The recent discussion about Katherine Anne Porter’s Morning Song on the ‘Poem Of The Week’ thread raised a number of issues relating to feminism. Obviously women are biologically different from men but they also have different physical experiences (childbirth and menstruation) and different cultural and ideological forces shaping them. Does this result in different writing?
In The Semiotic and the Symbolic, Julia Kristeva links ‘feminine’ discourse with the pre-linguistic ‘babble’ of the child before it enters the ‘symbolic’ system of language. I’ve only dipped into Kristeva and Cixous but find the former far more interesting than the latter, whose work seems to focus on challenging ‘phallic’ discourse and producing the same polarity that she finds objectionable about such discourse but this time in favour of women’s bodies.
While flicking through a book of women’s poetry, I came across this poem by New Zealand poet, Fleur Adcock. Is it me or is this not only a fabulous piece of writing but also a kick in the teeth to the likes of Mr John Donne and the Metaphysicals?
The Ex-Queen among the Astronomers
They serve revolving saucer eyes,
dishes of stars; they wait upon
huge lenses hung aloft to frame
the slow procession of the skies.
They calculate, adjust, record,
watch transits, measure distances.
They carry pocket telescopes
to spy through when they walk abroad.
Spectra possess their eyes; they face
upwards, alert for meteorites,
cherishing little glassy worlds:
receptacles for outer space.
But she, exiled, expelled, ex-queen,
swishes among the men of science
waiting for cloudy skies, for nights
when constellations can’t be seen.
She wears the rings he let her keep;
she walks as she was taught to walk
for his approval, years ago.
His bitter features taunt her sleep.
And so when these have laid aside
their telescopes, when lids are closed
between machine and sky, she seeks
terrestrial bodies to bestride.
She plucks this one or that among
the astronomers, and is become
his canopy, his occultation;
she sucks at earlobe, penis, tongue
mouthing the tubes of flesh; her hair
crackles, her eyes are comet-sparks.
She brings the distant briefly close
above his dreamy abstract stare.
Fleur Adcock
Brilliant – exceptionally clever and with a purpose.