> That the passion is for other women seems less important than that it
> sings.
>
> Doug
I'd almost entirely agree with you here, Doug, except that I think the
assertion or implication of gender-identity can often be quite crucial in
poetry -- the difference between Cavafy's love poetry, and Auden's, for
instance.
And while it's impossible exactly to map gender roles between Ancient Greece
and today, ignoring them manages to spoil the point of one of the funniest
(and wry, sad, and complicated) of Anacreon's epigrams, which turns on how
he's {generally considered to be} [in our terms] gay:
(my translation:)
ANACREON: Fragment 15
That blond-haired boy, young Eros
Has tossed me his ball,
Sent me to play catch
with the girl in laced sandles.
No luck however; she's from Lesbos,
That fine island, turns me down flat
Since my hair has gone grey,
pants after her other.
Then there's Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 ...
Somewhere, Tom Paulin talks about "the clitoral tic of an accent," and isn't
it Wallace Stevens who asserts the Sweet Particularity Of Things?
Robin
[Once Scotland's Only Lesbian Poet -- sorree, couldnt resist that!
<g>
R ]
|