No more masks! No more mythologies!
Following the birth of a child, Rukeyser was moved to assume a poetic gaze that was more directly affirming of truth and relied less upon the mediation of aesthetic distance which marked her early career. The imagery preceding the sudden emotional cry quoted above is direct in reference to the life-altering event; the birth process splitting her open in her sleep. The declaration of intent to pursue emotional honesty is distinctly person. Nevertheless, the cry assumed a broader life of its own as one of the rallying calls of feminism and the call for women to step out from behind the personae enforced upon them by patriarchal society.
Erasing the failure of weeks with level fingers,
she sleeks the fine hair, combing: 'You'll look fine tomorrow!
You'll surely find something, they can't keep turning you down;
the finest gentleman's not so trim as you!' Smiling, he raises
the adolescent forehead wrinkling ironic now.
Three decades separate the declaration of “No more masks!” from this poem written as the Great Depression was trudging toward its tenth year. The mask that Rukeyser vows to throw off is there. The sister’s optimism that her brother will find work tomorrow and that he can’t keep running in rejection forever is a manifestation of emotional masquerade. Previous to this stanza, however, is another form of mask and myth as the poet creates a narrative of economic condition out of imagery and suggestion rather than honest and forthright statement of fact.
“When I asked, What walks on four legs in the morning,
two at noon, and three in the evening, you answered,
Man You didn’t say anything about woman.”
“When you say Man,” said Oedipus, “you include women
too. Everyone knows that.” She said, “That’s what
you think.”
Around the same time that Rukeyser was making her cry to throw off the shackles of mythologizing in poetry, she was also engaging of the most well-known myths. In this instance, the theme of feminist empowerment is not personal and is direct and must be considered intentional. Today, such a reversal of expectation about gender construction and language would not as surprising, but in the late 1960’s, the ironic twist at the end would have been capable of leaving most male readers—had they bothered to read it—as confounded as Oedipus himself.
: I am not happy. I will be open.
I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet poems.
There has been fear in my life. Sometimes I speculate
On what a tragedy his life was, really.
Form meets function in the unusual construction of this poem in which that construction is an extension of the theme situated in the title. The poem asserts right from that title that it is about the difficulties of communication and then proceeds to make communication of the poem difficult as well. The poem’s seven stanzas are all take the form of this one each first line includes the colon. In addition to seeming like a typo, the colon also interrupts the understanding process because of the inclination to view a colon as a symbol of separating speaker, leading to the expectation that the poem is a dialogue in which each insertion of a colon represents a change in character. And yet, the same character seems to be speaking in a monologue. The spacing between sentences imply stoppage in speech, indicating a silent pause for processing thoughts before continuing. And yet, the connection between the sentences separated by spaces seem too disconnected to imply such a gathering of thoughts.
