The Sisterhood
“A Simple Poem for Virginia Woolf” is an ironic title that is perhaps the definitive statement of this them which permeates throughout the verse of the poet. The speaker commences with the announcement that she had merely intended to write a simple poem about the legendary British author. It does not take many lines, however, or the poem to become a celebration of the sisterhood of women, with a primary focus on women writers. Imagery of bacon grease and frying pans are situated as the metaphors for what being a woman means in the domestic realm and this aspect of the expectation of women is juxtaposed with that of Woolf’s famous work “A Room of My Own” and the novels of Jane Austen as examples of what women can do—and have done—as writers that men have not done as a general rule, but isn’t to say they cannot. The sisterhood of women is intensely focused upon the subset of women who are creative artists, but Wallace also finds kinship with women in all walks of life struggling to juggle two separate but inseparable existences.
#MeToo
Though she died just before the internet even began to take off, Wallace can be considered one of the godmothers of the social media-driven MeToo movement. A selection of Wallace’s verse is directed toward the particularities of being a woman in a patriarchal society where violence is the domestic norm and lack of interest the legal equivalent. “Intervals” introduces Ruth who entered the emergency room with a broken jaw, swollen eyes and stitches over her hear. “Thinking with the Heart” moves this all-too-familiar scene from the hospital to the police station where the cop who accuses women of getting into so much trouble because they cling to the poem’s titular mode of thinking and whose only response to assistance is “charge him or we can’t help you.”
