Write a definition essay (MLA Format)
APO 96225
A young man once went off to war in a far country,
and when he had time, he wrote home and said,
“Dear Mom, sure rains a lot here.” (3)
But his mother—reading between the lines as mothers
Always do—wrote back,
“We’re quite concerned. Tell us what it’s really like.” (6)
And the young man responded,
“Wow! You ought to see the funny monkeys.” (8)
To which the mother replied,
“Don’t hold back. How is it there?” (10)
And the young man wrote,
“The sunsets here are spectacular!” (12)
In her next letter, the mother pleaded,
Son, we want you to tell us everything. Everything!” (14)
So the next time he wrote, the young man said,
“Today I killed a man. Yesterday, I helped drop napalm
On women and children.” (17)
And the father wrote right back,
“Please don’t write such depressing letters. You’re
Upsetting your mother.” (20)
So, after a while,
The young man wrote,
“Dear Mom, sure rains here a lot.” Larry Rottmann (b. 1942)
Sorting Laundry
Folding clothes,
I think of folding you
into my life (3)
Our king-sized sheets
like tablecloths
for the banquets of giants,
pillowcases, despite so many (7)
washings, seams still
holding our dreams.
Towels patterned orange and green,
flowered pink and lavender,
gaudy, bought on sale, (12)
reserved, we said, for the beach,
refusing, even after years,
to bleach into respectability.
So many shirts and skirts and pants (16)
recycling week after week, head over heels
recapitulating themselves.
All those wrinkles
to be smoothed. Or else
ignored; they’re in style. (21)
Myriad uncoupled socks
which went paired into the foam
like those creatures in the ark.
And what’s shrunk (25)
is tough to discard
even for Goodwill.
In pockets, surprises:
forgotten matches,
lost screws clinking on enamel; (30)
paper clips, whatever they held
between shiny jaws, now
dissolved or clogging the drain;
well-washed dollars, legal tender
for all debts public and private,
intact despite agitation; (36)
and, gleaming in the maelstrom,
one bright dime,
broken necklace of good gold
you brought from Kuwait, (40)
the strangely tailored shirt
left by a former lover. . . .
If you were to leave me,
if I were to fold
only my own clothes, (45)
the convexes and concaves
of my blouses, panties, stockings, bras
turned upon themselves,
a mountain of unsorted wash
could not fill
the empty side of the bed. Elisavietta Ritchie (b. 1932)
Sample Cites:
Ritchie begins to feel the possibility of loneliness when she writes, “If you were to leave me,/if I were to fold/only my own clothes, . . . ” (ll 43-45). Here she is thinking of what it would be like to be rid of her significant other.
The author finally believes that “a mountain of unsorted wash/could not fill/the empty side of the bed” (ll 49-51), which leaves the reader perplexed as to her true meaning in this poem.
This can be seen in the following short stanza:
The convexes and concaves
Of my blouses, panties, stockings, bras
Turned into themselves, (ll 46-48)
By this she begins to magnify all the loss that would be experienced, but the loss is not of great significance; it’s merely articles of clothing.
Topic: Gender difference as depicted in poetry written by opposite sexes. (four paragraphs)
