Rich, Forche and the Political Message

With her poems, I have the sense that Rich is fighting tooth and nail in a battle that has no seeable end. I think this is because she feels that women's struggle to overcome oppression is ongoing and has no clear endpoint. Yet, I find something very pessimistic in these poems that I didn't see quite much in Rich's earlier work. It's as though she doesn't believe the struggle can ever be overcome, yet, at the same time, feels compelled to wage this un-winnable war. I guess I just keep looking for her to reach some kind of acceptance about the fact that it will be a continuous struggle or to recognize the progress that women have made. But Rich really doesn't seem to do either of these things, or at least, only for brief moments. In the poem "Tattered Kaddish" (249-50) Rich "praises" life but always qualifies this with a negative statement. "Twenty-One Love Poems" (143-54) is one of the few places where Rich seems a little more content. In poem VIII she writes: "The woman who cherished / her suffering is dead...I want to go on from here with you / fighting the temptation to make a career of pain" (147). Yet, I don't really get the sense that Rich does go on from here; rather, it seems that her career is very much engrossed in suffering and struggle. I think, in some ways, Rich sees this as a necessary step in clearing a way for women.

While Forche's poems seem to have a sense of despair or bleakness about them, I don't really have the sense of struggle that I do with Rich. Forche, I think, wants us to see what she sees and while this vision is often stark and sad, I think it contains a little more hope (or at least acceptance) than Rich's. Forche doesn't seem angry or to be trying to effect some kind of action--at least not in an immediate sense. Instead, I think she is trying to create an awareness, to make us know and feel the things she shows us. I have the sense that she wants to inform the oblivious, ignorant American.

Perhaps this is a good time to enter into the discussion of vision and image since Forche's poems seem to rely heavily on image. I think Forche wants to create for the reader what she see in El Salvador. She wants the reader to become a witness as she herself is. For Forche, then, visual image is extremely important because she wants to actually place the reader in the scene. Forche doesn't want to merely tell us that things in El Salvador are pretty crappy because this would mean we must take her word for it--we would not experience the devastation ourselves. But, I am probably biased in this view as I tend to like image-based poetry over metered or rhymed poetry (although I realize they are not mutually exclusive). I don't rule out the possibility that meter/rhyme could have a different persuasive effect that I don't readily see.

I see Rich's poems as being less reliant on image. Rich seems to tell us more directly what her argument is while Forche just give us a picture of the situation. Of course, the picture that Forche gives us is not unbiased, as she presents the picture in a way that reveals something specific about the situation. Rich's agenda is, perhaps, only more transparent. Yet, Rich certainly does incorporate image into whatever it is she is telling us and often uses extended metaphors to convey her message.

As to whether or not both poets are truly un-metered, I think it could be argued that Rich and, perhaps, to a greater degree, Forche, have an attention to sound and rhythm that is not unlike meter. Also, I think the way that some of Rich's poems use spacing could be seen as a variation of meter.