came.

Consequently, I am not the ideal reader for this poem, and probably should not even comment it, but I do so only to make the point that the failure or success of a poem is not always attributable to the poet, but often to the reader.

And that is important to keep in mind as the voters storm to the polls.

I am sorry I am such an unworthy audience.

I tend to agree completely with Turner's terse summary: Competent, but this poem does not really attempt much.

Very often on the Sphere, because of the nature of who we are, and of the workshop process, I think that critiques can read far more depth into a poem than the author intended, give the author credit for layers of meaning that were never intended. I've been the happy recipient of such critiques myself (and sometimes confess, and sometimes don't), and I feel that may have happened here. My gut sense is that more is being seen in the poem than the author had in mind.

I like this a lot. The details make the poem for me. The enjambments in L4-6 really gave me the sense of unpacking and unfolding the pieces. I only wish the closing had a bit more bite.

David R.

What I like best is how visual this sonnet is. It's so easy to picture everything, even the auction which is conveyed with such deft strokes. I like the circularity that others have mentioned. There's an irony in it that's appealing but somehow a little sad: For some reason the linens were never used by their maker, and now that they're antiques they'll never be used by their buyer.
The enjambment on place/mats bothered me a little.
The line with "trousseau" worked fine for me because I always pronounce it as "trousseau". And putting a very slight stress on the word "a" goes with the territory:

a country homestead, maybe a trousseau

The opposition set up between "quaint" and "trousseau" on one hand and fine handwork on the other is significant. Having bought and sold antique handmade textiles on rare occasions, both from the East and Europe/the Americas, I know they have increased considerably in monetary value as women have become more financially independent. Yet in most cases they are still (and were before the recent crash) undervalued compared to other types of handcrafted work. The poem evokes international memories for me and no doubt for others who have seen or owned and pondered the time and reflection spent in the making. Not just memories, but the imagining of history and biography.

One is still torn between making "everyday use" (be sure to read Alice Walker's story with that title if you haven't already) of these items and putting them on display or storing them away in the bottom of a closet. Which I think affirms the importance of the sentiments here expressed. Consider that fragments of textiles thousands of years old have been recovered from sites on most continents. The first link below shows a 7,000-year-old fragment of Egyptian linen.

http://blog.ounodesign.com/2008/10/3...-in-the-world/

http://www.comp-archaeology.org/Jakes_rmizreport.htm

http://www.adireafricantextiles.com/...textintro5.htm

http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~kbruhns/textile.htm

Also, Alicia's suggestion to move L12 to the end is crucial to the power of this poem.

I don't like the place/mats enjambment because it doesn't surprise like a good enjambment (especially in a rhyming poem) often should. The hyphen would help.

The close is wonderful, and I agree with Alicia about moving around those lines.

My gut feeling is that a poem with girly subject matter is more likely to be read superficially and dismissed as trivial than one about [insert manly theme].

Petra said
I thought perhaps I was pronouncing it incorrectly so I asked my AmHer pronouncing dictionary which renders it as TRUE-so. But I looked a little closer after Petra's comment, and see that opinions differ. Although the preferred pronunciation seems to be (ahem :p) my way, I suppose it varies regionally (Louisiana and such areas may come closer to the French pronunciation).

At this pronouncing site both variants are given.

http://www.answers.com/topic/trousseau

So that is just a personal stumbling block that proves again how much our little idiosyncrasies have bearing.

The tense shift is signaled by "later" in line 3; the auction (past tense) precedes the unpacking (present). What's the problem?

This poem has a lot going for it in its specificity of focus & its quiet attention to detail, but that in itself is not enough. Nor is the poem vocal in telling us What It Means. If it were ONLY about an auction and a chest with some doilies, it would not be a good poem; a poem needs some doubleness or resonance which sets it in tune with our own experience. We then as readers can be uncharitable and dismissive, a la Cantor & Cassity; or we can be charitable, assume that the poet MUST have meant more than a trivial object description, and start to think. What we come up with will be half the poem, and half us; but that's how poetry works.

So I say that Nemo is right, this poem is an Ars Poetica, but we won't see it unless we read with the same quiet attention which the poet has turned upon the box she describes; we read the poem as the poet reads the box. The careful craftsmanship of the sonnet parallels the intricate handiwork of the napkins and doilies, the chest is the book in which this sonnet presumably appears, the doubtlessly female author is a sympathetic familiar to the dead embroiderers, and the auction is the accident by which 100 years later these quiet testaments of labor fall into the hands of succeeding generations. The sonnet is about the connection between the writer and the wordless workers before her; in its quiet we feel both sadness, that all of this finery need be hidden away, that individuals can evaporate, leaving only such few and mute traces behind, and consolation, in the affirmation that such connections do happen; we even hear the poet's tentative hope of her own words being stored up in the "chest" (or heart) of a few readers "ages and ages hence."

If I read it like that, it's a poem. If I read it as about one thing and nothing else, it's not. Gee, what should I do?

Chris

Janice,
I loved reading your little essay. Beautiful! Thank you.
Janet

PS: As is Chris's piece above this post.

I like the too-good-to-use theme, with the philosophical questions it implies. I find many of the line breaks rather uncomfortable, but I enjoyed the poem

Understated delivery, and good pacing that keeps drawing one in. Quite accomplished, but I wish the closing couplet wasn't as flat and did a bit more.

Cheers,
...Alex

Ok -- I'm back in town.

Thanks, everyone who took the time to consider & comment on "Women's Work".

A debate having arisen as to what the poem is "about" ...

As Cathy explained very well, the poem is basically "about" woman's relationship to work & to art, and the narrow outlet for self-fulfillment/expression traditionally afforded her by society, and the undervaluation of her work, craft & art. So it's somewhat self-referential, e.g. most obviously, the title itself applies both to the linens and to the poem. The sonnet should be working, then, on several levels. It's a story about a bargain buy at auction -- but if it were only that, I wouldn't have bothered to write it & no one would bother to read it.

Unpacking, slowly looking over those antique pieces of domestic or decorative art bought on the cheap, N thinks about the woman who made them long ago ... and through that evocative experience (which many people have had, see: e.g., Terese's comments), through which that long-dead woman lives on, the textiles speak. They speak of time (of day-to-day domestic life & practical use & mortality), they speak of work & its function in our lives (self-fullfillment/creation of use & value), they speak of craft and of art (and the transcendance of time through art, and the relationship of decorative art to art), they speak of value, and how society values all of these things -- and of a woman's role in relation to it all. And they speak of the narrow scope of expression afforded her, the thwarting of her desire. Maybe they say something about repression, and a closing off of the self. Whatever. These are subjects I have thought a lot about literally all of my life -- in my work as a labor lawyer, in my pass-time as an appraiser of art & antiques, in my writing.

The poem was chosen by Andrew Hudgins as a finalist in the 2006 Nemerov competition and published in Measure (2007).

Cathy -- Thank you for your insightful comments. "A woman's work is never done", indeed. Or, as someone else said, "Disappointment is the lot of woman" (Lucy Stone). Sometimes I think we've come a long way, sometimes I think the French have got a point when they say, "The more things change, the more they stay the same".

Alicia -- Wow. Thanks so much for your suggestions. Everyone seems to want the hyphen, so ... I'd better put it in! Your idea of moving the
12th line to the end is something I'd never thought of & will keep in mind and consider over time -- after all, a poet's work is never done either! But I'd be pretty hesitant to make the change and not (I don't think, though time will tell) because I've gotten stuck in my ways. I was aiming for closure, actually, and to have the couplet bring the poem full circle and shut it like the chest. And I do like those implications you pointed out -- of a woman "shutting up something of herself" etc., as you put it so well, though they might not be blunted by the change ... That 12th line seems to be working as a hinge at the point where the poem is turning full circle heading into the couplet. In a way, the poem hinges on that line. No reason not to ratchet things up a notch now ... but ... something would be lost, too, in turning that line into a "punch" line instead. Psychologically, too, the poem is accurate as written: first the realization of L12, then the locking shut. Anyway, I'll think it over.

Tim -- Thank you, I'm glad you enjoyed the details and yes, I'll add that hyphen.

Janet -- Thank you for reflecting with me on "women's often underestimated artistic expression".

Dee -- Glad you enjoyed the growth of this sonnet. I tried to "exploit" the sonnet form in bringing out my story: the psychological movement/development, the turns, the closing couplet. Thinking about the "anonymous" woman and her painstaking work was the impetus to the poem -- moving beyond the woman-who-shops (and gets a good bargain!) to the melancholy contemplation of real loss.

David Anthony -- I'm very happy that you enjoyed and took time to comment on this poem. Thanks for picking up on the "circularity of the implication in the close".

Nemo -- Thanks for your time & close attention to the time/art tropes in the poem. My hope is that they are more eternal than time-worn and, anyway, are reexamined here in a new way in relation to the decorative/domestic arts and woman's social role.

Janice -- Your comments are appreciated, though I don't agree with them! "Trousseau" (emphasis on the second syllable -- after all, it's a French word) and "hand-done" are in common use here. "Hand-done" is heard very frequently in the auction context pretty much interchangeably with "hand-made", especially when giving or drawing attention to the actual work on a piece. I'm unclear as to what you don't understand about the ending but, as Cathy said, the reader may imagine "a variety of scenarios". Questions are raised, not wholly answered.

Michael -- I'm glad I made it look effortless. They say that's the mark of a pro ...

David Rosenthal -- Thanks for the kind words -- I do hope the details are hard at work in this poem and I did intend to keep the ideas communicated grounded in those narrative details. Maybe the enjambments of L4-6 do reflect the actual act of packing/unpacking -- they were drafted during the act of doing that (unlike the rest of the narrative which was, instead, remembered or recreated or imagined).

Petra -- Thanks. Yes, you've picked up on the sad aspects of the story, which becomes bitter-sweet.

Terese, my fellow-traveler. Your comments ably describe the central event here: the highly evocative handling of an antique (in some cases, ancient) handmade textile and the thrill of connection with that long-ago person who put so much into it.

Kevin -- Thanks. I think I will add that hyphen.

Rose, you wild woman -- what can I say? I was surprised, too -- and taken aback -- by the dismissive comments of a couple of the readers. Could be some irony there ...

Chris -- Much appreciation for your careful reading of this and for your detailed and thoughtful comments. I was, of course, attempting to use the intense "specificity of focus" and "quiet attention to detail" to pierce the veil of the everday and bring on some deeper realizations. "Doubleness" was layered into the poem -- hey, it really wasn't just slapped together by accident, guys. I attempted, too, to use the craft of the sonnet to parallel the craft of the linens and to trace the movement of N's mind as she thinks about the exquisite and time-consuming work of the long-dead woman who made them.

Deborah -- Thanks! Yes, the "too-good-to-use" line is a pivotal one, and it was meant to raise philosophical (as well as practical) questions.

Alex -- Thank you, too, for considering this. I'm happy that you were drawn into it and appreciate your thoughtful comments & suggestions.

Mr. Cassity -- thank you for your time and attention. I'm sorry you didn't appreciate my attempt a bit more, but I guess that's what makes horse racing. And I'm really glad you weren't the first one who ever read it!

So thanks again, all. I'll be considering & reconsidering everyone's comments over time. The poem was a lot of work, but a lot came together for me while unpacking those lovely old linens and ... hey, I got 'em for a song.