I once heard Adrienne Rich (it was somewhere around the publication of
Diving) lament to an audience that her sons, then both under twelve,
weren't daughters, which I thought rather odd. I've never understood or
been able to recognize the female voice thing, and it's not for want of
trying, altho I certainly understand the circumstances and emotions that
might lead one to propose it.
The revolt against the rational in poetry in favor of "the subconscious" is
a cyclical phenomenon. It was most clearly enunciated by Jacob, Apollinaire
and the Surrealists and Dadaists who followed them. Irrationality has never
been an exclusively female prerogative--virtually that entire crowd was
male, alas (but not to forget Gertrude Stein), altho variously gendered.
Hacker, who can't dance, might learn something from them and the scores of
poets, female and male, who have followed.
Mark
At 08:54 PM 2/4/2001 -0000, sevanthi ragunathan wrote:
>>From: [log in to unmask]
>When
>>I hear phrases like "female voice" I sniff the same old trap again - and
>>yes, there it is decorated with love hearts and smelling of lavender -
>>and at the end is the same old pile of laundry -
>...
>>Poetry surely seeks to destroy that artificial line between "intellect"
>>and "emotion". It's feeling intelligence or intelligent passion.
>
>
>Katha Pollitt has an excellent essay on this called Gilligan's Island. But
>since this is a poetry list, let me quote Marilyn Hacker:
>
>Then the advocates of Feminitude
>--with dashes as their only punctuation--
>explain that Reason is to be eschewed:
>in the Female Subconscious lies salvation.
>Suspiciously like Girlish Ignorance,
>it weems a rather watery solution.
>If I can't dance, it's not my revolution.
>If I can't think about it, I won't dance.
>--Marilyn Hacker, Graffiti From the Gare St. Manque.
>
>
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