Go On by Lisa Zaran - Essay Example

She hates her boss, but she has to put up a pretentious smile because she needs to work with her boss. She suffers inside but manages to display a smile outside. And this also re-emphasizes the idea of “go on”, the same monotony and stagnancy that a woman is stuck in from her birth till death. There are many important issues of a woman’s struggle that are highlighted in this poem. Life pushes her against dead ends and then she takes solace in the dark, doomed corners of hallucinations and the poet says “drink, smoke, do drugs” and that is what makes women bad again.

So they are literally cursed for whatever they do. Then the poem also depicts the “commoditization” of women, they are like commodities that must be perfect in all cases. The most debated and controversial topic for women is their size, which should be perfect because they are judged on that basis. The poet shows this struggle in a very effective way, saying “Eat. Don’t Eat. Get fat. Go skinny” and this is a very realistic picture of what constantly goes on with women. They are tagged as skeletons and made to eat, or then they are disliked for being fat so they are ordered to go skinny.

Whatever they are, no one is ever satisfied and so they “go on” changing themselves, striving to fit in. The last stanza of this poem also continues with the same idea but suddenly this monotony comes to a halt in the last line. A very important part of every woman’s life is discussed in the last part and that is adding another person in her life as the poem says “lives intersect” and then “wombs bloom”. There is a very clever selection of words in this poem and the idea is conveyed in minimum but very concrete usage of words.

The words used by the poet are very powerful and their. The female speaker in this poem limns the typical life of a woman with helplessness and indifference to indicate that she wants a new life, according to her own choice and taste.The poem starts with making a woman realize that she is a woman and in front of her she has a long long way to go. This long journey is not an easy and smooth one; in fact it is lined with obstacles and difficulties. The poem starts with a kind of over arching emphasis when it declares “born woman”.

This declaration is very powerful itself openly telling a woman that you are the “other” and now you have to face the music of being a woman. The poet’s tone here is very affirmative and strong, and then the poet tells a woman that the way before her is longer and harder than it seems.The poem is not about the extraordinary life of some particular woman; rather it is what goes on in every woman’s life. The poet has chosen a very ordinary topic but presented it in a very extraordinarily effective way.

The poet has chosen images and situations from everyday lives of women that are very universal in nature. A woman living in any part of the world can easily relate with this poem. Good poetry is not always necessarily about out-of-the-world things; rather it is about taking an ordinary thing and elevating it to the level of extraordinary. And this is what Zaran has beautifully accomplished in this poem.There are many poetic techniques that the poet has employed in the poem to convey her idea persuasively.