Aliuson wrote (and well as usual):
>
>However, that poem I quoted is pretty amazing for a misogynist to write
>in 1965, yes? Especially with its awareness of the significance of
>things like domestic violence and its attack on the authority of the
>husband, and for its passionate denunciation of female oppression. I
>mean, especially when you look at the gender politics of more
>"progressive" poets like Olson, who I find much more troublingly
>misogynist. Hope was good friends with Gwen Harwood and had no problem
>with the idea that women could write poems, which despite the staggering
>contributions of women to modernism seems sometimes a bit of a block with
>the so-called avant garde.
Which raises so many tough questions. But it makes me face my own biases. I
learned so much from Olson that I can ignore his misogynism, when it
appears, And it may be there as Hope's is, if it is, as just a part of
being an American man at that time (or an Aussie mate). Okay, Hope does
some fine things, but I could also point to the poem on Susanna and the
Elders.
As to Olson, I guess it's my background: I needed someone thinking that way
about poetry, but then I started out in open form. And I recall that Daphne
Marlatt was a student of his at one time, & although she later recognized
that he didn't always appreciate women's experimentation & writing, she
also clearly learned a lot from him & he apparently had no problem with her
as a poet in his 'course' (or whatever he would call what he did).
Both men are probably larger than any particular critique of aspects of
their work or being could capture...
Douglas Barbour
Department of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton Alberta Canada T6G 2E5
(h) [780] 436 3320 (b) [780] 492 0521
http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/dbhome.htm
People, people -
ten dead ducks' feathers
on beer can litter . . .
Winter
will change all that
Lorine Niedecker
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