Feminist Poetry

[Silenced Chaos]

I love love love love Stevie Smith!

Quoting her very famous 'Not Waving But Drowning' will do no harm:

Not Waving But Drowning
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.


She mastered the ambiguity of identity there, so many possible explanations and at the end none of them truly satisfies.

[kelby_lake]

I doubt that: she seems incredibly skilled to me. This would explain why she is now the poet laureate and your dog remains, sadly, anonymous. :

http://nauplion.net/Medusa.html

Medusa is one of my favourite poems by duffy. I think everyone's felt that way at one time or another.

So-called 'feminist' poetry really annoys me. Yes, we know it's great and bad to be a woman but men don't whine on about the toils of being a man.

There's just poets that can say it far better, without dragging out the same metaphors and recycling them.

[JBI]

So-called 'feminist' poetry really annoys me. Yes, we know it's great and bad to be a woman but men don't whine on about the toils of being a man.

There's just poets that can say it far better, without dragging out the same metaphors and recycling them.

It's proportionality, and mixed politics - Feminist poetry is hardly monolithic - for instance, the French Canadian poet Nicole Brossard is a fantastic poet, whereas Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Nikki Giovanni, etc. all seem lacking. French feminism, in a sense, to me seems to hold more aesthetic capabilities - that is because, French feminism is completely different than its American counterpart - In the US, feminism, in discourse, acts as both a rip off of French feminism, and also a mixing between racial politics and pseudo-political movements, whereas in France it seems more capable of turning out good poetry. The distinction is perhaps best seen in the novel, if you compare, for instance, Alice Walker to Marguerite Duras, or in theory, if you compare Helene Cixous to Andrea Dworkin, or somebody, but in a sense, the Cixous model, put out in the Laugh of the Medusa seems quite stronger, as a theoretical model, than, for instance, the models put out by Elaine Showalter in England, the Canadian Linda Hutcheon, or the American post-feminist Judith Butler.

That being said, I don't deny that there has been poetry, rooted in feminist politics from any of these countries, but ultimately, as a theoretical model, something like the tradition built on Betty Friedan is going to be less capable of creating perpetually relevant poetry than one built on the theoretical model of someone like Simon de Beauvoir. By centralizing the body, and the subconscious, existential elements and sexual identity, as apposed to a sense of community shared by women, a sense of political movement and agenda, and a sense of sisterhood in opposition to patriarchy. In a sense, politically, both movements are very important, but when it comes to writing poetry, too much reliance on the later model, with little care for the former tends to spawn pretty mediocre verse - in today's day and age, I think most people who are reading verse, especially verse written by women, are almost entirely in support of equality for women already - even the most conservative critics, in terms of aesthetics, such as Harold Bloom, ultimately are in favor of equality for women - in that sense then, poetry as a medium for a political movement doesn't really seem to work - I'm a self defining feminist, I see no reason for me to really read a poem that encourages me to rise up against Patriarchy, though I am very interested, in contrast, in poetry that deals with female identity, a subject which is forever fascinating, as male identity is equally as fascinating, though is made fresher and therefore far more interesting by its lack of representation in the canon up until recent times.

In that sense then, I see no problem reading something like this as a feminist poem: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/page/poem4.htm

In a sense then, certain literary traditions treat feminism differently - I'd say more than half of the figures recognized as major to the Canadian canon (from the very first texts too, mind you) have, for one reason or another, been female, while the bulk of the male authors have, for one reason or another, held strong feminist attitudes. In that sense, the whole tradition is somewhat strange - the bulk of contemporary poets being of minority groups, and female, yet writing in a sphere that has essentially, almost unanimously absorbed feminism, creates a sort of model that, rather than encouraging change through poetry, seeks to break free of the confines of the unpoetic world, into the unrepressed diegesis of the poetic world. The verse then, is written with the assumption that the reader almost always already agrees with the politics behind the poem - with that out of the way, the argument is able to change to more interesting topics - how one is shaped by the exterior of the poem, and the real world politics, rather than a focus on how the poetic world can be used as a medium to change the real world.

In the US, things seem to be different, for some reasons, many of them rooted in, essentially, the way social change seems to work in the US. You get, for instance, your African American Feminist poetics, which work in contrast to your White Feminist Poetics, which in turn are different than your Chinese-American poetics, which, together with the former three, are put in contrast with their lesbian counterparts in respective traditions, and are labeled heterosexist, racist, or whatever in turn. The actual grouping, in terms of American criticism and poetics, seems to be more central than the actual poet - the act of being part of a major movement is more central to American poetics than elsewhere, and therefore the association of poet with movement is made to dominate much of the discourse, so that, in turn, poetry functions more as a manifesto than as a testimony or personal reflection, or a subconscious insight spilling free onto paper.

On another note, how do we decide if a poem is feminist or not? is this one, for instance: http://thomashardy.blogspot.com/2008...-of-kings.html and in the original French: http://membres.lycos.fr/poetesse/sou...heberta05.html a feminist poem? We can't really define too well what feminism, relative to poetry means, other than to know the ones with overt political tones are feminist - the problem then, becomes, in terms of discourse, deciding what is feminist and what is not - in that sense, I think people just assume everything written by a woman to be feminist, which is, or could be argued, incorrect, yet creates problems (and Ph. Ds)

[Helga]

there are many famous Icelandic feminist poets but I love one quite opposite by a man who only wrote one book of poetry about feminist hens.. very clever and funny

[MANICHAEAN]

What is a highbrow?
Is it a man who has found something more interesting than women?

[meh!]

So-called 'feminist' poetry really annoys me. Yes, we know it's great and bad to be a woman but men don't whine on about the toils of being a man.

There's just poets that can say it far better, without dragging out the same metaphors and recycling them.

Yes they do, it's called poetry. What's John Donne doing if not whing about being a man? He's whining about being a person, ie a man as far as we're concerned.

Hate duffy all you want, but don't hate her because she's a so-called feminist. I really don't see anything in that poem that's doing anything except being honest about a relationship.





I wouldn't trust any woman that isn't a feminist, to be honest. Or any man.

[kelby_lake]

Yes they do, it's called poetry. What's John Donne doing if not whing about being a man? He's whining about being a person, ie a man as far as we're concerned.

Hate duffy all you want, but don't hate her because she's a so-called feminist. I really don't see anything in that poem that's doing anything except being honest about a relationship.

I wouldn't trust any woman that isn't a feminist, to be honest. Or any man.

There's nothing wrong with complaining about being a person. It's just women complaining about men, or being a woman, as if that's the only thing women can write about.
That Medusa poem wasn't the worst- but it's just another 'I feel compelled to whine to you about every aspect of my personal life, even the bits you probably didn't want to know'.

[meh!]

I just don't see where your problem lies; it seems imagined. Loads of poets 'whine' about their personal life non-stop. You just seem to be reacting against women doing it for some reason...

[JBI]

I just don't see where your problem lies; it seems imagined. Loads of poets 'whine' about their personal life non-stop. You just seem to be reacting against women doing it for some reason...

That's just pure ignorance - there is just as much whiny poetry by men as there is by women - in truth, there is probably more, since men have been writing poetry in large numbers for longer.

The question though, is what gets published - I'm not going to speak for the US, but Canadian feminist poetry rarely works if it is whiny - as I have said before, it generally is very personal, yet at the same time,very relevant. The speaker of the poem ultimately needs to be someone who is both personal, yet at the same time, relevant to the readership because they see themselves within her, or can understand the situation.

But of course, cultural differences and politics are staggering - there is quite a bit of purely political verse coming out these days - I think, for instance, of Nikki Giovanni, who I would argue doesn't really write poetry at all, as a whiny sort of poet, self centered with her pseudo-politics. But you don't need to be a complainer to be a feminist, and not all women who complain are feminists. The two examples I posted above, for instance, aren't whiny poems, but I think they are very powerful - you are taking a small sample, and essentially applying it to all poetry.

The poet Erin Moure, for instance, who is really hard to post about here, since she is a very, very difficult and extreme poet who doesn't excerpt well - ultimately is informed by post-modern concepts of gender and sexuality. Yet at the same time, she doesn't sit there and whine about how life being a lesbian is terrible - she uses poetry as a means of expressing cultural preoccupations and obsessions and understanding how we construct certain concepts. Unless of course she isn't working with these themes, and is off writing on a million other subjects - the truth is, even if poets write a couple poems like this, it doesn't mean that a)all feminist poetry is like that, and b) all their poems are.


Now, back on that, how many crappy sonnets do you think there are whining about some woman or another? I think enough to preoccupy one for the rest of his life in reading them x 1000. How about poems written by men whining about how depressed they are, or how their "beloved" won't sleep with them. I know people who, for instance, consider Hamlet a whiner, and we know for sure that the poetry loving Orsino is most definitely a whiner, but should we cancel those plays, edit out those characters?

[kelby_lake]

Remember- Christina Rossetti

REMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.


Look- a powerful poem written by a female that doesn't whine about being a female, or whine about men! Male whiny 'woe is me' poetry doesn't annoy me as much because it's not all political and the man doesn't come off as being superior.

[JBI]

You should have posted Goblin Market - that one has been a favorite of mine for a long time !

[meh!]

That's just pure ignorance - there is just as much whiny poetry by men as there is by women - in truth, there is probably more, since men have been writing poetry in large numbers for longer.

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.

[meh!]

Remember- Christina Rossetti

REMEMBER me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land;
When you can no more hold me by the hand,
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day
You tell me of our future that you plann'd:
Only remember me; you understand
It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.


Look- a powerful poem written by a female that doesn't whine about being a female, or whine about men! Male whiny 'woe is me' poetry doesn't annoy me as much because it's not all political and the man doesn't come off as being superior.

Maybe we differ because you don't think women have legitimate issues to write about related to being women? Grievances or praise. ie you think they should 'just write' not 'write as women'?

This argument we're having is bizarre, you're referring vaguely to 'women/female poetry - maybe some of it sometimes' and making statements about it. It's very hard to argue back because you're not saying anything specific.

[JBI]

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.

So in other words, since Duffy writes about the same topics as John Donne, she is ultimately comparable to John Donne?

Please, yeah right. She's a popular poetry icon who will be forgotten in a decade or so, and even if she had something, giving her a Poet Laureateship most certainly will kill that, as it did to every other poet who was good and held the post.


You cannot compare poets like that - if she is any good, ultimately, she won't be outright comparable to Donne - if she is a feminist, ultimately, her politics won't be in line with Donne, who, for all his worth, is quite obviously a misogynist even by the poetic standards of his day.

[meh!]

What? I said 'in that sense'. 'that sense' being where kelby is perceiving poems by men and women about the same subject differently.

You don't have to compare them in terms of quality, that's not the issue. If Duffy is 'whiny' for writing about personal issues, about love, then so is Donne. Don't like Duffy? Pick any female poet that writes about personal issues and there you go, same argument.