This is a page where I give my brief impression of other people's writings, right now poems.

This is a poem by Juana Ines, a female writer of Mexico. She come across as quite angry when I read the poem, and the whole situation she describes is quite bleak.

You foolish men who lay

the guilt on women,

not seeing you're the cause

of the very thing you blame;

if you invite their disdain

with measureless desire

why wish they well behave

if you incite to ill.

You fight their stubbornness,

you say it was their lightness

when it was your guile.

In all your crazy shows

you act just like a child

who plays the bogeyman

of which he's then afraid.

With foolish arrogance

you hope to find a Thais

in her you court, but a Lucretia

when you've possessed her.

What kind of mind is odder

than his who mists

a mirror and then complains

that it's not clear.

Their favour and disdain

you hold in equal state,

if they mistreat, you complain,

you mock if they treat you well.

No woman wins esteem of you:

the most modest is ungrateful

if she refuses to admit you;

yet if she does, she's loose.

You always are so foolish

your censure is unfair;

one you blame for cruelty

the other for being easy.

What must be her temper

who offends when she's

ungrateful and wearies

But with the anger and the grief

that your pleasure tells

good luck to her who doesn't love you

and you go on and complain.

Your lover's moans give wings

to women's liberty:

and having made them bad,

you want to find them good.

the greater blame in passion?

She who, solicited, falls,

or he who, fallen, pleads?

Who is more to blame,

though either should do wrong?

She who sins for pay

or he who pays to sin?

Why be outraged at the guilt

that is of your own doing?

Have them as you make them

or make them what you will.

Leave off your wooing

and then, with greater cause,

you can blame the passion

of her who comes to court?

Patent is your arrogance

that fights with many weapons

since in promise and insistence

you join world, flesh and devil.

Instead of feeling joy that a woman writer was standing her ground, contributing to women's rights, reading this poem is depressing for me, to see what female members of society had to go through.

This is a collection of poems by Phillis Wheatley, the first African-American woman to write poetry and have it published.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/409

Since the poems are in an old-fashioned version of English, I find them somewhat difficult to understand, especially when the poems are long. However, I will review one of her poems.

ON BEING BROUGHT FROM AFRICA TO AMERICA.

’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

Taught my benighted soul to understand

That there’s a God, that there’s a Saviour too:

Once I redemption neither fought nor knew,

Some view our sable race with scornful eye,

“Their colour is a diabolic die.”

Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,

May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.

She is referring to Africa when she refers to "her Pagan land," she tells the viewer that she converted to Christianity, and she is saying Christianity does not discriminate against races, they can all be saved.

I learned the answers from here.

https://www.tolerance.org/classroom-resources/texts/on-being-brought-from-africa-to-america

(Just my impression, but I find it interesting that she refers to Cain, since Cain was a murderer in the Bible.)

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Not explicitly related to poetry, but people used to use flowers to communicate. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/31591