I've been surfing tha net but it just gives me info on her life:o(

I have to select a poem which expresses tha love of a woman to a man

Here's one by the late Judith Wright, of Australia. It's copyright, but has so often been anthologised and memorised, that I trust her estate won't sue on account of it being reproduced it in a good cause here. Buy her books of poems!

Woman to Man

The eyeless labourer in the night,
the selfless, shapeless seed I hold,
builds for its resurrection day -
silent and swift and deep from sight
forsees the unimagined light.

This is no child with a child's face;
this has no name to name it by;
yet you and I have known it well.
This is our hunter and our chase,
the third who lay in our embrace.

This is the strength that your arm knows,
the arc of flesh that is my breast,
the precise crystals of our eyes.
This is the blood's wild tree that grows
the intricate and folded rose.

This is the maker and the made;
this is the question and reply;
the blind head butting at the dark,
the blaze of light along the blade.
Oh hold me, for I am afraid.



Post Edited (06-18-04 18:03)

THE SHIPFITTER'S WIFE

I loved him most
when he came home from work,
his fingers still curled from fitting pipe,
his denim shirt ringed with sweat
and smelling of salt, the drying weeds
of the ocean. I would go to him where he sat
on the edge of the bed, his forehead
anointed with grease, his cracked hands
jammed between his thighs, and unlace
the steel-toed boots, stroke his ankles,
his calves, the pads and bones of his feet.
Then I'd open his clothes and take
the whole day inside me-- the ship's
gray sides, the miles of copper pipe,
the voice of the foreman clanging
off the hull's silver ribs, spark of lead
kissing metal, the clamp, the winch,
the white fire of the torch, the whistle
and the long drive home.
--Dorianne Laux

thanx but i need poems by Joanna Baillie because she is from the romantic period : (

Lan-Anne, what do you mean by 'N E' poems?

Lan-Anne,

Just because Joanna Baillie lived in the ‘Romantic’ period doesn’t mean that she wrote poems expressing the love of a woman for a man.

From the description of her life and work at [www.litencyc.com] , and from reading her poems named below, it doesn't sound likely.

I haven’t done so, but it appears you can read all the poems she published as ‘Fugitive Verses’ at
[www.lib.ucdavis.edu]

Some other poems of hers available on the Internet are:

‘The Outlaw’s Song’
[www.bibliomania.com]

‘Maid of Llanwellyn’
[ingeb.org]

‘Night Scenes of Other Times’
[www.english.upenn.edu]

‘Wake Lady’
[www.womenshistory.about.com]

If you want to search further, you will probably have to go to some big library, or find her books in an antique book store.

Ian



Post Edited (06-18-04 19:14)

when I say N E its just short for saying any....i can't find any love poems by her so i guess your right. For my assignment i needed to find a poem by a women from the romantic period and it had to be how she feels towards another man or woman in terms of love

Maybe you can find something at
[www.nottingham.ac.uk]
which has lots of links to the works of women romantic-era writers, arranged alphabetically.

Under the Joanna Baillie heading, there's the text of an anthology of poems collected by her, which includes some of her own poems (see under 'The Editor' in the contents list at the end of it), but the only one that might be classed as a love poem is this one apparently about burning old love letters from a love gone cold:

ON BURNING A PACKET OF LETTERS RECEIVED FROM A FRIEND AT AN EARLY PERIOD OF LIFE, WHOSE CORRESPONDENCE HAD LAPSED INTO SILENCE, AND WHOSE FRIENDSHIP INTO APATHY.

Cold is the hand that gives thee to the flame,
Sweet source of pleasure in my early years!
But, O ye friends! to me impute no blame,
I mark its quick destruction thro' my tears.

Cold was the hand that at one cast destroy'd
Sweet friendship, which, upon that crackling scroll,
Depicted was; even where, with skill employ'd,
Her pen had traced the kindness of her soul.

Ah! why the proof of former joy preserve!
A present grief 'twere folly to retain;
Years to encrease the change would only serve,
And every change would add severer pain.



Post Edited (06-19-04 10:24)

>when I say N E its just short for saying any

No, it's not. In fact, it takes longer. Why on earth would any rational person type capital N capital E instead of any? Just curious, you understand.

Don't you have text on your mobile, Hugh?



Stephen

I don't know what that means, but I do have a wocket in my pocket sometimes.

and there's a space in there too!

pam

Indeed.

My original failure to read N E as 'any' was partly because of that space, but mainly because of the preceding word. No north east poems?? I now realize 'no' was short for 'know'. A common abbreviation in text messaging, but confusing to anyone not expecting such lingo. Abbreviations are great when you are only allowed a limited number of keystrokes to express a message, but shouldn't be a habit for all short communication, otherwise a message can end up as a mess.



Post Edited (06-22-04 09:11)

True. And seriously, I usually put my moderator hat firmly on my head and normalise ne txt msgs I find.



Stephen

I actually had people believing that RU469 was the name of that "morning after" pill

It seems that it would prevent the need for one.

pam

As mentioned in another thread, if a lie is repeated often enough, people start believing it !

I almost slipped up myself during a pharmaceutical benefits meeting, and I'm the idiot who started it !

I am attending high school. One of my assignment in my English class is to
offer a "close reading" of the poem "A ship fitter's wife". I need to explain and discuss the poem's themes and meaning. I am to analyze the poem and discuss the nature of the voice. Please help me! I beg of you. This is for major marks. I have tried reading the poem several times but I can't quite grasp the meaning. Please help me . This paper is due on the 8th of November 2004. Please help.