Barren Woman
Barren Woman - meaning Summary
Infertility and Emotional Isolation
The poem presents a speaker who feels emotionally empty and cut off, using a museum metaphor to portray her interior as grand but lifeless. She imagines a public role, a mother to triumphant figures, but instead experiences barrenness and stunted attention. Classical imagery (Nike, Apollo) frames her longing for generative visibility, while marble and funerary details emphasize sterility, isolation, and the pain of unrealized maternal identity.
Read Complete AnalysesEmpty, I echo to the least footfall, Museum without statues, grand with pillars, porticoes, rotundas. In my courtyard a fountain leaps and sinks back into itself, Nun-hearted and blind to the world. Marble lilies Exhale their pallor like scent. I imagine myself with a great public, Mother of a white Nike and several bald-eyed Apollos. Insread, the dead injure me attentions, and nothing can happen. Blank-faced and mum as a nurse.
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