Poetry Essay
12 March 2009
True to Life
Being an adult in real life is nothing like it appears to be in the movies. In real life you have to go to work…everyday…no matter what. Husbands and wives fight, and no one insists the other move out, or sleep on the couch. When you’re at work you can’t call your best friend and tell her all about the newest crisis going on in your life…you actually have things that demand your attention. The reality of being an adult is paying bills, making huge financial decisions, and getting so wrapped up in work that even thought you’re at home in bed, you’re still thinking about work. You never see these things in movies. Hollywood isn’t the only entity that idealizes the reality of life; books, music, and even poetry are to be blamed. All genres of human entertainment put the rose-colored-glasses on our faces. Two poems that truthfully tell-it-like-it-is are “The Secretary Chant” by Marge Piercy and “True Love” by Judith Viorst. These two poems illustrate what life is like when work takes over and what every day in an average happy marriage is really like.
In “The Secretary Chant,” Marge Piercy cleverly makes a comparison between a woman’s body and the equipment of her job that have taken over her life. The subject of the poem is a woman lost in her work. She is letting her job become her life. She is a secretary who spends her day between files, supplies and the Xerox machine. As the reader you can almost feel what it is like to be this woman, especially anyone who has ever worked in a corporate office setting.
Piercy compares the woman’s body to the required tools of her job, “My hips are a desk/from my ears hang chains of paper clips/rubber bands form my hair” (1-4). When the secretary is at work you get the feeling that she is attached to her desk. Her desk is the location where she spends at least eight hours a day. This comparison brings to mind the old adage “attached at the hip,” meaning that the secretary is never too far from her desk. The image that the paper clips and rubber bands have become her hair and jewelry help the reader to picture the secretary as she appears through out her work day. She uses a rubber band to pull her hair back in to a pony tale, and she’s so busy with her work that she doesn’t realize she’s probably got a paper clip, or a used staple stuck to her, like jewelry.
When the secretary states that “My head is a badly organized file…a switchboard where crossed lines crackle” (8-10) these comparisons are used to represent that she is enveloped by her work. In an office a badly organized file would be cause for panic and distress to anyone who needed to access the information inside it. If phone calls don’t get to where they need to be, or don’t come through clearly, trouble and anger are bound to arise. The corporate world is a circus of information flying from one person to another, conference calls, and meeting.
Piercy gives no hint as to what this woman experiences outside her employment, because during the hours that this secretary is at work, there is nothing else, nothing outside the walls of her workplace confinement. What we know is that the secretary feels she is no longer a person, she’s a machine. She reflects, “File me under W/ for I wonce/ was/ a woman” (21-24). The reader gets a sense of the loneliness and despair this woman feels as she realizes that she has sacrificed her life for her career.
Conversely in the poem “True Love,” writer Judith Viorst presents her vision of a working wife, who because of the support of her husband balances it all; the house, the kids, and being a wife. Viorst’s voice of the poem guides the reader on a ride through the tunnel called marriage and shows that there is light on the other side. She draws the reader in to the life of this woman by providing humorous examples that nearly every woman in American can understand. “It is true love because… I do not resent watching the Green Bay Packers/Even though I am philosophically opposed to football” (1, 6-7). Most women who are wives would tell you that watching football, or baseball, or basketball, was not a very large part of their lives before they got married. After they are married they learned the rules of the game (or at least to feign interest) so that it could be something that the two of them could enjoy together. A woman just knows that her premarital hobbies are not something in which her husband is likely to be interested or even act interested.
“Despite cigarette cough, tooth decay, acid indigestion, dandruff, and other features of married life that tend to dampen the fires of passion/We still feel something/We can call/True Love” (31-35). Once you’re married there is no hiding any longer. You see each other first thing in the morning, when you’re hair is a mess, and you still roll over and kiss each other. The illusions of the prince and the princess is gone and what your left with is real life. Viorst makes the reader feel this in these lines. You understand this wife isn’t likely to come home from the grocery store and find candles lit with a rose petal path leading her to the back yard where her husband has strung millions of lights in the trees, and a violin is playing softly in the back ground and dinner is prepared; but you know that there is still love between them. This couple shares a strong bond that the effects of daily life do not destroy, even if for a time they get slightly dampened.
As I stated above both of these poems are what the daily life of a real person is like. My life has gone through the cycles where I totally lost myself in my work like the secretary did. I used to be a retail store manager and I let the job become my life. I never had a day off when I wasn’t driving to my store to check on things or calling them 3 times a day to see what the sales figures were. I would go on vacation, and bring the sales charts with me, and spend time trying to come up with ways that I could motivate my staff and increase sales figures instead of enjoying my time away. My cell phone constantly rang, and of course I felt obligated to answer it, even during dinner, half way across the country when there was nothing I could do about anything that was going on. I let my job interfere with everything in my life, and I became so jaded. When I left that job and I went to work in an office, where I worked 8-5 Monday through Friday, it was like a little light went off in my head. Oh, this is how life is supposed to be. You’re actually supposed to leave work at work when you come home. Sure there were times when I was in the middle of a huge project or billing that I needed to stay late, and I would think about ways to improve my procedures when I was at home, but it didn’t envelope my life. I didn’t get calls about work on the weekends or on vacations, and everything went on with out me when I wasn’t there.
Through out all of my careers and overly-possessive jobs, my husband stood by me. When I would come home from work and tell him how much I hated my job, he encouraged me to find another. When I lost the job that I loved, he encouraged me to change paths and become a student. I know its true love because 6 years ago, my husband, who loves classic cars, went to an auto auction with his friends and bought a car even though he was out of work, and I didn’t freak out. I knew he had a plan, and we would find a way to make it work. And when I have aches and pains he is there rub my shoulders and he climbs 2 flights of stairs get me a heating pad and Tylenol when I have cramps. We live an average life, and we are happy. We fight and when we’re done, we kiss each other and say “I’m sorry, but you’re still an idiot.” It’s real life; it’s our version of true love.
There is no rose colored glasses here, just the grey area we call life. Our world is full of “yes-men,” just waiting for the opportunity to wrap everything up in a nice, neat little package and tie a bow around it. This expectation leaves us thinking that everything really does end up on the perfect side every time. That’s just not reality. Viorst and Piercy dish up two wonderfully fresh helpings of real life and leave their readers thankful for it.
Works Cited
Piercy, Marge. “The Secretary Chant.” Literature: Reading, Reacting, Writing. Compact 6th Edition. Lauire G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. Boston, MA: Thomson Wadsworth, 2007. 775.
Viorst, Judith. “True Love.” PoemHunter.com. 3 March 2009.
The post Poetry Essay 12 March 2009 True to Life Being an adult in appeared first on PapersSpot.