Feminist Poetry

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Originally Posted by meh!

What? I never suggested that there wasn't. I don't see how you're disagreeing with me.

What i'm saying to Kelby is that his problem with 'feminist' poets seems imagined. He perceives 'whining' where, presumably, if the poet was male he would only see 'poetry'.

I don't understand why Duffy's poems about love are different from Donne's poems about love, in that sense. You make all the arguments you want about the quality of their poems, but you can't call Duffy 'whiny' without calling all poets who write about anything vaguely personal whiny.

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How rude- I'm female!!:eek: That is why it annoys me so. I am longing for some female writers to rival the male greats but alas no.

Anyway, Donne writes about far more than love and writes poetry in a nice way...Some of the stuff in 'Rapture' by Duffy is worthy (I think Text and Rain both work) but it's just same metaphor after the other. Yes, we know you're using rain as 'rain after the drought' sort of thing (and god knows the other interpretation...), but please don't put it in all your bloody poetry as if it's so groundbreaking.

Meh, Emily Dickinson > PK Page > John Donne.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

How rude- I'm female!!:eek: That is why it annoys me so. I am longing for some female writers to rival the male greats but alas no.

Anyway, Donne writes about far more than love and writes poetry in a nice way...Some of the stuff in 'Rapture' by Duffy is worthy (I think Text and Rain both work) but it's just same metaphor after the other. Yes, we know you're using rain as 'rain after the drought' sort of thing (and god knows the other interpretation...), but please don't put it in all your bloody poetry as if it's so groundbreaking.

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Hah, sorry. See that? That's patriarchy right there ;)

I just want to make clear, i'm not talking about the quality of the poetry. I don't think Duffy is as good as Donne (Donne is one of my favourite poets...). I'm saying I think there's something wrong with what you were saying generally about female poets, i'm not particularly trying to defend Duffy particularly (though I do think she is skilled poet).

I just want more decent female poets! Of course there are some, but we need more! And they need to stop being hormonal.

You mean they, 'need to be more like men', sexist.

Sorry, I can't help arguing with you for some reason... :p:

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Originally Posted by meh!

You mean they, 'need to be more like men', sexist.

Sorry, I can't help arguing with you for some reason... :p:

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That's okay :P

I like men :)

I'm in the audience here and not really participating but I am interested nevertheless.

I think historically, in all things, men are considered to be the norm.

perhaps this explains the odd reaction toward female poetry-why it cannot be judged on its own merit.

It is strange. Whenever I read a book, until the narrator's gender is revealed, I always assume it's a man.

Indeed, which is gonna be part of the reason why some people will want to purposefully make an issue of their gender.

This is the second time in a couple of days that I get to mention Edna St.Vincent Millay.

I, being born a woman and distressed
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn wtih pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

Sylvia Plath's confessional poem "Daddy." It talks about "daddy" as both a god (for his power, not for his good attributes) and a devil.

Ironically I prefer feminist analysis of men's work, seeing as feminism is basically 'how are women perceived by society (i.e. men)?'. You get a far better insight into how women are seen. The problem with feminist works by females is that they try and generalise things, assuming all women either feel what they feel or are vehemently against it.

You seem to be generalising 'feminist' works now, when i don't really know any poets that write like you're saying.

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Originally Posted by kelby_lake

Ironically I prefer feminist analysis of men's work, seeing as feminism is basically 'how are women perceived by society (i.e. men)?'. You get a far better insight into how women are seen. The problem with feminist works by females is that they try and generalise things, assuming all women either feel what they feel or are vehemently against it.

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Depends - I think, personally, Elaine Showalter is boring beyond belief, but Camile Paglia is somewhat interesting - it all comes down to which theorist, and which books they are criticizing - no matter how propped up a text by a critic, if I can't help but feel the gender is the only thing they are really reading, I generally don't like the criticism.

In that sense, generally I gravitate more to radical feminist types, though not particularly to American ones, as I find American feminism very uninteresting in the mainstream.

I mean lets be honest - who actualy likes all those dug up 17th and 18th century female poets? I don't think people actually bother to read them in the text books either, just skip over them, unless they are taking a women writers course. Women, in terms of the English tradition, had been silenced until mid-19th century by my reckoning, with a couple good lyrics floating around before that.

In Italian poetry, though men dominate still, there is a female presence, and that perhaps is an interesting area to search, since the poetry is, and can be read as something other than a deceleration of being feminine in a male literary scene, quite publicly in the 16th century, before English verse had even kicked off.

In a sense feminist interpretation is interesting, but in another way, especially, as I said, with American literary critics, it can be tedious as hell, since there are always critics pining the same theories against every work, and coming up with the same boring results. I guess there are third rate critics of every type though, why not suspect feminist critics to be the same.

Though, I think in modern times feminist criticism as it was known in the 80s and 90s has since become dated discourse itself, with gender-stressing criticism taking more of a forefront - I guess it is only fair, if one is asking how women are constructed in a text, it is just as easy to ask how the critics assumption of gender is constructed, and how their emphasis on sexual difference drives them toward their conclusions on other works.

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Originally Posted by meh!

You seem to be generalising 'feminist' works now, when i don't really know any poets that write like you're saying.

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There are thousands upon thousands - search on any major database for any major poet + the word feminist and you probably will dig some up. Although, I will say that generally these sorts of readings function better in articles than in book length studies.