On 30/8/05 1:01 PM, "Mark Weiss" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 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?
I said the poem - perhaps I should post the whole of the sequence, though
it's quite long - was political, in the particular, not unusual sense I
meant, not that it was a "political statement". As for the former, that
seems to me to be obvious. At least, there are many people who seem to have
had no problems at all in reading it that way. I have no interest at all in
making "statements", which is something PR flacks do.
> So, unless I am
> misreading you, Alison, I think it's pushing it to render the exploration of
> traditional - albeit ignored - forms as an automatically progressive,
> liberating act, feminist or otherwise.
Stephen, did I ever make that claim? And I most certainly wasn't speaking of
any gender/metre thing, though that may be something Annie has spoken of; I
was talking simply about using given forms with certain associations in
potentially subversive ways. A common enough practice, surely; and one that
can be bent towards feminist concerns as much as any other. The particular
poem I posted is, among other things, an essay in form, like all the poems -
even the freest of free verse ones - that I write, and most certainly
employs a "high" diction; but it does not use traditional forms, nor is it a
sonnet.
Best
A
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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