I think it will go into mine as well even if they are already bursting. What
an exceptional student you have Frederick, congratulations.

On Dec 27, 2007 8:12 PM, sharon brogan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> This is going in my 'save' file.
>
> Thank you for this.
>
>
>
> On 12/27/07, Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Janet Jackson" <[log in to unmask]>
> > To: <[log in to unmask]>
> > Sent: Wednesday, December 26, 2007 9:48 PM
> > Subject: Re: SNAP: He follows her with his voice; she sees him with her
> > skin
> >
> >
> > > On 27/12/2007, Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > >>
> > >> >
> > >> I like this.  The intensely tight focus, right up to the skin, makes
> it
> > >> more
> > >> convincingly sensual.  I wish I did sensual.
> > >>
> > >
> > > Ah, but many people do sensual (including me). Doing 'dry' as well as
> > Fred
> > > is what's unusual.
> > >
> >
> >
> > Thanks for the kind words --- I do wish, however, that I could readily
> "do
> > sensual."  I mean more than as a way of fleshing out a narrative or an
> > abstraction.  Wrote a few love poems, but that was years ago.
> >
> > In my teaching I make a distinction, which I think is useful, between
> > "love
> > poems" and "poems about love."  My students, both introductory and
> > intermediate, write reams of what they think are the former but are
> really
> > the latter.  If love means an intense focus on and concern for the
> > particular identity of another person, there actually are very few love
> > poems; most what goes by that name focuses only on the speaker's own
> > sensations.  Which leads towards Auden's remark: "Ladies, if he writes
> you
> > a
> > good love poem, mistrust him; for if it's good he was thinking more of
> it
> > than of you."
> >
> > What follows is correspondence with one of my intermediate-poetry
> > students.
> > My course had ended, but others only finished 12/19.
> >
> >
> > From: Liz A.
> > To: Frederick Pollack
> > Sent: Saturday, December 15, 2007 6:17 PM
> > Subject: Thanks and a Random Request
> >
> >
> > Hey Professor Pollack,
> >
> > Thanks for the feedback on my last poem and the two reviews. I was
> > wondering
> > if I could ask you a couple of questions for a paper I am writing for
> > Womens
> > Studies. If this is a problem I completely understand. thanks a lot and
> I
> > hope you have a wonderful holiday season.
> >
> >
> >
> > ~Liz
> >
> > 1. Do you feel you can tell whether a speaker is male
> > or female based only on how or what they write? If so,
> > what markers do you use when coming to your
> > conclusions, assuming the work is anonymous or has no
> > name which points to gender?
> >
> >
> >
> > This is a hard question to answer because I'm unsure of its
> > parameters.  By
> > "speaker" do you mean a student, or any writer?  I'll assume the latter.
> > Also, is "writer" meant to include both poets and prose writers, or does
> > it
> > mean only the latter (as it usually does)?  In contemporary prose,
> there's
> > a
> > great deal of overlap.  If  presented with ten New Yorker stories with
> > authors' names removed, I'd feel sure of the gender of perhaps four
> > authors.
> > Markers?  Clothes are a dead giveaway.  Women describe what their female
> > characters are wearing, and seem to assume that outfits reveal, not only
> > social class, but mood and even character.  To women, perhaps, they
> > do.  In
> > prose by women, male characters tend to think about women they love the
> > way
> > women in love think of their men: i.e., in depth and at length.  To a
> male
> > reader, that's another sure marker.  Kingsley Amis once said, in a poem
> > about women's writing: "Man's love is of man's life a thing apart. /
> Girls
> > aren't like that."  The principle holds even for men who are deeply in
> > love,
> > who would die sooner than lose that love.  The emotion - at least in its
> > conscious aspect - is compartmentalized, even when that compartment is
> the
> > most important.  Love occasions an internal discretion (or confusion and
> > silence) rather than self-examination.  For other differences I sense
> > between men's and women's prose, see #5 below.  In poetry the difference
> > feels clearer, but several factors obscure it.  In the style of the
> > current,
> > institutionalized or academic, avant-garde, the "I," narrative, and
> easily
> > readable syntax are suppressed; emotion (if any) and gender are
> therefore
> > harder to discern.  In England, the mainstream poetry scene is very
> > male-dominated, and women poets adopt - even when protesting this fact -
> > the
> > prevailing mode of glum, dry wit.  In American mainstream poetry,
> > traditionally feminine values of emotional "openness" and "sensitivity"
> > prevail.  Yet on the whole, female poets seem interested in love and the
> > mechanics of their emotions per se; for men, these generally represent
> > more
> > abstract themes.  Women may become ironic about emotions, but one
> doesn't
> > feel, as with male poets, that emotions are there as a pretext for
> irony.
> >
> >
> > 2. In your work with students at GW do you feel there
> > is a default guy poem? A default girl poem?
> >
> >
> >
> > The imaginative life of the average male adolescent is a video game;
> that
> > of
> > the average female, a Teen Romance novel.  I state this fact to my
> > introductory students, to instill a healthy self-doubt.  The default guy
> > poem is vaguely about frustration, love, loss, or grief, in that
> > order.  Its
> > speaker usually suffers, almost never inflicts, violence.  The speaker's
> > suffering "I" is the only real thing in the universe; what causes his
> > suffering, including the love-object (if any), is obscure.  The default
> > girl
> > poem is vaguely about love, grief, or loss, in that order.  Its speaker
> > suffers emotionally.  That suffering is the only real thing in the
> > universe,
> > though it is inherently beset by various obscure forces, including the
> > love-object (if any).  It should be stressed that these default poems
> are
> > always excruciatingly bad.
> >
> >
> >
> >   3. Do you feel that males and females learn how to
> >   write differently?
> >
> >
> >
> >   Again, the parameters of the question are unclear.  Girls are
> socialized
> > differently.  They gossip; boys bullshit.  Girls' advantage, in terms of
> > creative writing, is that they are compelled from infancy to recognize
> the
> > reality and inescapability of relationships, of interpersonal (though
> > seldom
> > of social) bonds.  Boys are allowed, sometimes for their entire lives,
> to
> > regard any infringement of their solipsism as unfair.  Girls are still,
> to
> > a
> > great degree, the ones who are *expected to write outside of school, if
> no
> > more than thank-you notes.
> >
> >
> >
> >   4. Are there poetic techniques you see more in females
> >   and less in males, or vice versa?
> >
> >
> >
> >   Occasionally a young poet will project his or her narcissism outward
> and
> > write a political poem, religious poem, or a poem of ethnic, feminist,
> or
> > other ideological commitment.  The results are always rhetorical.  In
> > boys'
> > poems, the rhetoric is snide, angry, or violent; in girls' poems, merely
> > self-righteous.
> >
> >
> >   5. Anything else you wish to comment on, on the topic
> >   of men and women in the field of creative writing or
> >   about how your male and female students differ,
> >   specifically at GW. Thank you!
> >
> >
> >
> >   About forty years ago, a feminist writer whose name I forget (was it
> > Marge
> > Piercy? Germaine Greer? Doris Lessing?) wrote a parable about relations
> > between the sexes.  She portrayed them as those of a single couple, an
> > immortal Adam and Eve (though the writer didn't use those names).  Adam
> > was
> > committed to one simple idea, that death is more important than life.
>  Eve
> > refused to accept this idea, or even to understand it.  It couldn't be
> > understood, she felt, because it was so patently wrong.  Adam tried to
> > impose it on her.  He suppressed, hurt, and tormented her, trying to get
> > her
> > to accept it.  Eve survived his cruelties and constantly found ways
> around
> > his rules and dogmas, hating yet loving him all the while.  The struggle
> > continues.  Eve's hope is that, frustrated by her lack of compliance,
> Adam
> > will fall asleep, and will sleep long enough to wake up whole, cleansed
> of
> > his idea.  She will then lead him into a gentle, egalitarian, life- and
> > nature-affirming future.  When I read this parable I felt enormous
> > resentment, yet I realized the writer was on to something.  She's right,
> I
> > thought - I do believe death is more important than life.  It's more
> > important because it is more powerful.  And I hate death and want to
> > defeat
> > it.  Life is at *war with death; life can't be whole or fulfilled until
> > death is destroyed.  The writer (let's call her Eve) feels that life
> > defeats
> > death just by being: by multiplying, ramifying, filling ecological
> niches,
> > by having families and babies.  Life can even accept death, as a
> necessary
> > end making room for new growth.  The individual can learn to accept, to
> > value, going back into the earth or Nature.  I won't.  I can't.   I
> affirm
> > life (or my life) by fighting death however I can.  This affirmation may
> > even require embracing death, marching into its bullets in the name of
> > some
> > cause.  The concept "glory" is real for me - though most of its supposed
> > instances are ingloriously stupid, and the causes that invoke it,
> vicious.
> > It occurred to me that both Eve and I were right, though our truths were
> > incommensurate.  Incommensurate truths are what tragedy is about; and
> > life,
> > including relations between the sexes, is tragic.  But these relations,
> I
> > decided, need not be a battle.  Equality can be achieved, submission on
> > either side is unnecessary, if each learns to accept the other's truth
> *as
> > well as* his or her own.  In a dark but vital way, this recognition is
> > what
> > literature is about, perhaps what fuels it.  Sophocles has the Trojan
> > women
> > say, "How ye are blind, ye treaders-down of cities!"  Wilfred Owen looks
> > forward to a time "when each proud fighter brags / He wars on death for
> > life, not men for flags."  And Flaubert says, numinously, "I am Madame
> > Bovary!"  I dislike Jung and mean to imply no support for his idea that
> > the
> > soul or creative spirit in a man, the "anima," is female, and that of a
> > woman, the "animus," male.  I do, however, try to teach my male students
> > that the most important thing is, not feeling, but relationships; and my
> > female students that the most important thing is, not feeling, but
> action.
> >
>
>
>
> --
>
>
> ~ SB  | http://www.sbpoet.com |  =^..^=
>