Women in Poetry

    Women play an important role in the literary world, especially in poetry. Often, poems coming from the women have a strong relation to the dissatisfaction faced by the women themselves. Women tend to channel their thoughts in writing forms. As far as our knowledge brings us, we are all well aware that women writers back in the day before 21st Century were often kept in the kitchen. Women were not allowed to voice out their opinions on almost every issues, except sadly only on topics regarding to keeping the house and raising the kids. Back in those days, women only have kitchen talks among themselves. Their opinions were being suppressed, even their husbands won't pay much attention to it. Problems were kept to themselves. On certain cases, it became worse and caused traumatic experience for the women. Human beings are not born to held their feelings, emotions, and needs solely to themselves. That is why, texts from women often portray their problems. Thus, the birth and evolution of feminist criticism.  Writers like Emily Dickinson, Naomi Shihab Nye to name a few had made a huge impact in today's society. Their contribution is unexceptional in educating women to be independent and not afraid to stand tall among the harsh society, dominated by the males.

    Here's an example of poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, All Things Not Considered. This poem is about the innocents who lost their lives to the war. Wars happen because of the political interests among the bourgeoisie. The setting for this poem is in war torn countries, possibly between Isreal and Palestine. I made this assumption based on the particular words found in the poem such as Palestinian, the Jewish Boys, Jewish and Arab women. Houses were bombed and scattered to pieces, and the livings were killed. "A brother and sister were playing with toys when their room exploded." 

    "The Jewish boys killed in the cave were skipping school, having adventure." This sentence gives the picture of a naive, inexperience, jovial and free-spirited boy whose life was taken away swiftly from the unprecedented incident that happened on him. The words terrified and die give an idea of death, pain, and terror. "I spit in the face of this ugly world.", uttered by an Arab father who had buried and wept for his 4-month-old daughter. From this, we literally can feel the pain and agony experienced and underwent by a father. "Huddle under cliffs, eat crumbs and berries." This is exactly the excruciating situation faced by the homeless refugees. They constantly seek for a safe place to accommodate their families and survive only on petty food. "Some picked up guns because guns were given." The aimless and oarless uneducated people will definitely fall into this trap. They were not taught of the right and wrong. They blindly accept whatever that comes in their way. Wars continued, and lives being taken away mercilessly with no chance of speaking for themselves at all. However, "Jewish and Arab women standing silently together.". This strong and solid evident proves that wars are created by the selfish, greedy, and inconsiderate men not women. Wars happens to feed the greed of mankind, and to satisfy their unrealistic ego.

http://rinabeana.com/poemoftheday/index.php/2005/12/04/all-things-not-considered-by-naomi-shihab-nye/