Those are interesting points Alison. In Canada at least, my, probably
unfounded, sense of things, is that, for the past couple of decades anyway,
we have had at least as many, if not more, major women poets than men. I
don't know why.
I will say this; I do know that I belong to the first generation of male
poets, some of whom, bpNichol, & me, at least, know that many of their most
important mentors are women. For me that group includes Phyllis Webb,
especially, Margaret Avison, Daphne Marlatt, Denise Levertov, & recently,
especially reading the great Collected Works this summer, I am learning
much from Lorine Niedecker (since we never stop learning, do we?).
bp certainly turned to Gertrude Stein (always there for everyone now, on
some level?), in prose as well to Sheila Watson, whose one novel more or
less made real modernism in fiction possible in Canada, Webb, of course,
and many others.
Of course, there were many important male mentors too...
Doug
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
not random, these
crystalline structures, these
non-reversible orders, this
camera forming tendencies, this
edge of greater length, this
lyric forever error, this
something embarrassingly clear, this
language we come up against
Kathleen Fraser
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