[Turner Cassity]

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.

[Catherine Chandler]

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.

[A. E. Stallings]

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.

[Tim Murphy]

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.

[Janet Kenny]

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

[Elle Bruno]

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

[David Anthony]

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

[Rose Kelleher]

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.

[R. Nemo Hill]

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

[Janice D. Soderling]

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.