Louise Bogan was an American poet who served as the Library of Congress Poet Laureate in 1945. As poetry editor of The New Yorker for 40 years, she helped shape mainstream 20th century poetry. Some critics consider her the most accomplished woman poet of the century, though others see her as a minor poet who favored traditional forms over modernism. The poem criticizes women for being too domesticated and not experiencing the wilderness or world, and for having love that is either too restrictive or relaxed.

1. Women

2.  Louise Bogan (August 11, 1897 – February 4, 1970) was an
American poet. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the
Library of Congress in 1945.
As poetry editor of The New Yorker magazine for nearly 40 years,
Bogan played a major role in shaping mainstream poetic sensibilities of
the mid-20th Century.
The Poetry Foundation notes that Bogan has been called by some
critics the most accomplished woman poet of the twentieth century. It
further notes that, "Some critics have placed her in a category of
brilliant minor poets described as the "reactionary generation." This
group eschewed the prevailing Modernist forms that would come to
dominate the literary landscape of the era in favor of more traditional
techniques.
Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Brett C. Millier named
Bogan "one of the finest lyric poets America has produced," and added
that "the fact that she was a woman and that she defended formal, lyric
poetry in an age of expansive experimentation made evaluation of her
work, until quite recently, somewhat condescending."

3. Women have no wilderness in them,
They are provident instead,
Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts
To eat dusty bread.

4. They do not see cattle cropping red winter
grass,
They do not hear
Snow water going down under culverts
Shallow and clear.

5. They wait, when they should turn to
journeys,
They stiffen, when they should bend.
They use against themselves that
benevolence
To which no man is friend.

6. They cannot think of so many crops to a
field
Or of clean wood cleft by an axe.
Their love is an eager meaninglessness
Too tense, or too lax.

7. They hear in every whisper that speaks to
them
A shout and a cry.
As like as not, when they take life over their
door-sills
They should let it go by.

8. .
Summary of the poem
In this stanza, the poet says that women are
not wild, but are entirely domesticated.
They can make plans for the future, for they
have no reason for unhappiness. They are
quite happy to be victims of their emotions.
It is as if these emotions constitute a prison
that they cannot escape. They do not crave
any change from the bread they have day in
and day out for food. In other words, they
do not hope for anything better at any time.

9. In this stanza, the poet says that women never
experience much of the world. They do not see
cattle roaming in the fields and feasting on grass
that has dried up and turned red during the winter
months. They do not even hear the snow-melted
water as it runs by in shallow drains under the city.

10. In this stanza, the poet says that women never
behave as they ought to, but rather they behave as
they should not. So when they are expected to
start moving, they wait around. Again when they
are expected to be flexible, they become rigid.
They care too much about themselves to engage in
any hardship, unlike men who are always ready to
undertake difficult physical tasks.

11. In this stanza, the poet says that women cannot
even imagine how crops can be rotated during
different seasons every year on a single field.
They can never manage to chop wood with an
axe. They are only capable of love, but that love
itself has no meaning other than the enthusiasm
they seem to exhibit. Their love is either too
restrictive, or too relaxed, for the men in their
lives.

12. In this stanza, the poet says that women imagine
everyone to be screaming or crying out loudly even
when they are in fact only whispering. It is not
often that women can move over their door-sills
and out into the world outside, but even if and
when they do, they ought to let their lives go by
without any significant incident.