Women Analysis

How can something be irregular and regular at the same time? No, the answer isn't "If it's a pair of jeans I found at the outlet mall." This isn't some great riddle on the back of a fortune cookie...

We're glad you're here, Shmoopers. With a poem like "Women," this may be one of the most important sections to read. (Of course, you should know by now that everything we have to tell you is import...

We talk a bit about the setting of this poem over in our "Symbols, Imagery, Wordplay" section, so hit that up first before we go too much further here…Up to speed? Great. Let's say a bit more, th...

It's easy to get caught up in this laundry list of things that women don't do correctly, but in this section we're going to try to stop and smell the language a little. It may just seem like our sp...

"Women," says our speaker. "Can't live with 'em, so…I might as well write a poem about all the ways in which they fail at life." Our title essentially announces the target of this poem. Every sta...

"Women" isn't the only Louise Bogan poem to re-enact its own little war of the sexes. Lots of her poems took up a similar theme. Most of them used a formal pattern of rhyme to do it, too. Check out...

We know—5 out of 10 seems like a huge cop-out when it comes to ratings, but hear us out, gang. The language in this poem is pretty much as straightforward as it gets. There are no obscure referen...

Louise Bogan once worked in a bookstore with famed anthropologist Margaret Meade. That would have made for one wild sitcom. (Source.) Bogan was the poetry reviewer for the New Yorker—for thirty-...

When love is an "eager meaninglessness" (15), you can pretty much kiss any chance at sexiness good-bye.