Wife (Ada Limón poem) Literary Elements

First-person speaker, closely identifiable with the poet, a woman who is married

24 lines in one stanza, free verse

Lines 17-18: "the kettle steaming over / loud like a train whistle," simile for the kettle's high, piercing sound

Lines 8-9: "famous / feminist," alliteration of /f/ sound
Lines 11-12: "made / easily into maid," homophone repetition / alliteration / assonance of "made" and "maid"

Lines 8-11: the quote from Judy Brady ("the famous feminist") is ironic and satirical, a woman married to a man describing why she "wants a wife" because "wife" has come to represent an impossible ideal of a domestic servant

Contemporary poetry

In the second half of the poem, the setting is implied to be a kitchen in the morning

At times sarcastic, exasperated, and emotional

The speaker against society's sexist demands of a wife

The struggle of the speaker to articulate her own self-worth and her love for her husband in defiance of the impossible, unrealistic, and harmful expectations placed on wives by cultural misogyny.

The poem accelerates continually until its end, making its last few lines a climax as the speaker confesses how fiercely she loves her husband.

Lines 11-12: "A word that could be made / easily into maid," for a moment the word "made" can be read as "maid" and foreshadows the homophonic parallel in the next line.

Line 1, "I'm not yet comfortable with the word." This line, with its casual use of "yet," is made to feel like an understatement by the extent and depth of criticisms the speaker goes on to express about the word "wife."

The quote in lines 8-11 is from the 1971 feminist satire "I Want a Wife" by Judy Brady, published in the inaugural issue of Ms. Magazine. Brady's essay satirically critiqued the impossible expectations placed on wives by taking on the persona of a man who expects his wife to attend unfailingly to all of his needs and none of her own, a man with extreme double standards about the importance of his own job, education, and sexual freedom compared to those of his wife.

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Line 6, the younger women's eyes are described as rolling "out of" their heads, indicating how extremely they are rolling their eyes in judgment.
Lines 19-20, "she who tears a hole / in the earth." This is likely an exaggerated image of gardening, since Limón writes about gardening elsewhere in her book, but comes across as an extreme description of anguish or sorrow.

Line 2, "woosh" for the sound of the word "wife"