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The Difficulties of Subject Matter in Modern Poetry

Leah Dodd

Adrienne Rich, Eavan Boland, Carol Ann Duffy and Sylvia Plath are poets whose poems often include difficult or challenging material. The nature of these difficulties is typically the subject matter presented. The difficulties that surround and grow from being a woman, in particular things like rape and social injustice, are issues that are often difficult to read or grasp in poetry. These poets unapologetically explore difficult, yet necessary subjects, but in some cases their chosen subject matter is problematic. Adrienne Rich’s poetry, in particular her later poems, contains subject matter that is often difficult. She writes of the challenges that women face, and openly discusses things like rape in her poems. The poems “Rape”, “Frame” and “Women” are especially difficult poems to read for their challenging subject matter. The difficulty of Rich’s poems has provoked discussion around their poetic merit; Robert Boyers, for example, does not care for such subject matter: “It is customary today to applaud…writers…for their frankness, and surely we do not need to be reminded of the degree to which frankness has become a salable commodity” (“On Adrienne Rich: Intelligence and Will” 147). The frankness that Boyers seems so offended by in Rich’s poems is not apparent in “Rape” (Rich 42). The poem is instead thought-provoking and purely implicit – the subject matter is difficult, but there is no explicit depiction of rape, or anything that may be considered frank. The difficulties of this poem are intensified by what is not said – the essence of the poem is rape and the pain and destruction followed by it, but what makes the poem challenging to read is its clarity that does not rely on overt description. Even if it weren’t titled “Rape”, the poem would remain difficult due to its imagery and subject matter that is universally painful. The poem is enigmatic and experiential rather than explicit, and the rape that is discussed is not simply a recount of rape but a commentary on the victim’s ongoing trauma; her lack of a safe space

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and somebody to confide in. For the victim, and many other victims that are not in the poem, she must entrust a male-dominated world that appears just as terrifying as her attacker. The poem is difficult, as the terrifying and patriarchal world of the poem is simply a reflection of the world outside of the poem. The victim is raped and raped again (in the sense of something being taken involuntarily) of her dignity and her personal story, which becomes pleasurable to the cop as he revels in her “hysteria”. Rich is not discussing rape to be poetic or contemporary, or to demand praise for a flowery, beautiful poem. She is writing what needs to be said; and doing so without pretention. The subject matter of “Rape” is difficult as not only is it weighted enough to be a challenging read without explicit depiction, but, although written in 1972, it is directly applicable to how rape is often dealt with in the world today. Generally, the difficulty with Rich’s poem “Women” springs from the potential readings that provoke (ultimately needed) discussions about the damage that women have suffered (Rich 40). The subject matter evokes visceral, natural images that are ambiguous enough to either pose difficulties or support an interpretation, depending on the way they are received. A potential reading might see the black obsidian on which the sisters sit as a representation of men; damaging, inanimate objects, albeit strong and beautiful. The hopeful ending could play into this reading, as the are physically above the obsidian. Ambiguity lends itself to the difficulties of this reading, however, as the poem is not explicitly about men – it is about women, its namesake. Another difficulty is the nature of black obsidian itself –a protector crystal which allegedly enhances truth, mirroring the soul of whoever possesses it, and absorbing their negative emotions. The dark-red crust in the last stanza could again pose difficulties, depending on the way that it is read. The crust could be representative of the irreparable damage done to women, or perhaps, conversely, the unrelenting force of their womanly power. The latter interpretation, if applied to menstrual blood, could summon difficulties for more conservative readers. Perhaps Robert Boyers found offence in a similar

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reading, as he wrote that “[difficult areas of Rich’s poems are not] serious expressions of her intelligence but reflections of a will to be contemporary, to please those who are nothing but contemporary, and who therefore can have little sense of the proper gravity of the poetic act” (144). Rich’s “Frame” may be contemporary to the time it was written, and sadly remains so (43). The poem’s difficulties surround the subject matter of police brutality, civil rights, and racial discrimination; again, challenging areas, yet ones that need to be discussed. Difficulties may arise as to Rich’s place here, as she is white, and has probably not experienced these issues. However, the speaker in the poem is the witness, rather than the victim. Rich addresses this with poetic gravity. Her whiteness is present (“What I am telling you/is told by a white woman who they will say/was never there. I say I am there”) but only at the end of the poem, when the victim’s silence must be resisted, and the event must remain present. The ending note poses difficulty, as the speaker is aware that being white will help bring immediacy to the account. This self-awareness positions a challenging mode of thinking, as the speaker’s point of view is unclear. Boyers wrote that “…one is not supposed to confuse the content of poems with their specific value as poems” as he was confused by the content of Rich’s poems, and thought their value to be lessened (144). However, Rich’s poems are inherently valuable not only to the world of poetry but to the world itself, for their difficult subject matter is necessary, and is presented with an unrefined yet elegant manner. Eavan Boland, a poet who made a space for herself and feminism in the literary worlds of Britain/Ireland, has written poems that may be considered difficult for their subject matter, often in an understated mode. Sarah Maguire, when writing on Eavan Boland’s concerns with women and poetry in “Dilemmas and Developments: Eavan Boland ReExamined”, wrote that “what worries Boland is that…women poets will be tempted to invest their banal routines with portentous emotional fervour, leading to a failure of authenticity” (60). Here, the issue of traditionally womanly experiences such as housework are discussed

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as being excluded from typical poetic experiences. Boland herself, however, has given portentous emotional fervour to banal routines in poetry, yet her authenticity is retained. An example of this is “The Achill Woman” (Boland 66). The subject matter of the poem may be described as banal, or domestic, yet it is the emotional fervour behind the banality that drives the poem and gives it difficulty. The role of women in history, and more-so the role of women in poverty is to serve and play a domestic role. In “The Achill Woman”, the speaker, staying in a cottage, watches a lady bring her water. She is hardworking and perhaps elderly, and the speaker retrospectively realises that her duties have been shaped by history and its poverty. The poem’s speaker has obvious flaws; at the time she was oblivious, both to the omnipresence of poverty in her present day environment, and its place in history that has moulded the present. The speaker is too preoccupied with the beauty of the Silver Age Court poetry in her university texts that she fails to comprehend and realise the omnipresence of poverty (“the harmonies of servitude/the grace music gives to flattery/and language borrows from ambition”). Boland is self-aware both as speaker and as poet in this poem; a characteristic that may be interpreted with difficulty. If the speaker here is only now realising her obliviousness then perhaps we, as readers, are unknowingly of the same oblivion. Here, Boland is discussing the destitution behind beauty; the omnipresence of poverty and its timelessness, and furthermore, her later realisation of its issues. Maguire writes that “[Boland is] right that ‘appropriate’ subject matter in poetry is limited…certain experiences…are difficult to render…But poetic development and upheaval has always extended the boundaries of subject matter” (61). In “The Achill Woman”, subject matter is what renders the speaker’s experience so thoughtfully, even though it is not stark or gruesome. The subject matter here poses the difficulties not because it is emotionally challenging in its depiction, but because it describes an omnipresent force that is better rendered in images, rather than words.

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Carol Ann Duffy has written some poems that revolve around difficult subject matter. Maguire wrote that “…if we don’t accept that women are peculiarly disadvantaged as poets, then the only other way to account for male poetic pre-eminence is that they’re simply superior beings” (64). Duffy wrote The World’s Wife – a series of poems that insert the women counterparts into many male-centric historical and mythological events. “Eurydice”, for example, is a poem written from Eurydice’s perspective as Orpheus attempts to revive her from death (Duffy 58). The poem is difficult because of its irony: at first, the poem’s seemingly cynical tone is humorous and witty, but its potential readings may be interpreted otherwise. Eurydice is faced with a choice: stay in the underworld, dead, or be revived by Orpheus, her pompous husband. If choosing death, Eurydice is ultimately indicating that the underworld, a typically bleak place, is preferable to a life with Orpheus. If choosing life, Eurydice allows herself to be revived by a patriarchal figure, and sees life with him as a sort of inner death where she will be forever objectified (“Eurydice, Orpheus’ wife –/to be trapped in his images, metaphors, similes,”). And so, Eurydice chooses to stay dead; a decision that could be perceived as a metaphor for the hopelessness of women, that there is only one choice between death or submitting to the male-dominated world. Or, at the least, the poem may be interpreted as a statement to the patriarchy; a message of free will and refusal to be objectified, trapped, and reduced down to poems; things to be written about. The difficulty with this poem lies in the ways it can be interpreted. The former interpretation is extreme, but the space is there for “Eurydice” to be read with difficulty; as a refusal to try and shift the dominating forces of the world and instead choose death, although that would detract from the reason for the poem’s existence in the first place. At worst, the subject matter could comment on the impossibility of a feminist world, but at best, it remains a powerful reflection on feminism and power.

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The most known and widely discussed difficulties in Sylvia Plath’s poetry are both her use of Holocaust imagery and subject matter, and her biographical context. Plath’s poems “Lady Lazarus” and “Daddy” are particularly dense with Holocaust subject matter, which raises a plethora of issues, namely Plath’s lack of cultural ties to the Holocaust (excluding her German heritage), and the interpretations of the imagery in her poems as a means of comparison to her own suffering (“A number of critics view Plath’s use of holocaust imagery as a means by which she enlarges her own emotions and sensationalizes her own biography.” Sanazaro, Leonard. “The Transfiguring Self: Sylvia Plath, A Reconsideration” 67). In “Daddy”, the subject matter is largely comprised of German and Holocaust images, such as “A man in black with a Meinkampf look” and “Not God but a swastika/So black no sky could squeak through” (Plath 48). A comparison may be made here between Plath’s relationship with her father to that of a Jew and a Nazi, respectively, or as a wider reading akin to that of Al Strangeways in “‘The Boot in the Face’: The Problem of the Holocaust in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath”: “freedom, for the archetypal ‘feminine’ figure in ‘Daddy,’ is freedom from the authoritarian father figure” (372-373). As for “Lady Lazarus”, subject matter such as “a Nazi lampshade”, “Jew linen”, and “Herr Doktor” is employed to create an intentionally stark, brutal atmosphere (Plath 8). The problems that arise here are not only cultural, but biographical. If Plath is, as critically noted, using the Holocaust as a metaphor for her own suffering, then question of which subject matter is acceptable to use in poetry is raised. Strangeways comments on this, remarking that “…once the Holocaust and Jewish victims become mythical metaphors for suffering, it is easy to extend such metaphoric treatment into the very anti-Semitic stereotyping that resulted in the Holocaust itself” (376). But, as he goes on to note, what must be taken into consideration is the efficacy of Plath’s poems, and the way she confronts the problem of metaphorising the Holocaust (376). The discussion of Plath’s Holocaust imagery and her place to use it is widely contested, yet the poems are still

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often regarded as high forms of art in their own right: “to view these works as exhibitionist and self-pitying is to obscure and even ignore both their artistic complexity and their rich theological significance” (Sanazaro 68). Typically, it is not advisable to compare one’s pain to somebody else’s, let alone that of the Holocaust victims. Plath’s biography here interrupts her poetry with its comparison to Holocaust subject matter, but generally interferes and overshadows her later work due to her death (“unfortunately [Plath’s] suicide on February 11, 1963, has come to overshadow the meaning of much of the late poetry and its vital significance” Sanazaro 74). In poems such as “Lady Lazarus” and “Edge”, where death is so readily discussed and achieved in multiplicity, Plath’s biographical context largely interferes with the poem’s complexity as a poem, as opposed to an insight into the mind of a tortured artist. This and the use of Holocaust imagery are major difficulties in these later poems; a notable difficulty when reading poems like “Edge”, where lines such as “Her dead/Body wears the smile of accomplishment” so closely intertwine with Plath’s biographical context. At surface level, the main difficulty is separating the poem from the context of what happened after. Some works of modern poets Adrienne Rich, Eavan Boland, Carol Ann Duffy and Sylvia Plath are often considered difficult for their subject matter. For Rich, the subject matter is challenging for its depictions of the damage that women suffer. Her poems discuss violence and rape, and further their difficulties when considering their relevance to life today, even though they were written decades earlier. Boland and Duffy’s poems possess more nuanced difficulties – ones that reside underneath the subject matter, and become challenging with different interpretations or more contemplated thought. Plath’s poems are largely difficult for their incorporation of Holocaust subject matter and its comparisons/interferences with her own biographical context, which glazes over her poems and makes them difficult to

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read as singular entities. Although the subject matter of these poets may be considered difficult, their poems, and their difficulties, only further their quality.

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Works Cited

Boland, Eavan. “The Achill Woman”. Rpt. in ENGL231 Modern Poetry Course Reader, comp. Harry Ricketts. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington, 2017. Pp. 66. Print. Boyers, Robert. “On Adrienne Rich: Intelligence and Will”. Salmagundi, No. 22/23, Contemporary Poetry in America (Spring-Summer 1973), pp. 132-148. Skidmore College. Accessed 08-06-2017, JSTOR. Duffy, Carol Ann. The World’s Wife. Picador, 1999. Print. Maguire, Sarah. “Dilemmas and Developments: Eavan Boland Re-Examined”. Feminist Review, No. 62, Contemporary Women Poets (Summer, 1999), pp. 58-66. Palgrave Macmillan Journals. Accessed 08-06-2017, JSTOR. Plath, Sylvia. Ariel. Faber Modern Classics, 2015. Print. Rich, Adrienne. “Women”. Rpt. in ENGL231 Modern Poetry Course Reader, comp. Harry Ricketts. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington, 2017. Pp. 40. Print. Rich, Adrienne. “Rape”. Rpt. in ENGL231 Modern Poetry Course Reader, comp. Harry Ricketts. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington, 2017. Pp. 42. Print. Rich, Adrienne. “Frame”. Rpt. in ENGL231 Modern Poetry Course Reader, comp. Harry Ricketts. Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington, 2017. Pp. 43. Print. Rodriguez, Laura Ma Lojo. “Female Iconography and Subjectivity in Eavan Boland’s ‘In Her Own Image’”. Atlantis, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Junio 2006), pp. 89-100. ADEAN: Asociacion Española de estudios anglo-americanos. Accessed 08-06-2017, JSTOR. Sanazaro, Leonard. “The Transfiguring Self: Sylvia Plath, A Reconsideration”. The Centennial Review, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Winter 1983), pp. 62-74. Michigan State University Press. Accessed 08-06-2017, JSTOR.

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Strangeways, Al. “‘The Boot in the Face’: The Problem of the Holocaust in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath”. Contemporary Literature, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 370-390. University of Wisconsin Press. Accessed 08-06-2017, JSTOR.

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SYLVIA PLATH Daddy You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo. Daddy, I have had to kill you. You died before I had time—— Marble-heavy, a bag full of God, Ghastly statue with one gray toe Big as a Frisco seal And a head in the freakish Atlantic Where it pours bean green over blue In the waters off beautiful Nauset. I used to pray to recover you. Ach, du. In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars. But the name of the town is common. My Polack friend Says there are a dozen or two. So I never could tell where you Put your foot, your root, I never could talk to you. The tongue stuck in my jaw. It stuck in a barb wire snare. Ich, ich, ich, ich, I could hardly speak. I thought every German was you. And the language obscene An engine, an engine Chuffing me off like a Jew. A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen. I began to talk like a Jew. I think I may well be a Jew. The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna Are not very pure or true. With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack I may be a bit of a Jew.

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I have always been scared of you, With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo. And your neat mustache And your Aryan eye, bright blue. Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You—— Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you. You stand at the blackboard, daddy, In the picture I have of you, A cleft in your chin instead of your foot But no less a devil for that, no not Any less the black man who Bit my pretty red heart in two. I was ten when they buried you. At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. But they pulled me out of the sack, And they stuck me together with glue. And then I knew what to do. I made a model of you, A man in black with a Meinkampf look And a love of the rack and the screw. And I said I do, I do. So daddy, I’m finally through. The black telephone’s off at the root, The voices just can’t worm through. If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two—— The vampire who said he was you And drank my blood for a year, Seven years, if you want to know. Daddy, you can lie back now. There’s a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.

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