Feminine Gospels Flashcards
The Long Queen
‘in the graft of their hands’ - power, tough guy vernacular
‘All hail to the Queen’ - sainthood, untouchable, repeated
‘till the room screamed scarlet’ - birth, emotion is transferred, womanhood
The Map Woman
‘bodies fading into the earth like old print on a page’ - disappearance, nothing without their origins
‘When she knelt she felt her father’s house pressing into the bone’ - discomfort, oppressive, harsh sounds, pain
‘stale cake of the castle crumbled up on the hill’ - metaphor, tradition, joy of her town has gone, no longer bright and shiny
‘Deep in the bone old streets tunnelled and burrowed hunting for home’ - inescapable nature of the past, lack of direction and guidance
Beautiful
‘A thousand ships - on every one a thousand men’ - Helen of Troy, mythic, goddess like, power over men
‘kept a little bird inside a cage’ - Princess Diana, not suffering but not free, metaphor, the truth
‘She played with him’ - Cleopatra, emasculating, men are toys, power of women
‘They filmed her famous, filmed her beautiful’ - Marilyn Monroe, fake, only filmed her when she was ideal, women are used for their beauty
‘till she couldn’t die when she died’ - Marilyn Monroe, greed of the public, society does not let women live their lives, they are always scrutinised
The Diet
‘’She starved on, stayed in, stared in’ - monosyllabic, singular, nameless, repetitive, it controls her life
‘lay in the tent of a nostril like a germ’ - she’s everywhere, infectious, like a parasite living off others
The Woman Who Shopped
‘wanted a honeymoon, went on one, looked at the gold of her ring as it flashed in the sun’ - appearance of money before love, monetary motive
‘unopened cartons, overstuffed bags’ - unnecessary, frivolous, excess, global consumerism
‘Her ribs were carpeted red, her lungs glittered’ - anatomical description, she has become consumerism
Work
‘Mother to millions now’ - women’s duty in society, work never ends
‘ripped CDs, burned DVDs’ - violence, wasteful destruction, change, control
Tall
‘She bowed herself into a bar’ - start of supplication, making herself less to fit in
‘She needed a turret’ - like a princess, only thing big enough, warped fairytale
Loud
‘beak the sickening hiss of a thrown spear’ - sibilance, panic, horror, hostile, raw emotion
‘loud, loud, louder, the News’ - women’s anger does nothing, news item above, women ultimately have no power
History
‘She was History’ - pun, away from their domestic image, direct, play on words
The poem goes through history
Sub
‘the blood and soap suds mingled to pink’ - feminine, isolation, separate from the team
‘nursing the precious egg of the ball’ - reproduction, fertility
‘what I think to myself is this:’ - nothing, emptiness, women are voiceless
