A Valediction Forbidding Mourning

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1970

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Separation as Death

Rich’s reimagining of Donne’s “Valediction” distorts many of the original poem’s themes. While Donne’s poem emphasizes how marital bonds are maintained over large distances, Rich’s poem connects separation and travel with death. This connection serves to deepen the affinity between Rich’s speaker and Donne’s addressee. The particular way Rich expresses the notion of separation as death, however, suggests that Rich is not interested in the marital aspect of Donne’s poem.

In Rich’s poem, the feminized speaker asserts their own ability to leave. Before introducing the idea of “repetition as death” (Line 7), the speaker frames the topic by stating that they “want you to see this before I leave” (Line 6). This overt statement of agency and intention to leave showcases that Rich’s speaker, despite being in the same position as Donne’s wife figure, is capable of travel. They are capable of “taking a trip” (Line 15), and departing “forever” (Line 15). The image a trip lasting “forever” (Line 15) evokes ideas of death as a final or eternal passage from one state to another. Though the speaker leaves space for less permanent afterlives, change and separation remains eternal despite “repetition” (Line 7).

The speaker’s unique understanding of time and space (See: Symbols & Motifs) means that any spacial separation is also temporal. The speaker not only refers to the “[e]mptiness of nations” (Line 4) through migration and war but through its connection to history. In this temporal way, the speaker’s murderous separation is also cultural and historical. Their separation from the literary canon, or the history of Western literature that silenced their voices, results in their death as a poet. Despite the speaker’s contemporary agency, they continue to associate travel and movement with death.

Failure of Literary Criticism

One of the things the speaker wants the addressee to see before they leave is “the failure of criticism to locate the pain” (Line 8). By “criticism,” the speaker refers to the history of critical engagement with literary and artistic works—predominantly those by Western men. The history of Western literary criticism is also a history of silencing outside voices. Rich’s “Valediction” points out a number of ways the failures of literary criticism lead to larger societal and artistic problems.

Literary criticism fails to “locate the [speaker’s] pain” (Line 8) because it is always outdated and caters to a small subset of experience. The speaker attempts to use the tools of criticism to engage with the world in a generative way. In the same way a critic pulls apart and expands a metaphor, the speaker engages with “hair, glacier, flashlight” (Line 13) but concedes that “[t]hese images go unglossed” (Line 13). The speaker’s experience cannot be processed or explained by the tools of literary criticism. Despite the speaker’s use of literary jargon, the terms fall flat against realty. This failure is why the speaker can say “those mountains have meaning” (Line 16) yet be unable to explain what that meaning is.

Perhaps the largest problem with literary criticism is how it excludes the common reader. The speaker’s literary jargon is the “dialect” (Line 12) of a social elite that serves to separate educated and uneducated readers (see: Symbols & Motifs). This separation threatens the speaker’s ability to express things “in my own way” (Line 18), outside of accepted poetic convention. Like the poem’s other separations, this divide is a matter of life and death.

Medical Misogyny

Rich’s speaker encounters structural patriarchy in a number of forms. Other than the power of male-dominated literature to silence female voices, the medical industry and its history of misogyny is the second clearest representation of structural violence toward women. This control of women through biased medical sciences is evident in the advertisement the speaker sees “in the bus” (Line 9). The advertisement, which states “my bleeding is under control” (Line 10) likely promotes a form of birth “control” that aims to regulate female reproduction.

The birth control pill was a major revolution in female agency and identity, and allowed many women power over their own bodies. Rich’s speaker, however, suggests that it is one more way that men control women. The speaker shows a deep understanding of the history of male definitions of female bodies (See: Symbols & Motifs); the bus represents a microcosm of the patriarchal structure of society, and the speaker’s presence “in the bus” (Line 9) places themselves as one of its subjects.

The speaker articulates their lack of agency over their body when they state they were given “a drug that slowed the healing of wounds” (Line 5). This drug, like that advertised on the bus, aims to keep the speaker “under control” (Line 10) by keeping old wounds open. Despite the speaker’s ability to “leave” (Line 6), they are reliant on the bus driver’s predetermined route.