One thing this discussion has made me do, is go back and read Hope and
Olson. It's always a delight, may I say, to re-read poetry that has been
sitting on your bookshelf for awhile. There you are studying them again
-trying to figure out what they *were on about.* I studied Olson and will
never forget firstly being shocked by his poem 'Hymn to the Word' - which to
my mind contains all the *hot* four letter words, but the alliteration
works. I thought at the time, ooooooh naughty man, and oh well, somebody had
to do it.
This era (Olson 1910-1970) has to be put into perspective. It was before
political correctness and discriminatory issues against women (esp. in
language). Clearly both Hope and Olson were experimentalists, not
misogynists. (Could someone please show me in their poetry where they hated
women?). Any current critique can look back and come up with many a male
writer who could be labled a troglodyte. But what's the point! Surely the
exercise is to look at poetry in its historicism, rather than putting the
poet into a certain category. Or Hope might say you are *digging at his
bones.* You can only get away with this on the internet, you know! In any
other media you could be sued for defamation of character.
I like this poem of Olson's. It's one of my favourites.
The Perfume/Of Flowers!
The perfume
of flowers! A haw
drops such odour
it stops me
in the wall
of its fall. Love
Arrests
Lime-trees
saturate
the night. We walk
in it
On a path jonquils
fill
the air. Love
is a scent.
HH
> >
> >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
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com
|