Revolution

By Susan Griffin b. 1943 Susan Griffin

I would not have gotten in this boat with you.

I would not

except

where else was there

at the dock’s end

to go?

The water

was cold.

I would not have let you row the boat.

I could see

what kind of man you were.

I would not but

who was there to choose

between

you and me?

I would not have let you throw away the oars.

I knew what would happen next,

except

what else was there to do,

struggle

in a boat with a leak

over cold water?

Susan Griffin, "Revolution" from Bending Home: Selected and New Poems. Copyright © 1998 by Susan Griffin. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townshend, WA 98368-0271, coppercanyonpress.org.

Source: Bending Home: Selected and New Poems (Copper Canyon Press, 1998)

Biography

Poet, essayist, and playwright Susan Griffin was born in 1943 in Los Angeles, California. An early awareness of the horrors of World War II and her childhood in the High Sierras have had an enduring influence on her work, which includes poetry, prose, and mixed genre collections. A playwright and radical feminist philosopher, Griffin has also published two books in a proposed trilogy of “social autobiography.” Her work considers . . .

Continue reading this biography