Alice Walker 4
The poems "A Woman Is Not A Potted Plant" by Alice Walker and "I Knew A Woman" by Theodore Roethke both speak about women having an aura about them of beauty and magnificence. In "A Woman Is Not A Potted Plant" Walker uses the metaphor of a plant to explain the nature of a real woman. The image of a potted plant is confined to a small ceramic circle and rooted in one place. Potted plants have to be taken care of and cannot exist by themselves. Women are not like that according to Walker. She is saying that women cannot be bound to any certain thing or by anything. They are not in need of someone to take care of them despite what someone may have told them or what some men think. In the second stanza she says that a woman's "leaves" are not "trimmed to the contours of her sex" (lines 8-10). Walker is saying that her physical shape does not have to be any certain way for her to be a beautiful woman. Women are beautiful just because they are women. Walker goes on to use the metaphor of a fence to represent the confining of a woman to her race, country, motherhood, and husband. The inclusion of "her man" in that list is powerful, because women are very often labeled by whom they are marri
In "I Knew A Woman" Roethke explains how much of an impact the type of woman from Walker's poem (strong, confident, and beautiful) had on the narrator. He also uses nature to describe how magnificent she is in line 2 where he says, "when small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them." The narrator, who is presumably Roethke, felt disconnected with her, though, because she was so intimidating. This is apparent where he says that she possesses qualities that only "gods" and "English poets who grew up on Greek" can properly put into words (line 5-6). The latter is obviously a small attempt to make the reader smile at his wittiness, but he says that she is somehow unattainable to him and he does not even have the privilege to speak about her. The narrator is in awe of this woman because she taught him "turn," "counter-turn," and "stand" which are parts of Pindaric ode poetry (line 9). This suggests that she was his muse of some sort. The woman was poetry in motion and it compelled him to write it. The fact that he "nibbled meekly from her proffered hand" states feelings of subordination that a beautiful woman can make come over a man (line 11). Comparing her to a "sickle," though, is a strange comparison (line 12). O
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 830
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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