Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Sauce for the gander

Someone referred to me a website posting "formalist poetry by women." Folks have been trying to enlighten me for years, but I must be ineducable: it just hasn't worked. I still don't understand why such places and labels aren't offensive. You know, don't you, that if someone opened a site dedicated to "formalist poetry by men," it would be booed, hissed, reviled, and castigated for being openly, blatantly sexist. (It also would be ignored, but that's a different problem.) Why is this different?

I welcome answers, you know, though if they consist of little more than "you troglodytic brute," I'll just delete them.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am no expert, not even a poet, but I love visiting your site. Are women the minority in the world of poetry? Perhaps they feel they have to band together and show you men how it's done. Smile.

qua said...

Troglodytic brute? No more than Elizabeth Bishop is a troglodytic femme. At times double standards defy both explanation and understanding.

Richard Epstein said...

Lacy,

An "in numbers there are strength" sort of thing? Perhaps. But it's difficult to take poets-in-the-aggregate seriously. Movements and sisterhoods notwithstanding, poetry really is a one-person-at-a-time pursuit, and organization by gender seems an even sillier principle than most.

More snow for Conifer this weekend. Get ready.

Eloise said...

Perhaps because the last 1000 (2000?) years of mainstream poetry has been dedicated to formalist poetry by men, with a (very) few notable exceptions. If we are really talking equal opportunities I think that women have a far stronger case for single-sex collections, if purely to benefit from the strength in numbers.

Of course I believe in striving for the best poetry regardless of gender, age, race, sandwich filling preference etc. but we aren't quite at the point yet where that can truly happen and the odd women's site is only helping women poets to get to that first step so that they are on an equal footing with men that have the benefit of a rich history of dead white guys.

I hope that is a little bit more helpful than just calling you a troglodytic brute.

Richard Epstein said...

"Of course I believe in striving for the best poetry regardless of gender, age, race, sandwich filling preference etc. but we aren't quite at the point yet where that can truly happen"

But nothing else matters in poetry, which is made a poem at a time by a poet at a time. The obvious parallel to affirmative action seems to me a false one; no one is denying women access to pen and paper; and anyone (as you and I prove) can "publish" on the Web. It's hard for me to picture the weight of DWEMs keeping formalist women from blogging. Perhaps that merely proves that I myself am a near-DWEM.

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Richard Epstein said...

Naomi,

I could have done without that patronizing "sweetie" in your extended response. You don't have to be Andrea Dworkin to have your teeth set on edge by a tone like that. And I'm not sure I understand why postings on a site exclusively for formalistas would keep you from reading Robert Frost. Not even Donald Rumsfeld proposed that.

epsteinsternator said...

But nothing else matters in poetry, which is made a poem at a time by a poet at a time.

"No poet, no artist of any art, has his [!] complete meaning alone."

Not being initmately familiar with the genre of women's formalist poetry, this would be the best explanation I could hope for (though maybe not the *actual* explanation): that these poets are trying to define themselves w/r/t to a tradition of "women's poetry." Probably not exactly what TSE had in mind, and I have no clue what the tradition of "women's formalist poetry" would look like. No doubt it would reach all the way back to Homer.

A little late to the convo, but I've been busy fellowing.

Richard Epstein said...

I have no clue what the tradition of "women's formalist poetry" would look like.

It would look thin, really thin. Spanish fashion runway thin. Its greatest exponent, up there in her Amherst room eschewing tradition (32 times before swallowing), probably would disclaim it, and it would be stuck with the less-than-satisfactory Brownings, Millays, and Wylies.

I think that any great poet, man or woman, formalist or un-, would rather close ranks with the Fraternal & Sororal Order of Other Great Poets than pick her company by gender.