How would I know that the poem is a political statement (except in the
sense that all statements are political) if I read it without your
prefatory remarks?
Mark
At 10:52 PM 8/29/2005, you wrote:
>On 30/8/05 12:19 PM, "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Not incompatible, but different categories. Female is a gender, feminism is
> > an ism. Your poem is from a female perspective. It may be useable in a
> > political context, but it's not written from that perspective.
>
>Interesting contention, but I would argue, very mistaken. To write in formal
>literary ways from a female perspective can be, in certain contexts, an
>extremely and consciously political act. It asserts certain things about
>both literature and experience that I can't separate from the sphere of the
>political, which in its broadest sense is, after all, the analysis and
>practice of power. If prevailing powers dismiss or erase certain kinds of
>experience as legitimate concerns of "proper" artistic expression, as part
>of a wider social constellation of attitudes which marginalise or
>sentimentalise such experiences, that is, to me, very much a political
>question. In my experience at the time - and subsequently - such an erasure
>is often the case with motherhood, which is an experience either
>sentimentalised or ignored. One response - not the only response, I hasten
>to say - is to couch it in terms of "proper" artistic expression. I would
>argue such an assertion is profoundly feminist.
>
>My oscillations around feminism - which is a very broad church, and covers a
>wide range of practices and ideologies - have to do often with this kind of
>problem: writing poems like this, instead of opening out the formalities of
>writing into marginalised areas of experience, trapped me as a "female" poet
>(the "AC writes poems of love and motherhood" thing, whereas I wanted to
>think of myself as a poet who writes about processes of consciousness). One
>can just end up back in the trap of being defined, first, by one's sex and
>sexual status. Whether one should be too responsive to myopias that one's
>poems are in fact arguing against is a moot point. Still, writing those
>things was important for me at the time.
>
>All the best
>
>A
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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