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Why I Am Not a Poet-Mom
Kwame’s post (below) got me thinking about, of all things, motherhood. Because he brings up our cultural identities as something both constructed (a narrative) and a given (we can’t choose it), and because the one aspect of identity I’ve ever been asked to write about was — not my race, or my nationality, my parents’ immigration, or my gender, but my reproductive status. Will you, I was asked, review some new poetry books about Motherhood?
No, I said. For several reasons.
1) The commodification of pregnancy and motherhood irritates me, and it’s unclear how poetry books “about” the subjective experience of mothering aren’t merely an offshoot of this.
2) The commodification of poetry books — which includes, among the more “experimental” players, organizing collections around a theme: it’s good marketing.
“But we live in the real world,” you say. “We package the experience, but there’s real value inside.”
Right, the real world — let’s talk about that. Even as the subjective experience of motherhood is endlessly parsed, there is almost no reference to the societal and technological changes being wrought upon our (women’s) biologies and how that might impinge upon this “identity.” But in this day and age, how can you claim motherhood’s centrality to female experience and ignore the larger forces at work to sever the female and the reproductive?
If that sounds too recondite, what about the reality of war and violence? While poems celebrate the sheer exquisiteness of infants and so forth, where is the political consciousness of other mothers and children trapped in far different circumstances?
So far as I know, there are no books, or even chapters in ordinary parenting books, that advise new mothers on how to deal with the problem of not being able to get through a newspaper without sobbing.
I’m not a political poet. But if being a mother confers an “identity” on me, it’s not one that has to do with language or poetry, but everything to do with politics. And increasingly, technology.
Posted in Group Blog, Politics on Wednesday, August 15th, 2007 by Ange Mlinko.
Comments (18)
I write this with all dur respect, but I must take issue with a number of your points here.
First, you do not seem to have a problem with writing about racial idenity, therefore, it seems inconsistant to your argument that you would be offended with asking to write about “motherhood idenity.”
I don’t know what poets you read, but I have never found a poem that celebrates infancy. Most of the poems in Not For Mother’s Only and particularly the essays in Grand Permission address the issues of the struggle of motherhood, which is a REAL one. I have some such poems in Coconut 7 that you could read. Many poems “about” motherhood are not about what you insist they are, they are poems about women whose souls and bodies — what Notley calls Doublings — have been divided. Women’s voices have been surpressed for so long. They have been unable to write about motherhood, sex, their bodies, lebianism, and so on.
I see what you mean about politics. But, I think you need further research. The three best women/political figures of our age (Akhmatova, Muriel Rukeyser and Denise Levertov) all wrote RELENTLESSLY about politics AND MORE THAN OTHER POETS they actually worked in the field. They were all mothers and both wrote about their sons.
But, you hint that women shouldn’t write about motherhood because of world suffering. By this arguement ALL POETS SHOULD only write about world-suffering right?
Finally, the arguement about the commodification is old. The Language poets are retired and I think we should put this arguement to rest and stop rehashing it like it is a new concept.
Besides, what is so wrong about selling a few books!
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Amen, Jennifer. Experience, in all its glorious subjectivity, is not only a valid subject for poetry, it’s a productive, entertaining and necessary subject. And what better experiences to mine than pregnancy, birth, motherhood and all its accompanying tears, puddles of vomit, placentas, piss, milk and other messes. I wish mainstream movies took a nod from poetry and did a better job de-sentimentalizing family life. This, itself, would likely have political consequences.
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Jennifer, why do you think I don’t “have a problem with writing about racial identity?” I find poems “about” racial identity just as boring as other self-consciously “identified” writing.
The 3 poets you mention are indeed exemplary poets, political and otherwise. But you miss my point if you think I mean that women shouldn’t write poems about their children. They should write whatever they want to write. But the minute they package it up and say “You’ll like this because you’ll *identify* with me,” I just laugh. I don’t “identify” with other women poets because they are mothers. I’m interested in what they bring to the field of poetry, the reading experience, the linebreak — things that are a hell of a lot harder to commodify, but are essential to poetry being an ART, not an alternative to memoir (for people who can’t write prose?).
And I am not a Language Poet. But I am bombarded with products pitched to me as a mother. A lot of fake products, fake conflicts (work vs. staying at home, anyone?), fake books. This is commodifying motherhood, and poetry books that package themselves as such do not deserve a pass from criticism just because poets *mean well*.
Best,
Ange
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Yes, and in fact, Josh, I think movies that do portray family life in all its complex and political messiness are indeed radical acts–witness SherryBaby, in which race, class, gender, sexuality, drug addiction, work, motherhood, etc. are all entangled in one incredibly problematic bundle (and it’s not one of joy).
Long ago, Ange, you took me to task in public for being politically naive, but at the risk of getting in trouble with you again, I want to say that there are many, many poet-moms who write about exactly the issue of mothering while sobbing through the newspaper–and poems which do so without offering simplistic “advice” about it, thank goodness. I also know of many poems by our generational peers about the ways in which “larger forces” impact motherhood and birthing…I’ve actually been writing about that a lot myself, as a homebirth activist for reasons that are deeply political and have everything to do with technology, among other things.
I for one am grateful for women writing about women’s lives–especially the unpleasant or unromantic details of real women’s lives that are always deserving of more literature. I think if you actually read (have you?) Not for Mothers Only, or Beth Ann Fennelly’s Tender Hooks, or Rachel Zucker’s last book and forthcoming book, or Laynie Browne’s, or others, not to mention the amazing books by Bernadette Mayer and Alice Notley and many, many others who view motherhood with the same shrewd, unsparing eye that they use for the rest of the world, and the same attention to the wildness of language used to describe such experience, you’d find poems that are extremely valuable, not just to other poet-moms, but to us all.
If it takes a good marketing effort–by a small, woman-run press–to get such poems out to the world, I say hurrah for that. Women–especially new mothers, who often feel isolated–deserve more and easier access to complicated literature about their lives, not less.
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My first impulse is to say Brava! In my 11 years as a mother, most of them single, I don’t think I’ve ever written on motherhood–mostly for lack of motivation rather than conscious avoidance. That said, I think Rachel Zucker has done an amazing job of grappling with her own experiences as a wife and mother in poems–and reading her, I’ve sometimes wondered why the absence of those things in my own creative life.
It’s possible that for all motherhood has changed me, there’s still a zone that remains untouched, and it’s that zone I privilege (maybe even defend), when I sit down to write.
That’s somewhat tangential to thrust of the original post, but I agree as regards motherhood and politics. Before my daughter was born, I still though war could justified in very limited circumstances. Now I find the physical and psychological torture war inflicts on children and adults alike entirely unconscionable, irrational, and incapable of ever producing a desirable result.
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Ange, Arielle -
I must confess I feel my puppet was in some way remotely responsible for your political fisticuffs as he tried to lump the both of you together as artists. Time however has served to prove Lester wrong on some points. Clearly you are in no way to be confused as artists.
I thank god or whatever (‘whatever,’ becauuse I am atheist) that Ange you are taking a resolute stand against the dreck-wave of this family values confesisonalism. Mommie poetry is still just more “I” poetry however you cut it, however fractured it is presented. This form of poetry, like 99% of confessional poetry banged out in the keyboard era, is a fundamentally uninteresting poetry. I speak as a stay at home attachment parenting dad for the last three years, one who even wrote a daddy poem. Once.
Never again. If I do, shoot me. Please.
What Howard Korder play was it? “Just because it happened to you doesn’t make it interesting.”
Ange you have demonstrated some serious artistic integrity here. I applaud you.
I’m not sure whether the problem is commodification *entirely* though that is part of it. Mothers are a target market and the identities of poet-moms help close the sale. I worry that in league with commodification is a larger problem, one that will last far beyond the point in time when all the po-commodity money ($50 in total) is spent. I think that our generation of poetry will be clogged with the all-time worst poetry and that taste in poetry is forever shifting towards crap confession.
There’s a lot of good poetry today and I know where to find it. But it just becomes harder to find, no matter how good retrieval technology gets. No I’m not saying it’s the end of poetry. It’s the end of nothing. But I’d like to work a little less to find more and more really amazing poetry.
Sorry moms, and dads, too.
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Is it possible that you are saying that “work v. staying at home” is a “fake” conflict?!
Also, I’m sick and tired of admirable linebreaks when the poet has nothing to say. It is as easy, in my mind, to “commodify” line-breaks as content. “Poet so and so writes a gripping verse with roughly 4 beats per line.” Wow, I’d rush right out and buy it!
I think that the ability of the reader/viewer to “identify” with some aspect of the work is much more essential to ART than line-breaks. You seem to deride the whole process or idea of identification. Why? Isn’t that the foundation of empathy and most of human understanding?
PS Thanks for the kind words, Ginger.
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Ange,
I think you misunderstood me, I didn’t say that you were a Language Poet — I said that your idea of commodification of poetry DERIVES from the LP, and, in part, Duncan, before them, as you probably know. It is an OLD topic that has been tested and overdiscussed.
I don’t see the appropriateness in comparing an anthology like Not For Mother’s Only to a diaper commericial. If you DO want to make the agruement against the commodity of poetry — poetry sells so little that it’s almost a non-issue.
Actually, I am not really into identity poetry either. I have a disability, and very few of my poems reflect it directly. I agree that identity writing can be tedious. But, any identity can be part of a person’s writing. I mean a person is black, or disabled or a mother, it would be a mistake to erradicate ourselves from our poetry.
I feel there is a deeper, unstated issue here. Are you against ALL anthologies: Lower East Side, African-American, Gay, whatever — or is it just motherhood? I wonder whether this is a touchy subject for you in the feminst realm of “We don’t want to be defined by our children.”
I write this with all respect, but I suspect that you wanted to ruffle feathers here …and you did!
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“not an alternative to memoir (for people who can’t write prose?).”
Also, this is a very low comment, and I wonder whose work it is directed toward — mine, Greenberg, Levertov, Ostricker, Zucker, Notley….I’m not sure who you mean.
If you want to play — play fair!
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Oh la, Where to begin? I spent the day at the Dutchess County fair, missing the rollercoaster right here.
Jennifer: I didn’t have anyone in particular in mind when I wrote “for people who can’t write prose;” most confessional poetry seems to beg the question: Why is this poetry? Why is this not prose? My thinking on “motherhood” poems is mostly an extension of my thinking on confessionalism. And I don’t care for most anthologies, no. Unless they are taking a specific stand on aesthetics. Then it makes sense to me.
Rachel: I can understand your sensitivity toward the topic, but I must point out that you completely contradict yourself in the same breath: “It is as easy, in my mind, to ‘commodify’ line-breaks as content. ‘Poet so and so writes a gripping verse with roughly 4 beats per line.’ Wow, I’d rush right out and buy it!” Well, clearly it *isn’t* commodifiable. As for “poets who have nothing to say” I have heard that objection to just about every poet I love, including Stevens, Moore, Ashbery, Creeley, Guest. I think you’d be hard put to say what James Schuyler “had to say,” but I believe it had something to do with weather. Sometimes it isn’t easy to sum up a poet’s themes: Time? Consciousness? Loss? Joy?
Arielle: I sincerely apologize for the tone of my earlier criticism. But our aesthetic differences stand. Of course I am familiar with much (though not all) of the writers you mention. I reviewed Grand Permission (ambivalently, to say the least) for the Poetry Project Newsletter; I have commented extensively on Mayer’s and Notley’s works. I think Fanny Howe’s essays on motherhood form something of an ideal stance for a woman who is truly invested in motherhood as an identity. But Howe’s motherhood is also imbricated with her Catholicism, and that brings a 2000-year-old tradition into the discussion. Talk about going beyond mere subjectivity!
Some friends have backchanneled to say that I’m wrong about the lack of social/political scope of some of the new poems on motherhood. (But somehow I think I’ve muddied the waters by even mentioning politics and technology. It was just a thrust against the merely confessional.) Of course, I haven’t read *everything* — if I wanted to, I would have agreed to review those books. Some peers I like, some I loathe, per the usual, regardless of their motherhood poems. I don’t read them for motherhood poems. I read them for a new experience altogether.
Thanks for the support, fellow aesthetes! Actually, Ginger implies something that could serve as the very ground of my criticism of identity poetry: I don’t think we choose our “themes” as much as they choose us. So when poets go on the attack with “I have Something to Say!” my bullshit detector goes off.
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Your argument is unconvincing and facile. In fact, it seems to me that you’re not saying much of anything, and I was stupid to be drawn into this. Obviously a poem isn’t good simply because it is “about” motherhood or some other topic. Is it good simply because of some aesthetic decision. The two must be connected. My “sensitivity” on this topic is not at all about “motherhood” poems but about content. I adore James Schuyler and would not dare to compare my work to his, but the impulse is, I think, the same. He’s writing about his world and I’m writing about mine. The children (who sometimes appear and sometimes don’t appear) in my poems are like the weather — they’re (t)here. Why are you and Patrick so worked up about “I” poetry? And is there even such a thing? Certainly the presence of the “I” is just one aspect or element in a poem along with form and structure and diction and argument and musicality and the poem’s relationship to other poems/ art forms, etc. Guest, Creeley and Ashbery write in truly fascinating ways about experience.
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Oh la, Where to begin? I spent the day at the Dutchess County fair, missing the rollercoaster right here.
Is this supposed to be a snide remark? I am confused. What exactly does this remark mean? Please don’t hate me, Ange, for I do not know you or your work! But, you seem to be someone more bent on insulting people and creating a division of poetry rather than making a comprehensive argument & you didn’t reply to many of the posed questions — i.e. you dropped the commodity agrument all together.
You don’t like identity poetry. Here’s what I don’t like, poets who decide that what they concieve of one kind of poetry is the best, and the rest is trash. There is nothing inherently “bad” about confessional poetry — or any other kind for that matter. Poems have to be judged individually.
I find your arguments very sophomoric. They are things we were arguing in under-grad school 15 years ago. I think to be critical of poets like Notley is disrespectful. I think you have no idea of what Zucker’s aesthetic is because if you look at her book, you will find that the poets derive from all schools.
My advice might be, if you want to argue intellectually, stop insulting people and making cheap shots. Also, open up you mind. Your views of what poetry is seem extremely narrow which is just not productive.
Best, Jennifer
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Patrick, I should not get sucked into this! I argee most poetry is crap but in addition to all the great dead people, have you read Andrea Baker, Kate Greenstreet, Adam Clay, Brice Covey, my work, Rachel Zucker, Notley, Fanny Howe, Nathaniel Tarn, Susan Howe, Marie Howe, Jorie Graham, Anslem and Edmund Berrigan, Charles Bernstein, MaryRose Larkin, Mary Higgins, Marcella Durand, Rachel Levinsky, Eleni Sikelois, Brenda Coultras, Lisa Jarnot, Edwin Torres, Monica de la Torre, Kristin Prevellet, Robert Hass, Seamus Heaney, Jaquac Roubaud, Anne Waldman, Eileen Myles, Mark Bibbins, Bill Kushner, Michael Palmer, Norma Cole, Lee Barlett and so on…
Surely you can’t hate all these!
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“O la…” was not a sarcastic remark, it was an exclamation. Why is everything I say taken so personally? Especially when, as you say, you don’t know me or my work? Many of my blog entries here on Harriet are part of a sustained questioning of lyric, confession, the purpose of poetry, etc. Yet you single out this one entry and see it as a personal attack. As far as I can see, I am the only one on this blog defending the notion of abstract lyric or poetry for its own sake. So who am I persecuting?
There were many responses, each response containing several points. I don’t see how I could respond to all of them, especially when it seems I am required to repeat myself.
I didn’t respond to your “commodity argument” because I didn’t perceive that you offered one. To quote:
“I said that your idea of commodification of poetry DERIVES from the LP, and, in part, Duncan, before them, as you probably know. It is an OLD topic that has been tested and overdiscussed. I don’t see the appropriateness in comparing an anthology like Not For Mother’s Only to a diaper commericial. If you DO want to make the agruement against the commodity of poetry — poetry sells so little that it’s almost a non-issue. Actually, I am not really into identity poetry either. …”
When you say the idea has been “tested and overdiscussed,” you merely assert, without proof, something that is still very much discussed, not least in the wake of the Poetry Foundation’s bequest (google “Poetry Foundation commodity”). Just look at the conversations on Harriet this week. And I didn’t compare _Not for Mothers Only_ to a diaper commercial — if you’re going to throw around accusations of bad faith (“O la…” as sarcasm?) then why don’t we begin with that diaper commercial? Anyway, if what you really wanted me to respond to was “poetry sells so little that it’s almost a non-issue,” I simply see that as a further dismissal of the notion that ideas matter — and that the packaging of poems under the heading of motherhood — or any other pretext of cultural identity — is a limiting idea. You don’t have to agree. Most people on this blog certainly don’t.
Where was I critical of Notley? All I said was that I had commented extensively on her works.
So it’s funny to be accused of sophomorism when I can’t even figure out where criticism of Notley and diaper commercials came from. Look, it’s unfortunate that Rachel posted her final post right shortly after my mom-post, but the juxtaposition is purely coincidental. I wasn’t singling Rachel out. I was singling an idea out. And there have been plenty of snide comments on this blog making digs at “my kind” of poetry which I could read a lot into, too. But it would be futile.
In the future, I will be sure to only talk about what I love, rather than what I don’t love. At least it brings out the people who agree with me … and we all love to be agreed with, I suppose.
I couldn’t possibly hate you, Jennifer. But I do want to be read accurately, and it’s hard for me to respond to accusations of hidden agendas, and embellishments such as “criticizing” Notley. I have no hidden agenda. It’s in plain sight: to champion a less popular sort of poetry.
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Ange,
i apologize. The Notley comment is unfair. I got the diaper thing from this quote:
“A lot of fake products, fake conflicts (work vs. staying at home, anyone?), fake books. ”
I thought by fake products you meant the stuff on TV ie diapers. I also think it’s not very fair for you to call books like NFMO fake books simply because they are not for you. If this is the book you mean.
I do disagree with you on the commodity of poetry in that felt like you were introducing it like a new idea & it has been written and discussed for years.
I also don’t agree that poetry with an “I” needs to be championed. That argument is old too — since the 50′s and actually MOST young people and small journals do champion the poetry you seem to like — unless I’m mistaken in reconizing that you like experimental, non=narrative poetry. In fact, it is impossibly TRENDY to like this poetry now! Ironically, the only institutions that champion “straight” poetry now are the ones like this one that you write for.
I have no accusations of hidden agendas. The only thing I think you may not be honest about is that the heart of this is that you feel demeeded as woman by putting your mother-identity forth. This is understandable and I oft feel it too — or am I way off base?
Finally, I can’t help feel like you’ve twisted the argument here. You didn’t say nice things thoughtout and now you’re the victim. When you directly criticize work that people are doing, how can they not take it personally.
I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but you made a point of mentioning your race at the beginning. Does this mean you have NEVER used your race as an advantage to get a job (including this one) or publishing? Most of us do at some time.
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“I also think it’s not very fair for you to call books like NFMO fake books simply because they are not for you.”
Hm, I called NFMO a “fake book,” did I? Let me get this straight. You hopscotch from a) my original post to b) a comment I make in response to another comment and presto! I am magically made to say things that are even more egregious than my original statement. You get an A+ in Sophistry!
“If this is the book you mean.”
As if, at this point in the game, I would have any intention of singling out a title for criticism. I would have to be *insane*. In fact, in my original post, I let the idea of “motherhood” poetry remain in the aggregate precisely as a reminder that the minute you label yourself, you cease to be an individual and become part of an aggregate; a package. But rest easy — all criticism dies herewith.
“I do disagree with you on the commodity of poetry in that felt like you were introducing it like a new idea & it has been written and discussed for years.”
Yes, women “feel” things sometimes. Especially at witch trials.
“Ironically, the only institutions that champion ‘straight’ poetry now are the ones like this one that you write for.”
Let me guess: You live in New York! Very trendy, as I recall.
“The only thing I think you may not be honest about is that the heart of this is that you feel demeeded as woman by putting your mother-identity forth. This is understandable and I oft feel it too — or am I way off base?”
I feel demeaned by cheap psychologizing, mostly.
“I don’t mean to put you on the spot, but you made a point of mentioning your race at the beginning. Does this mean you have NEVER used your race as an advantage to get a job (including this one) or publishing? Most of us do at some time.”
I’m white. And baffled by your question. But completely done with this topic. Let’s move on.
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Ange, I was working on a project today that had me reading through my blog archives, and I found the following note. Seems I remain as little interested in the project of self-definition as I was year ago:
As for IDENTITY, mine feels too fuzzy to be a real point of departure for my writing. I absolutely feel like I have a core. For lack of a better symbol I call it Ginger, and it’s the only place from which I’m really motivated to write. All the other tags–the race, class, gender, sexuality stew–feel not largely, but significantly external. My “I” has a relationship to my womanhood, my motherhood, my working-class-cum-academic-hood, etc., but it rarely, if ever, feels honest to signify those relationships with forms of the verb to be. If I had a better sense of who I am and what I’m about, would it be easier to write? I don’t know. But for now, I’m not convinced that latching on to any of those shadow-Selves, those Selves whose particular cast depends of the nature and direction of external lights, would make me a better writer.
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I’m white. And baffled by your question. But completely done with this topic. Let’s move on.
not my race, or my nationality, my parents’ immigration, or my gender, but my reproductive status.
I am not a crazy person! I have never, every heard a “white” person refer to their race or parent’s immigration status. It is not way off base, therefore to think that you are not white.
I did not intend to make an enemy here, nor get carried away from work. The issues you pose interested me.
While you seenm highly educated and well-regarded, on the internet, at least, you have a wicked tongue and are unable to even realize your own argument. I don’t know why you feel that being insulting and sarcastic is productive.
Best to you!
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