>Thanks Alison. What I suspect is that Laura Riding saw herself as the Muse
>in a similar way to Kathleen Raine nowadays.
The big trap of the idea of the Muse for women, certainly in Graves'
model, is to be the Muse. If Kathleen Raine thinks that (does she
really?) I would say it's a problem. Graves tries to deal with women
poets in The White Goddess, and doesn't quite know how how to; though, to
be fair, he vocally supported the abilities and rights of women to the
sacred duty of poetry, etc - certainly as far as Laura Riding was
concerned. But the Goddess always got him in knots; because for a woman,
where is that erotic thrill of difference, the desire and the horror?
For a man who believes in such things, the Muse is utterly Other; for a
woman, it is simply the Self.
It might explain Riding's vanity, perhaps: although it's a defensive
vanity. Being a woman poet must have been much harder then, and how
seductive the idea must have been of, not only being a poet, but being
Poetry itself.
Best
Alison
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