I really enjoyed the readings that we had for this week. Up until our class discussion earlier today, I had no idea that Sylvia Plath's poem "Metaphors" was about a woman in the middle of her pregnancy. When I first read it, I took the context to be more of a sexual innuendo than a poem about the miracle of life. I enjoyed all of the Clifton poems because I felt that they were very true to life and easy to relate to which is hard to come by sometimes with poetry, I feel.
What I found most interesting about the pieces was how they could potentially offer a male perspective on what it is like to be anatomically a woman,, something that men obviously would not be able to understand. The poems shed light on what can happen during pregnancy, menstruation, or menopause. Obviously, as a women, I can understand and sympathize with the authors. I know what other women are talking about when they talk about those subjects. Men however have no idea because they obviously have no understanding of what it is women go through. That would make it hard for them to show empathy because they are all concepts that men really have no direct understanding of. I started to think that if a man were reading any of these pieces, they might be able to grasp a little bit of what it is like to be a woman and they wouldn't be so quick to judge. I think it could be really eye opening for men in general.
Then, pieces like "wishes for sons" wouldn't fall on deaf ears.
I agree and from experience can tell you that anytime I hear a husband pushing his wife to have a natural birth and avoid drugs I ask him to please crap a watermelon and then tell me if he would like to do it unassisted again. I think these poems are wonderful and supportive of women and our struggles and that any perspective we can lend to our male counterparts is good perspective! Not all men are like the few that I have seen push about things they don't understand but I love how Clinton takes them on!
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