Comments on: By the Numbers

By: Ange

Ange — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:25:43 +0000

“As full disclosure, I am a single mother of two — I give up many things by that, I suppose — a few notably — the ability to travel for a job, and the dream of a long-term fellowship. But all of those decisions are life ones, and I am nervous about conversations that pit the one against the other.”
Jennifer, your comment reminds me — there is something wrong with a system of rewards in which residencies at places like Yaddo, McDowell, Provincetown etc. are seen as career-builders. People like you or I cannot or do not want to leave our families, and thus do not apply for those fellowships. It’s not that I object to the existence of those places, but that they become a little cherry on a resume.
That, on top of the fact that so many teaching jobs are adjunct, year-to-year, and turn poets into itinerants — certainly much about “the poetry career” conspires against not only family life, but any kind of connection — to anything but career!
So I do believe that some life decisions are incompatible with poetry career/employment conditions at their worst. But I do not believe that the work itself is incompatible with life decisions — you can only be who you are and write out of that, right? I wish you the best — being a single mom of two, and keeping the life of the mind alive — be fierce!

By: A. Dolitzky

A. Dolitzky — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 19:17:41 +0000

Some of my best friends are women.

By: cause

cause — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:59:26 +0000

Let me make sure I am understanding this. Someone writes a completely obvious paper and says some completely obvious things about gender like women tend to be represented at about 30% and the majority of people posting here thinks the best way to respond is to say one of these things: 1. it is the fault of women and/or the fault of their reproductivity tendencies and/or their lack of interest in writing or 2. the statistics of “flawed” (although no one has said how they are flawed or offered other numbers) . Is that a fair summation? Why is this obvious observation so upsetting? The paper doesn’t even seem to blame anyone. It just observes.

By: Jennifer

Jennifer — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 13:52:51 +0000

Dear Christian and Ange –
Thank you both for continuing with this very important topic. Nerves and emotions run so high around these issues, it’s a gift, your perseverance.
These are such important issues — I started looking at publishing numbers a few years ago — I’m a journalist and a poet — and started fishing around in the archives of the Paris Review to see who they were interviewing, as their interviews are so brilliant. The numbers there reflect those found in the CR article in recent years — the percentages drop further back, and minority numbers are dismal. Research and statistics are always flawed, but can we really argue these days that these are facts we are talking about?
The problem with the focus on the categorization, it seems to me, is that it is, historically, based on publishing too — so the conversation becomes slanted from the get go (or faulty research, perhaps) – If the Dada movement specifically challenged the church and the patriarchy, but Artemesia Genteleshi was taking on the personal issues of rape, why is one so much more prevalent in our learning of art history? Because of publishing.
Of course issues of family and what we give up in our careers are not solely a woman’s issue, as the eloquent and generous Major Jackson pointed out right here last spring.
As full disclosure, I am a single mother of two — I give up many things by that, I suppose — a few notably — the ability to travel for a job, and the dream of a long-term fellowship. But all of those decisions are life ones, and I am nervous about conversations that pit the one against the other.
After noticing the numbers in the Paris Review, I set out to start a series of interviews discussing these matters, both with women and men –
Claudia Rankine said this on the matter, far more beautifully than I could…
“I just read this great book by C.D. Wright, Cooling Time. On one of the pages she talk about poetry and pregnancy – and she says, in my quick way of summarizing, you get what you give – or, you lose some and you gain some, so that there is no going back. And you think it is a struggle of one against the other, but it isn’t at all. You realize that the language in which we think about it is inadequate and wrong. Unfortunately we enter into it feeling like it is a struggle of one against the other. But really it’s a struggle, but it’s never one against the other. Sometimes you feel like you are getting, and sometimes you feel like you are giving, and it is just the dynamic of your life from now on. And it is not a life you would give up under any circumstances. You wouldn’t give up your children, and you wouldn’t give up your work.”
All best,
Jennifer

By: Henry Gould

Henry Gould — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 11:43:53 +0000

Actually, the major injustice in the world of literature today is that too many right-handed people dominate the scene, both intellectually and monetarily. Handedness cuts across gender like a knife (held in the right hand, obviously) – and obscures the achievements of many terrific, and terrifically-neglected, left-handed poets. You’ll notice right (I should say, left) away the affinity between right-handers and technique. Most engineers are right-handed, and the brain ectoplasm seeps across into the writing : we find that “experimentalists” on the one hand, and “metrical-obsessives’, on the other (hand), are almost always right-handed. In fact a recent study (”I was a Teenage Poet-Profiler”, by Genderonatato Genera) has raitifed, beyond the shadow of a digit, that handedness controls the creative process in the same way that hands control the steering wheel on most standard automobiles. I could elaborate, but I feel my time is short (a common psychological syndrome among left-handers).

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 10:52:07 +0000

One can support individual women writers while preferring, or gravitating towards, kinds of writing, and goals for writing, which seem to avoid qualities considered feminine. I think that’s what Ange thinks Christian, and many other “a-g” poets and critics, may have been doing. (Whether it is per se wrong to do so, or whether it’s simply a consequence of tastes we cannot consciously change, wd be another question.)
Conversely, one can support individual male writers while preferring, or gravitating towards, kinds of writing (e.g. the varieties of lyric) and goals for writing, which seem to avoid qualities considered masculine (e.g. the programmatic, the violent, the consciously self-explanatory). I wonder if I have been doing that in my own practice. (If so, I have no plans to stop.)

By: Ange

Ange — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:39:07 +0000

Christian,
It’s hardly a “weird claim” when the percentage of women in mainstream magazines exceeds the number in a-g magazines. And Alicia finds that women are harder to find at the other extreme, that of “New Formalists,” which is also, you must admit, a form of Conceptual Poetry. We theorize that men congregate at the extremes of a poetic bell curve. If empirical data show that women aren’t quite as interested in these extremes, does it mean something? Not to disparage or dismiss in any way women like Dionne Brand, Nicole Brossard, Erin Mouré, and Lisa Robertson.
I wrote in a comment thread that I’m very curious indeed as to why lyric, in particular, gets such a beating from the avant-garde, or why lyric has to be continually ousted then slowly reincorporated. I suspect that’s the secret mechanism by which a-g calls itself into existence, and to face this mechanism head on would actually destroy it.
Maybe I’m essentializing lyric (”the feminine”) but certainly that’s been part of its history (e.g. “The White Goddess”) Such a history cannot be chucked so easily. My post concerns itself with gossip, the gossip of little communities. So allow me the liberty to repeat some gossip I heard around the Poetry Project years ago: that Lisa Robertson is too lyrical, too accessible, as if this a) accounted for her success and b) therefore made her just a little less hardcore than some less-successful Kootenay colleagues. It seems like ressentiment to me, but also symptomatic of entrenched attitudes toward the lyric.
In any event, it is enlightening to hear of your support of a-g women. I don’t think that Spahr’s intermittent posts at Swoonrocket come close to the dedicated bloggery of the men I linked to, and Queyras’s delightful site does not seem to inspire the same comment-box sparring that theirs do. Why not? That is beyond my area of expertise.
All best,
Ange