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Ripeness is withness,

To be is to be in love,

Love is the fullness of being.

. . .

1 Corinthians 13:1–13

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.

If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.

It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.

For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

WORK

I GREW UP IN A TIME when mothers, including my own, went back to work after they had raised their children. My mother had a job before she was married, but not a career. That was for my generation. In the past thirty years, women have become defined by what we do, as well as by whom we love. Now, for the first time, women constitute half the American workforce. At the higher end of the socioeconomic scale, the debate tends to focus on choices and the hidden truth that women without children can advance farther and more easily in the professional world, while for families in the lower half of the income ladder, women are the primary breadwinners in a majority of households and often struggle to support a family alone. For all of us, the challenge is how to balance work and family and do a decent job at both. It’s not easy in our society, which gives little support to mothers, still pays women 25 percent less than men for the same job, only grudgingly acknowledges that women still do the majority of housework, parenting, and caregiving, and does a woefully inadequate job of educating our children.

In traditional societies, women were responsible for farming, cooking, weaving, and sewing. Later they became domestic servants, teachers, nurses, and waitresses. In modern times, women are also scientists, lawyers, professors, and poets. So it makes sense that the world of work has become a subject for women’s poetry.

Women poets are often crusaders for social justice and equality. Tillie Olsen went to jail for trying to organize workers in the meat-packing house where she was employed. In the poem “I Want You Women Up North to Know,” she writes about the terrible conditions of Texas garment workers. In “PS Education,” Ellen Hagan, who teaches poetry in some of New York City’s most challenging schools, writes with moral indignation about the ways in which today’s educational system is failing our children.

Some kinds of work connect women of many generations. In “Lineage,” Margaret Walker writes about her grandmothers who struggled to survive in the harsh and unforgiving world of subsistence farming, but whose strength and joy inspired their granddaughter. Poems about the modern professional workplace are surprisingly hard to find. We can only hope that more poets will shine a light on its benefits and shortcomings, and help us to integrate work more easily into other parts of our lives.

weaponed woman

GWENDOLYN BROOKS

Well, life has been a baffled vehicle

And baffling. But she fights, and

Has fought, according to her lights and

The lenience of her