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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
THE PORTRAIT, by KAREN SWENSON Poet's Biography First Line: He wouldn't buy her shoes Last Line: A portrait of a woman as less than one. Subject(s): Paintings And Painters; Poverty; Women | |||
He wouldn't buy her shoes because her family was rich. So she washed the curds out of the milk bottles - love clung a sour white scab on glass - and took the bottles back to the dairy saving the pennies for cheap shoes. It was only after she was crippled that she came home on carbuncled feet, to live again with her brothers and sisters in the house where the prairie wind sloughed the last scent off the roses. She painted their roses on their plates; for their dining-room wall, in another frame, blue ripples of grapes falling into their own shadows on a tablecloth - bloom on china - ripeness on canvas. And again and again she painted herself, not in a palette of poses, but always quarter-profile against a ringent background; only shoulders and a fracture of a face, just enough to be someone you almost knew. When he died in a telegram she painted herself quarter-view again - a portrait of a woman as less than one. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...ARISTOTLE TO PHYLLIS by JOHN HOLLANDER A WOMAN'S DELUSION by SUSAN HOWE JULIA TUTWILER STATE PRISON FOR WOMEN by ANDREW HUDGINS THE WOMEN ON CYTHAERON by ROBINSON JEFFERS TOMORROW by ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD LADIES FOR DINNER, SAIPAN by KENNETH KOCH GOODBYE TO TOLERANCE by DENISE LEVERTOV |
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