Comparison/Contrast Paper
Poems can be similar in many ways, yet different enough to keep you wanting to read more. Poetry can be easy, or difficult to understand. In poetry there is many different varieties and emotions; for example, there is love, family, hate, and yes even death. Whichever poem you choose to read, may have different meaning from one reader to the next. This paper is to show how the two poems of Linda Pastan, “Marks”, and of Marge Piercy, “What’s that smell in the kitchen”, can be an example of poems that are similar, and yet still different in many ways with how the poems may end or even the scenario it’s self.
With the two poems that I chose to analyze, there are two females at their wit’s end, “What’s that smell in the kitchen”, states, “Look, she says, I once was a roast duck/ on your platter with parsley but now I am spam/” (Piercy, 1192, 20-21). I see her husband had down graded her, and no longer appreciates her in the way he used to. In “Marks” similarities, “My husband gives me an A/ for last nights supper/ an incomplete for my ironing/” (Pastan, 959, 1-3). These women that they are writing about seem like they are being degraded, unappreciated, and judged. You can sense the irritation building in the two women.
Another part of “Marks” says “ My son says I am average/ an average mother, but if/ I put my mind to it/ I could improve/” (5-8), which to me indicates that she is second guessing herself and her abilities by being put down just enough to believe her best is not good enough. As though there is a certain standard to uphold. On the same thought it was also said “All over America women are burning / food they’re supposed to bring with calico/ smile on platters glittering like wax/” (Piercy, 1192, 5-8). Within that there becomes another standard to uphold, as though women are to be servants instead of partners. For men to have their wives believing in this is to keep their self-esteem down in order to control or...