Thanks Tom. I understand that men are bound by gender, race,
religion, education etc just like anyone else. Why wouldn't they be?
Everyone is. I relish these bindings as much as I resist them:
they're useful & necessary.
One of the great things about hitch-hiking a ride with someone else's
set of cultural limitations is that you get to catch a glimpse of
your own. I never understood the degree to which my experience was
imbued with the values and history of Christianity until I lived in a
Muslim culture.
It's weird when the members of one group interpret their experience as
universal simply because they have maintained homogeneity in the
group, or hegemony in the society, or economically.
Values like metaphors and a sense of humor work only when a community
agrees to share them. In a sense though gender, class, race, etc are
the great friction-makers, the great "there's the rub"-ers (!), the
great scout spark that makes the blaze.
Sometimes it almost seems that women are perceived to be marked by
gender or Africans are marked by race or the poor are marked by class
while a White middle-class male is free of such markers. But that's
obviously nonsense from everyone's point of view, including the White
middle-class male's. I feel like I'm hallucinating even to remember
such a way of thinking. Maybe I dreamt it.
Humor is a great thing. We take our gender so seriously. Even on the
Internet, where as Peter said, the opportunity is certainly there to
play with gender, very few people do. I wonder sometimes about the
masqueraders among us but if they're decent skins I accept them as
women/men etc although their gender in the real world may be
different. Much as I accept anyone as Irish if that's what they lay
claim to.
Everything you say about Maine is very interesting to me. I spent a
few days in Orono last year, and did my first major (!) highway
driving in that state.
I think I found your notebooks in Providence! I'm using them anyway!
Mairead
On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 23:36:32 -0500, Thomas Fallon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Mairead -
>
> I would agree with your points here. There are women's subjects
> which can be universally expressed. However, they can also relate
> only to women, which is not a bad thing.
>
> Until you mentioned this point I had not thought that perhaps men
> have "male" focused subjects as well.
>
> The fear I have is that we will be bound by sex or gender, race,
> religion,
> even education, etc., and think that can happen. No one holds the keys
> to the kingdom although I think our categorizing tends to press us
> in that direction.
>
> I might say that Maine US has a problem in that the women are
> very conservative formally. Added to the men, by the way. This
> was not the case in the Seventies when a group came from away
> to really jumpstart literature here. However, those days are over,
> and many of this group have been "assimilated".
>
> So, while the women have done well relative to editing - and
> they have - neither they nor the men have encouraged very serious
> experimentation. In fact, they have strongly resisted this in
> discussions.
> Those who were once in favor of experiment are now "assimilated"
> in conservative literary magazines and academic environments.
> This is not the case outside the state I understand.
> -------
>
> I spent a semester at RISD and dropped out because I was confused
> by life. I began to write from those days in small pocket notebooks
> seeking answers. I am now living in Maine.
>
> Tom
>
> On Wednesday, January 5, 2005, at 10:16 AM, mairead byrne wrote:
>
> > I take your points, Tom. For me it's not really a matter of
> > superiority. It comes down to a few things. The first is subject
> > matter: Some subject matter only gets into poetry and vice versa when
> > the particular people whose experience it is
> > bring it forward. A classic example is childbirth which was not a
> > subject for poetry in English (with the possible exception of Anne
> > Bradstreet) until the 20th century, when women poets made it a
> > subject. Men wrote about death but not birth. As a result we have
> > great elegies but no name for a poem written to celebrate birth. I
> > invented the term "magnificat," it's very Christian-bound culturally
> > which is a limitation. The other two things, for me, are formal
> > experimentation / variation and the economy of the poetry business. I
> > have addressed the second of these already, in my last post:
> > Basically, as a woman poet I want to be "employed" as much as
> > possible: a critical mass of women in the business is the effective
> > way of achieving that; hence my interest in the inclusion of women in
> > the various fora.
> > The point about form relates to how those coming from outside a
> > tradition, in some respect, change and re-make that tradition. Women
> > poets have certainly brought huge formal innovation to English poetry,
> > as well as the crucial gifts of new subject matter and the consequent
> > new relationships with audience. These are my thoughts on the matter;
> > I continue to be informed.
> > Mairead
> >
> ****************************************
> If a man does not keep pace with his companions,
> perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.
> Let him step to the music which he hears, however
> measured or far away..........Henry David Thoreau
>
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