oh boy! I have to say something again!
So, when it comes to a woman (like Plath) she 'spill's her guts' but when it
comes to a man eg. like T.S. Eliot in 'The Wasteland' oh! no he doesn't
spill his guts, no, he writes the greatest poem of all century,
Could it be that these are the words of a happy man, with the first stanza
being; 1. The Burial of the Dead.  And in the poem he repeats  'What is the
wind doing? Nothing again nothing.' I guess the negative language and
sardonic tones, were, well, he was just kidding around, just trying to spike
up his poetry... like...

'By the water of Leman I sat down and wept
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song.

I think we are in rats' alley
Where the dead men lost their bones'

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
Out of this stony rubbish Son of man,
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is a shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.'

Man can muster all the emotional energy, suffering and language that he can
find into a great work and bravo! I say to the poet who wants to cry at his
desk while the ink puddles. Eliot even said 'The Waste Land' was 'the relief
of a personal and wholly insignificant grouse against life and just a piece
of rhythmical grumbling.' AND he also spent his life in a twelve year
unhappy marriage to a woman with psychological and addiction problems. David
Craig in 'The Defeatism of The Waste Land' suggested that 'The Waste Land
was 'a work which projects an almost defeatist personal depression in the
guise of a full, impersonal picture of society.'
He was going through depression when he wrote it. But when it comes to a
woman,  when she uses her 'female' voice, her language, her suffering she is
'spilling her ....what did you say?

>Spilling your guts in public is wearisome, whether the
>writer is male or female, especially if the material stems from
>misplaced emotion.  It works both ways I think -- it's not a gender
>issue of women being 'allowed' to say anything.  A shouty poet
>is a shouty poet, whether they're writing about politics, birth,
>death, relationships, whatever.  God knows I started out as a
>shouty poet myself . . . . . not a pretty sight.  Or sound.

So, if I can get this right, you are saying that someone like T.S. Eliot did
not help reshape modern literature, did not have the right to bring the
'emotional inner soul' into his work - that he was 'spilling his guts' and
was a 'shouty' man?

And on another point sir, women were concerned about Thalidomide. Women were
WORRIED! How would you like to bring a child into the world with no arms or
legs? She wrote about it - because, as Joseph Conrad said 'TO MAKE YOU FEEL,
that is, BEFORE ALL TO MAKE YOU SEE.' No matter what you think, the poet has
a right to attack the environment in which they find is repressive,
oppressive, subjugated, flawed, polluted, over-populated, threatened by war,
threatened by tyrants and chemical warfare. Those poets who gave their lives
TO MAKE YOU FEEL suffered more than we will ever do in our lifetime. Also
they had a conscience, and were concerned about the world in which they
lived. I have the greatest admiration for both of them.

>Sure -- it also preoccupied a lot of men who happened to be
>fathers of Thalidomide children.  To take childbirth as a subject
>for poetry is one thing -- to take the Thalidomide tragedy and
>turn it into another 'monstrosity', as was Plath's habit according
>to the nature of her muse, is quite another.  She wrote about it
>because, it seems to me, it had a grotesque appeal for her.
>This I find not just wearisome but rather sick.  Like the yew tree,
>'it had a Gothic look'.  And treated no differently from a small cut
>to her thumb.

Sleep tight!
HH

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