Poems About Girlhood: From Plath to Dickinson
There are girls.
There’s their girlhood.
And then there are poems about girlhood.
Somehow, even after you’ve grown up and become women, these poems stay with you, just like the thought of girlhood does, like the nostalgia, like the memories, like the happy dreams and the summer days and the muddy playgrounds and the sleepless nights.
You can grow out of the girl you were, but I don’t think she ever grows out of you.
These poems about girlhood are almost therapy, reading someone else say something that you probably felt too but never put into words.
Somewhere on this page, I hope your find your childhood too.
Out of the ash, I rise with my red hair. And I eat men like air.
Sylvia Plath, from “lady lazarus” published in ‘ariel (1965)’
And then there’s a poem that I wrote and submitted to a college magazine right before the deadline, so I was writing it the night before and it was a women’s magazine so this was the theme.
Poems about Girlhood
Title: Let Me Live an Ambitious Dream
Girls! A teenage girl’s body is a cage
Held strong together by things that are expected of her
Things she has to take care of; periods, boys, modesty,
While the child in her wants to come out and play in the mud.
But this is not about toxic feminism
This is not to hate men
Not to condemn all the people out there
This is not even about them.
A woman’s body is a temple and her cage is a bit bigger
It resembles a house and a naked child.
And her prison mates never bother asking
When was the last time you ever smiled?
“The birth of that child, made me the happiest person alive”
She answers with a smile
And see, there it is, that heavenly happiness
even if she’s tired and it’s been a while.
But why are you always pointing out this fact
I haven’t got a Y chromosome and those who do try to pull me down.
Is it an anomaly being a girl?
Why does my cherished body make you frown?
Just let me exist without worrying about him
Let me live my ambitious dream without a tremor.
Let me make something of myself and be unapologetic
In telling my own story and letting it breathe forever.-a poem on girlhood, by (ahem) tanu
You are lying beside your childhood friend.
The grass is greener on this side,
I’ll seek, you hide.
You’re lying beside your childhood friend,
She’s laughing at something you said.
And you can almost see it.
‘I’ll be your teenage bestie.’
And her laugh dies down, ‘Don’t replace me.’
‘I won’t.’
You make it sound like a promise.
So it’s done,
but it’s an old story.
‘You’ll be bored if I tell you all of it.’
‘Tell me,’ she insists. ‘I’ll listen.’
You are lying beside your teenage best friend.
She’s laughing at everything he said.
And you can’t see it anymore.
I’ll be your best friend even when we’re adults.
And you look at her. You almost stop breathing.
She isn’t her.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘You aren’t her.’
You are lying beside your childhood best friend again,
but neither of you is so little anymore.
She reaches out, laces fingers through yours.
‘You’ve changed,’ she whispers.
‘No one could replace you,’ you whisper back.
The sky is so blue, it hurts the eye.
Why did the grass on this side die?
You grab her hand,
but she pulls you up to stand.
The sky is so blue, it colors the bone
You abandon your shoes, run all the way home,
and your soles hurt,
but you’re twelve again.
What more to ask?
You’re twelve again.-tanu
Now that we’ve brushed the amateurish out of the way (yeah, I’m talking about me), it’s time to look at a poem from the actual master of the craft—
Over the fence—
Strawberries— grow—
Over the fence—I could climb— if I tried, I know—
Berries are nice!
But— if I stained my Apron—
God would certainly scold!
Oh, dear, — I guess if He were a Boy—
He’d— climb— if He could!-Emily Dickinson
And then this one—if you’ve ever had this thought about being different than other girls, you’d relate (and it’d be okay).
You are not like other girls. You are not like other girls (“You are not like other girls,” the boys you run with will tell you, and you will try not to let them see you preen under the glancing light of their approval). You learn their books and their language. You laugh at their jokes. You listen to their stories, sit blank-eyed on their couched while they play video games, pass them your English notes. You keep their secrets. You use the words they use about other girls in order to assure yourself that they will never use those words about you. You make yourself into nothingness, a ghost conjured into being only through the desires of boys, the rules of boys, the ideas of boys. You’re not like other girls.
-Sarah McCarry, ‘Here We Are’
While roses are so red,
While lilies are so white,
Shall a woman exalt her face
Because it gives delight?
She’s not so sweet as a rose,
A lily’s straighter than she,
And if she were as red or white
She’d be but one of three.
Whether she flush in love’s summer
Or in its winter grow pale,
Whether she flaunt her beauty
Or hide it away in a veil,
Be she red or white,
And stand she erect or bowed,
Time will win the race he runs with her
And hide her away in a shroud.-Beauty is Vain, by Christina Rossetti
“As for my girls, I’ll raise them to think they breathe fire”
― Jessica Kirkland
Much like Sylvia’s Plath’s famous line in The Bell Jar, as Esther tries to reassure herself of her place in the world – ‘I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am’ – the fervour with which we create content, capture ourselves, our rooms, our outfits, our possessions, and the ardour with which we turn ourselves inside out in the digital realm feels like a repeated reassurance: I was here, I was here, I was here.
-Ellen Atlanta, ‘Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women’
I loved the things that were ours—pink gloves,
hankies with a pastoral scene in one corner.
There was a lot we were not allowed to do,
but what we were allowed to do was ours,
dolls you carry by the leg, and dolls’ clothes you would put on or take off—
someone who was yours, who did not
have the rights of her own nakedness,
and who had a smooth body, with its
untouchable place, which you would never touch, even on her,
you had been cured of that.
-From “Ode to Girls’ Things” by Sharon Olds (Copyright © 2015 by Sharon Olds)
Sometimes when people look at me with pity I want to shout, I was a teenager girl once! so they know I can survive anything.
-Lucie Britsch, ‘Sad Janet’
There is so much woman in many a girl and too much boy in many a man.
-Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Monsterhood is a girl’s body you don’t belong in.
-Trang Thanh Tran, They Bloom at Night
Life has loveliness to sell,
All beautiful and splendid things,
Blue waves whitened on a cliff,
Soaring fire that sways and sings,
And children’s faces looking up
Holding wonder in a cup.
Life has loveliness to sell,
Music like a curve of gold,
Scent of pine trees in the rain,
Eyes that love you, arms that hold,
And for your spirit’s still delight,
Holy thoughts that star the night.
Spend all you have for loveliness,
Buy it and never count the cost;
For one white singing hour of peace
Count many a year of strife well lost,
And for a breath of ecstacy
Give all you have been, or could be.-Sara Teasdale, “Barter”
Peach pits are poisonous. This is not a mistake. Girlhood is growing fruit around cyanide. It will never be your for swallowing.
-Brenna Twohy, Swallowtail
Check out more posts!
31 Poems About Summer to Read this March
Emily Dickinson’s Poetry That You Need to Read Right Now!
Girlhood is not a stage, not an age. It’s more of a complete language, something you speak in rebellion, something that stays with you like a stubborn muscle memory, something you can’t forget despite how many other languages you end up learning. It stays. You sometimes get the itch to speak it again, someone laughs at you for your rusty vocabulary and slurred pronunciation—but someone else also understands, feels closer to you because you speak their own tongue. Girlhood is not a dress rehearsal, everything’s so real, you’re so real, finding things about you that no one ever told you. It’s exploring yourself, examining yourself, daring to even love yourself.
Something resonated with you? Share with us down below! There are countless ideas and poems about girlhood in the world. Which ones are your favorite?
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