I thought I sent this message last night but, as it hasn't shown up on my
email, I can only assume something went wrong. A little late but here it is
-
I accept that at a certain point in time it may be important for poets,
indeed writers generally, to explore a articular shere ofexperience - I'm
thinking of the War poets, whose work Yeats excluded from the
anthology of Modern Verse he edited - not a suitable subject for poetry
apparently. The same has been trueof women but I'd argue that the gap has
been filled, the case has been made. In some instances one
could even say it's been too easy - the sort of sensitive lyric about
'feminine' (gritting my teeth here)subjects like childbirth and rearing
seems to sit to well with an idea of femaleness I thought we were trying to
get rid of.Not to mention that parenthood is a complex and demanding
experience - there's a poem by Gwen Harwood most Australianlist members
would know, I only wish I could remember the title -but it ends with a young
mother saying of her children - they have devoured me.
But sooner or later it's time to move on and this is where it should get
interesting, and it has. When I think f the women poets (and I hate thinking
in those terms) whose work I respect (do we need names, say
Dickinson, Niedecker, Notley, Howe and Howe, Stein, whose work I don't know
well but who really ought to bementioned), they have moved beyond a defined
sphere of female experience without sacrificing
whatever accrues from gender. And I've never been sure quite what that is.
I've always thought and felt it's mre meaningful to say I'm a human.
Finally, if it is possible that women might bring something new to poetry
(of course, why must it just be one thing-) it won't be by writing about new
subjects in an old way, expressing a paradigm of the poet as sensitive
individual that,if probed, would probably reveal itself as grounded in the
cultural biases of'masculine' society. Rather, it will be by atempting new
ways of thinking (this is already happening), new forms perhaps and yes, new
and better words.
(Sorry about the little typing glitches - there's a good reason but I won't
go into it.)
best
Geraldine
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