Question

The Farmer's Wife Poem summary

Answer 1

The farmer's wife is a poem written by Volga. In this poem the poet has spoken on behalf of a farmer's wife. The farmer's wife is sad and sorrowful because he had committed suicide. He has died because he had borrowed money for his crop from money lenders. But he was unable to repay the loan. He had grown cotton crop. But there was no yield from the fields. Cotton pods were eaten by worms. So, he could not repay the loan. He took poison. But he forgot his responsibility as a husband and as a father. Now she has to answer the money lenders. She has to look after the children. She has to feed the children. She has to educate the children. She has to do all this alone and so she is sadly thinking about future.

Answer 2

farmers wife


From the hodge porridge 
of their country lust, 
their local life in Illinois, 
where all their acres look 
like a sprouting broom factory, 
they name just en years now 
that she has been his habit; 
as again tonight he'll say 
honey bunch let's go 
and she will not say how there 
must be more to living 
than this brief bright bridge 
of the raucous bed or even 
the slow braille touch of him 
like a heavy god grown light, 
that old pantomime of love 
that she wants although 
it leaves her still alone, 
built back again at last, 
mind's apart from him, living 
her own self in her own words 
and hating the sweat of the house 
they keep when they finally lie 
each in separate dreams 
and then how she watches him, 
still strong in the blowzy bag 
of his usual sleep while 
her young years bungle past 
their same marriage bed 
and she wishes him cripple, or poet, 
or even lonely, or sometimes, 
better, my lover, dead.