Pier

She saw

Old widows waiting by the sea
Sorrow in hand, heart lost of glee
Debilitating in waves crashed hopes
And sunken cheeks

A girl in youth
Flowered in cloth and perfect breath
Should not have to wait
Like the old widows till death

She saw

A woman with no name
Standing strongly at ocean’s end
Staring down into the blue abyss
Yearning to transcend

she warns

A girl in youth
Flowered hair and unabated breath
Of the perils of disloyalty
Places her husband in the arms of death

She saw

A storm in the eastern skies
An outcry of every lost woman
Darkening waters and dreams
A telltale story of a sailor’s demise

A woman in youth
Jade combed hair and shorted breath
Stood by the pier nevertheless
To answer the call of death

Individual Project
Review:
This poem was inspired by The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston. While The Woman Warrior had many themes, I believe its central theme was about Maxine herself finding her identity, growing up as a Chinese-American girl in California, and being able to achieve an individual voice amidst society. I believe this book was very apt in describing our creative thinking module. I adapted the theme for this book, for a personal take on my opinion piece on my struggles between different callings in life – one being my calling to be a writer, and the other being someone in the finance industry.

There are three stages of a girl being described in this poem. The first one, would be a girl in her youth.

“She saw

Old widows waiting by the sea
Sorrow in hand, heart lost of glee
Debilitating in waves crashed hopes
And sunken cheeks

A girl in youth
Flowered in cloth and perfect breath
Should not have to wait
Like the old widows till death”

The first stanza here addresses people who have worked their entire lives, devoting themselves to their jobs but with no love for it at all. They only do it to get by, to provide for their families. I understood this by looking at my parents, my dad being a safety consultant and my mum being a purchaser. Neither of them loved their jobs, but they worked solely to provide for me and the family.
I likened it to old widows who wait by the sea, where they have lost any purpose and enjoyment in their jobs, hoping for a “return” one day for an enjoyment in their jobs but not realising that it will never come, hence the term “widows”. I also blended the idea of waves crashing, into hopes, to draw out the image of hopes of enjoyment from work being dashed and sunken.
As a bystander, the “girl”, I knew then when I saw my parents, that I should not have to wait “till death” for an enjoyment in my professional field to come but rather seek it out for myself.

The second stage, a woman who is working on her career:

“She saw

A woman with no name
Standing strongly at ocean’s end
Staring down into the blue abyss
Yearning to transcend

she warns

A girl in youth
Flowered hair and unabated breath
Of the perils of disloyalty
Places her husband in the arms of death”

Here, I adapted Maxine Hong Kingston’s story of the “No-Name Woman” from The Woman Warrior. It speaks about the story of Maxine’s aunt who was offered as a cautionary tale to all women in the old Chinese society. Her aunt was impregnated by a man from the village who could not be identified, while her husband was overseas in the US working. This resulted in the villagers raiding her house and destroying her family’s livestock, crops and possessions. She fled the house, gave birth in a pigsty and subsequently committed suicide by drowning herself in a well with the newborn baby, believing that they would be both better off dead than suffer in this world. She is named the “No-Name Woman” because of the humiliation and the embarrassment she had brought to the household, which removes the right for her to be named.

Here, the ideas I blended was my love for writing and the practical aspiration of being in finance. I compared it to an “affair”, where the “No-Name Woman” has served as warning for people who cannot choose between their career paths, which has led to her death. The second stanza in this paragraph is actually a story of King David in the Bible where he committed adultery with Bathsheba, resulting in the death of her husband, Uriah where King David sent him to the frontlines of battle for him to die. Here, I was trying use the story as an analogy for committing adultery, where I would be sending my husband, a metaphor for “breadwinner”, especially in ancient China, to die. My purpose here was to blend two stories and use them as an analogy.

The third stage, the end of a woman’s career:

“She saw

A storm in the eastern skies
An outcry of every lost woman
Darkening the pier and the waters
A telltale story of a sailor’s demise

A woman in youth
Jade combed hair and shorted breath
Stood by the pier nevertheless
To answer the call of death”

This last stage is a description of my current self and my state of mind to the entire conflict within myself.
The first stanza in this stage is a foreshadowing of what is to come if I continued “flirting” with the possibility of having both a passion for writing and the desire to be adept in finance. I tried to build on the initial story of women losing their “happiness” from working, and also highlight my anxiety and my worry for losing my happiness and enjoyment in working if I were to continue in finance. I may end up like my parents, not finding joy in work but merely working for practical reasons such as supporting the family.
Here, the “girl” has became a “woman”, signifying growth with jade combed hair. In ancient China, girls undergo a hair pinning ceremony at the age of 15 to symbolise the coming of age. Just before marriage, they leave their hair long and combed which is considered a very attractive trait of girls in China. “Jade combed hair and shorted breath” is an expression of my current position, waiting for “marriage” (a career choice) and “shorted breath” representing my anxiety as mentioned earlier.

The poem concludes with “Stood by the pier nevertheless, to answer the call of death”. This represents my indignation and resolute, in knowing that even though I may run the risk of not finding joy in my future career, I will stick by my decision. Also, “to answer the call of death” draws another theme from The Woman Warrior. In the book, women are generally deemed as people with no voice due to the patriarchal system in society. The use of the diction “answer” shows a refute of that system. Here, it represents my rejection of the idea that one cannot be good in both the “literary arts” and “finance”, both being opposable to each other. By the statement of “answering the call of death” I am showing that I will strive to be good at both and this will give me my individual voice in society.

At the very essence of it, I am the marriage of the two dichotomies of being imaginative and grounded in my personality, trying to reconcile the opposable themes of words and numbers, and to generate synergies by combining both which will make me a better person.