Summary
The text begins with a man comparing a woman to various wild and dangerous things. However, as the speaker of the poem notes, the man is also unable to leave her. He is overwhelmed by his feelings for her, both afraid of and enthralled by her intensity. He describes this state as alternately enjoyable and destructive. Ultimately he feels she is too much for him.
Analysis
Shire's poem "For Woman Who Are 'Difficult' To Love" uses a troubled romantic relationship as a vehicle to explore the suppression of women's self-expression. The poem follows a man and a woman in an unsettled dynamic. The man is intensely attracted to her, but constantly criticizes what he perceives as her strange and unruly attributes. He tries to convince her to tamp down on these aspects of her personality, as they upset him.
The poem opens with two very sharp images: "you are a horse running alone / and he tries to tame you / compares you to an impossible highway / to a burning house." The man in the relationship immediately establishes his discomfort with the wildness he perceives in her. The speaker draws a parallel between the woman and "a horse running alone" to set up the idea that the man is always trying to minimize ("tame") her. The inclusion of the image of a horse conveys the woman's free spirit and power. The comparison he makes ("an impossible highway / to a burning house") about the woman is harsher and more troubling. Where the speaker's image suggests freedom, the man's invokes danger. This phrase communicates the lack of stability and unease that the man feels in the relationship. The next two lines ("says you are blinding him / that he could never leave you") offer the first of the poem's many emotional twists. In spite of his fear, the man is magnetically pulled to the woman. In spite of the fact that her qualities are so strong that they "blind" him, he is unable to "leave" her, or so he says initially. The subsequent lines double down on this idea, suggesting that the force of his desire is so strong he could never "forget you / want anything but you." However, the next line immediately shifts back into the negative: "you dizzy him, you are unbearable." His feelings are so strong that they overwhelm him, eventually becoming "unbearable." It is a level of attraction, coupled with his lack of understanding about his partner, that unsettles him.
The three lines that follow add another dimension to this complexity: "every woman before or after you / is doused in your name / you fill his mouth." These lines underline the fact that she is so present in the man's mind that he will always compare his past and future romantic partners to her. Her influence is unavoidable, even in his memories. The use of the word "doused" conveys the intensity of his feelings as well as the woman's far-reaching impact. She blankets every part of him. The last line ("you fill his mouth") serves to emphasize the sway she holds over him, while also carrying strong sexual undertones. The next two lines augment this impression, providing further details about the depth of his longing: "his teeth ache with memory of taste / his body just a long shadow seeking yours." The tone of this moment switches back to wanting, in contrast to the disapproval and fear in previous lines. The image of him as "a long shadow" looking for her also gives the impression that there is a gap between. He is reaching out in this manner because he feels powerful desire, not a stable sense of love. The final three lines of the first half of the poem turn the focus to the woman, marking a shift: "but you are always too intense / frightening in the way you want him / unashamed and sacrificial." While the speaker uses the adjectives "intense" and "frightening" to characterize the woman's desire, the qualifying use of the words "unashamed" and "sacrificial" suggests that the woman is normal and healthy. Unlike the man, she does not suffer from the same internal conflict about her romantic and sexual feelings.
The poem is written in free verse, all the words are lowercase, and the lines contain no punctuation. This free-flowing style adds a great deal to the poem's heated urgency. While Shire subtly embeds different changes in subject matter and mood, the looseness of the poem's form adds to its intimate, confessional quality. It enhances the impression that the speaker is reaching out to the woman, attempting to privately comfort and reassure her. In this way, the poem reads like an overheard conversation.
