Find Work by Rhina P. Espaillat
I tie my Hat—I crease my Shawl—
Life's little duties do—precisely
As the very least
Were infinite—to me—
—Emily Dickinson, #443
Espaillat makes a significant choice here, choosing this Emily Dickinson poem as her epigraph. It seems like a simple poem about doing simple everyday chores and "duties", like putting on one's shawl, dusting off the shelves, or even going to the post office to mail something. The importance of this particular poem correlates with how work is infinite--these little chores that must be done never stop needing to be done; there will always be dishes in the sink to wash, or a button to sew back on to someone's shirt.
My mother’s mother, widowed very young
of her first love, and of that love’s first fruit,
moved through her father’s farm, her country tongue
and country heart anaesthetized and mute
with labor. So her kind was taught to do—
“Find work,” she would reply to every grief—
and her one dictum, whether false or true,
tolled heavy with her passionate belief.
Widowed again, with children, in her prime,
she spoke so little it was hard to bear
so much composure, such a truce with time
spent in the lifelong practice of despair.
But I recall her floors, scrubbed white as bone,
her dishes, and how painfully they shone.
Let's talk about form.
This poem is technically a sonnet, as it has fourteen lines. Traditionally speaking now, a sonnet is
supposed to be a love poem, but at first glance of the poem, this seems like it
has got nothing to do with love…death maybe—work for sure! –but not love. If we take a closer look, however, we will
find that because of the way the author talks about her grandmother’s work, it
seems that work IS actually her love. So
sonnets continue to rule the love scene.
How did
I get work as Grandmother’s love? Well,
it was a long process. Let me break it
down:
Stage #1:
My mother’s mother, widowed very young
of her first love, and of that love’s first fruit,
We start out with the poem
explicitly mentioning Grandmother as a “widow”.
This immediately brings up the image of a woman whose husband has passed
away. Adding to this fact is the concept
that whoever died was her “first love”. This,
for me, totally had me convinced the poem was talking about a young woman who
married her first love and when he died, he left her with “love’s first fruit”
(which is always code name for children).
Stage #2:
moved through her father’s farm, her country
tongue
and country heart anaesthetized and mute
with labor.
Now this is one of those instances
where everything you thought you knew has suddenly been completely and totally
wrong. These next two and a half lines
reveal that she is not talking about a person (or husband) at all! Indeed, she is actually talking about a
country, a homeland. This is also an
instance where research into the life of the author might shed some light on
the poem.
According to Poetry Foundation’s
author biography, Espaillat’s family was exiled to the US from the Dominican
Republic because a relation of hers pissed off the dictator Rafael
Trujillo.
Looking closely at these lines, we
can tell that Grandmother is being made to leave the only place she has ever
known or loved. There is a deep emphasis
on the fact that she is leaving her “country”, as she repeats that she was
abandoning her “country tongue” and “country heart”. Both of these concepts are “anaesthetized and
mute” as well because her love for her country and culture could not save her
from her fate. So now, this sonnet has become a love poem about the Dominican
Republic and not a physical (first) lover.
Did Espaillat mean to mislead
readers with the first two lines?
Probably. Poets love to make
people think one thing and then totally twist it on them in the next line. They love to have theories collapse on them
and randomly hit readers in the face with something drastically new. It keeps you on your toes and from experience
writing poetry, it is also pretty fun.
Next Question: Why is her next love work? Shouldn't her next love be...I don't know...her husband? Well, let's look at the next few lines.
So her kind was taught to do—
“Find work,” she would reply to every grief—
and her one dictum, whether false or true,
tolled heavy with her passionate belief.
We already know that she was an immigrant new to a country that did not speak her "country tongue" so her priority after touching down in the US must have been to "find work". Take note that most immigrant women ("her kind"), gravitated towards jobs in the domestic sphere when it came to work, so like cleaning, washing, cooking, and looking after children. These jobs, while honest work, demand a lot of time and physical effort. "Every grief" of Grandmother probably had to do with the fact that she was uprooted from her country and forced to work in another to survive. The fact that Grandmother is using "find work" as a reply to every one of these griefs suggests that she is funneling all her emotions into the act of finding work and subsequently, actually working. It does not seem to matter whether finding work will help or not, "false or true", what matters is that she works so she can escape the reality of her life at that time.
We see later that it only gets worse for Grandmother and finding work literally becomes her life.
Widowed again, with children, in her prime,
she spoke so little it was hard to bear
so much composure, such a truce with time
spent in the lifelong practice of despair.
Poor Grandmother must have always been exhausted, because not only does she have to partake in this backbreaking work, she also had a family that she was suddenly made the sole caretaker for. At this point, she is not only working hard but she is doing it alone.
At the same time, take note of how Grandmother is ACTUALLY widowed this time. She is not talking about her country anymore and "love's first fruit" is actually her children this time.
This is sort of where the poem gets extra sad. The traces of hardship are very prevalent here. "She spoke so little it was hard to bear" pretty much indicates that she is so exhausted and beaten down by the world that she "spoke so little". The "lifelong practice of despair" seems to be her life.
But I recall her floors, scrubbed white as bone,
her dishes, and how painfully they shone.
She works hard because she has to; she has a family to feed, but just because she has to work does not mean she is immune to being human. The effort she puts into her work and the sheer exhaustion of having to support a family all on her own--and she IS all alone because she is cut off from her homeland and her husband is gone.
"White as bone" is literally a painful way to describe how hard she is working. It is also a play on "worked to the bone", which is something that Grandmother has definitely mastered. Because this woman is probably cleaning, as those are the jobs she could find, she cleans to the bone. It is both painful to do and she is painful to look at.
Grandmother's life is infinite in that her work is almost never ending, just like those little chores and tasks that Emily Dickinson was talking about earlier. Grandmother will always need money to feed her children until they can work and feed themselves, so she will always need to find work. Likewise, in working she found her next "love". Now, that is NOT to say she loves the jobs she works, but rather to say that she channels all her grief and exhaustion into work. Not a traditional love for sure.
