I rail against Ferlinghetti’s premise:
“there is what used to be called the ‘mystery of Woman,’
a romantic concept that endowed her with an illusive inscrutable
allure, both sexual and spiritual.
Then the feminist revolution brought Woman down from her
pedestal.”
What pedestal? I ask.
Raped in back alleys, suffering back-room abortions, or
raising children alone in ghetto apartments?
Where is the allure of a screaming child,
going without enough to eat, warm clothes to wear,
or a man to hold him and to mold his character?
No mystery in the drudgery of waitress
days, spent
Standing on swollen feet, 10, 12 hours at
a stretch.
No allure in broken bones,
swollen lips or blackened eyes
suffered by battered women.
“the feminist revolution,” Lawrence,
freed women from their bondage
of male fantasy, Romantic pedagogy,
and unspoken suffering.
Take your wistfulness, Lawrence,
o’re fantasy lost
And shove It.
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