Poetry Saturday - August 18, 2012

Dear Readers:

One of my favorite things to do is to read poetry. However, because of the meditative nature in the very process of reading poetry and my hurried existence, I often neglect the delights that this genre offers. One of the blogs that I follow, hecatedemeter, frequently regales its readers with inspiring poems. By presenting one text at a time, poetry seems to become much more accessible. In that spirit, I would like to emulate this lovely idea. Today's poem is from the new textbook, Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings by Susan M. Shaw and Janet Lee, which I will be using in the Introduction to Women's Studies course I will be teaching this fall. I hope this excerpt inspires and sets the standards that I want adhere to this academic year, and perhaps you will enjoy it as well.

Best,

Sylvia

My Heroines

Marge Piercy (2010)

When I think of women heroes,

it's not Joan of Arc or Molly Pitcher

but mothers who quietly say

to their daughters, you can.

Who stand behind attempts

to open doors long bolted shut

to teams or clubs or professions.

I think of women who dress 

'respectably' and march and march

and march again, for the ability 

to choose, for peace, for rights

their own or others. Who form

phone banks, who stuff envelopes

who do the invisible political work.

They do not get their faces on

magazine covers. They don't get fan

mail or receive awards. But without

them, no woman or liberal man

would ever be elected, no law

would be passed or changed. We

Would be stuck in sexist mud.

It's the receptionist in the clinic,

the escorts to frightened women,

the volunteers at no kill shelters,

women sorting bottles at the dump,

women holding signs in the rain,

women who take calls of the abused,

of rape victims, night after night.

It's the woman at her computer 

or desk when the family's asleep

writing letters, organizing friends.

Big changes turns on small pushes.

Heroes and heroines climb into

history books, but it's such women

who actually write our future.

Excerpted from Shaw, Susan M, and Janet Lee. Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print. 40.