Roger, I bet my bottom dollar that there are many cases where you
_can't_ tell the gender of the poet. I feel a bit depressed by some
things in this conversation, it's the other face of Luce Iriguay's
absurd claims about women's language. Of course there is difference,
but it exists within the sexes as much as between them. I might have
more in common with some men than with some women. Human beings are
much stranger than most people think.

Are you so sure that you can t ell whether a person is a man or a
woman in the first place? There are lots of women who pass as men, and
lots of men who pass as women, and a myriad of other variants.

The idea of the androgyne in writing is also very ancient. It's
usually the man taking on feminine aspects, but of course it runs the
other way around. Just that the gender appropriations tend to provoke
anxieties among those who like to think the sexes are sure and
absolute, instead of performances of various kinds. Writing is one
place where you can play with these things. Jane, I don't "reject
femininity" - I have three children, for a start, and am perfectly
aware that women and men have differences, and personally rather like
them. But I do reject huge aspects of the socialisations and values
that are attached to those differences. I remember that Bloodaxe
anthology of British women poets, where I kept reading how women had
to keep that pram out of the hallway if they wanted to be proper
poets. Now it seems like the other way around, like you have to have a
pram in the hallway to have any credibility. In either case, what is
at issue for women is the definition, self or otherwise, against ideas
of masculinity and within ideas of femininity. Surely there are other
ways of imagining writerly selves that don't imprison us in the merely
reactionary or ideas of the proper or proprieties that disempower us?
(Thanks for mentioning Sarah Kane, Rupert). Isn't there still
something to be learned, for example, from Frederick Douglass's
appropriation of European rhetorics of freedom to argue for the
freedom of slaves?

Btw, Zoe, what is a "passive" or "active" lyric? Loy's poem strikes me
as a performance of femininity, perhaps an ironic performance; but is
there something in the language itself that indicates that? I can't
see it. Or is it just what the poem is "about"?

All the best

A


On 9/30/06, Roger Day <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> That doesn't mean that female poetry & male poetry should face off
> against each as huge blocs - it's just that you can probably tell the
> gender of the person who wrote a particular poem.
>
> On 9/29/06, Roger Day <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > You take the word frequencies used by groups of female and male poets
> > writing within the same culture.  I'm willing to bet those frequencies
> > will be different. It would be a good test.
> >  After all, people claim they can tell individual authors from
> > sampling their work.
> >
> > Roger
> >
> > On 9/29/06, Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > > I do feel hostile to the idea of "male poetry" and "female poetry". I
> > > mean, what? Do you get told off if you're not a proper woman? How do
> > > you sex a poem?
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > http://www.badstep.net/
> > http://www.cb1poetry.org.uk/
> > Suspicion breeds confidence
> >
>
>
> --
> http://www.badstep.net/
> http://www.cb1poetry.org.uk/
> Suspicion breeds confidence
>


-- 
Editor, Masthead:  http://www.masthead.net.au
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com