I have tried and tried to write from a feminine point of view too. It's
not so easy because language, despite its fantastic capacity for change,
is also very conventional, and poetry is in some ways the keeper of its
conventionality. Even when writing poems on subjects which are specific to
the experience of women, e.g., childbirth, it is damned difficult to find
a point of view, set of metaphors, form of address, which is specifically
feminine. Or maybe what I mean is, it is damned difficult to find an
audience. I think a woman writing poetry is in a type of postcolonial
position, where there is less question of a woman's point of view than
articulation in a mixture/concatenation of voices. I think it
is a hell of a lot easier for a woman to write from a masculine point of
view, or just to ventriloquize for the fun of it, than it is for anyone
to write from a feminine point of view, all the more so when feminine is
associated with low-voiced, or quiet, or completely silent. I think the
combination of narrow definitions of femininity and an underarticulated
tradition, and of course an audience which is significantly male and
therefore not predisposed to listening to a woman's point of view, make it
hard to write poetry from a feminine point of view. On the other hand,
the twentieth century was a century where the struggling forward of the
feminine point of view was probably at the base of every major breakthrough
aesthetically; also, the tradition of poetry by women is being
constructed retrospectively; and of course, audiences with specific
interest in poetry by women are being made. So I have cheered even
myself up: it should be getting fairly possible to write poetry from a
feminine point of view -- round about tea-time tomorrow, I would say.
Mairead
On Sat, 28 Jul 2001, Chris Hayden wrote:
> Annie wrote:
> >
> > > Anyways, to cut myself off before I write anymore, what is your take on
> > > modern writers and femininity, and can men write like a women.
>
> I have tried and tried to write from the feminine point of view, and it
> always comes across as false. I have been much more successful when writing
> as a male appreciating a feminine point of view.
>
> CH
>
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