Comments on: Why I Am a Woman Poet

By: William Kammann

William Kammann — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:09:33 +0000

Maybe Lyric Poet would be a more apt and challenging appellation than woman poet. A thread “Why I’m (not) a Lyric Poet” Enjoyed it.
Bill

By: Annie Finch

Annie Finch — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:38:23 +0000

peace before me . . . 10 directions sounds like a thread to me . . . ( :

By: Prem Nizar Hameed

Prem Nizar Hameed — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:44:32 +0000

A writer or a poet, for me, is a writer or a poet
Never should she/he be categorized by gender
No matter, if we call them good or bad,
I assess you are a good poet and writer;
Exaggeration? No, excited by your lines

(First letters of each line make “ANNIE”)

By: Annie Finch

Annie Finch — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:26:27 +0000

Bill, it’s an honor to have a poem of mine under ED’s name. . .so I’ll take your posting it in that spirit! Re your question, I guess the idea is that writing consciously as a member of a group should not necessarily mean that one will be read only as a member of that group.

Yes, that that used to be a danger, but readers seem more sophisticated now about issues of identity. Langston Hughes is not only read as a Black poet, even though he often wrote very much with that identity in mind. Crane, Auden, Whitman, H.D., and Bishop are not only read as gay poets (granted, they were not explicitly writing as gay poets to the extent that Hughes was writing as a Black poet); and Eliot is not only read as an Anglican poet, and so on.

Hopefully, we now have the luxury to be explicit about our identities without being pigeonholed and restricted by them. So I don’t, thank goodness, feel I have to choose between being read as a woman poet and being read as a poet.

By: William Kammann

William Kammann — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 21:15:35 +0000

Yes, in those days everyone tied his shoes (unless it was a room full of women). Clearly haven’t learned much since. Yes, a fine lyrical talent. Take the story out; what about Stein, hypnotism, healing? Peace before me……. 10 directions. Is there a thread; a mission to tie the corpus together?

By: William Kammann

William Kammann — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:58:59 +0000

Dickinson
Lovely Lyric
All the things we hide in water
hoping we won’t see them go—
(forests growing under water
press against the ones we know)—

and they might have gone on growing
and they might now breathe above
everything I speak of sowing
(everything I try to love).

By: William Kammann

William Kammann — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 20:37:22 +0000

Annie,
I doubt anyone would deny Emily Dickenson a place in the first rank of American Poets. No qualifiers. What’s she got?

By: Annie Finch

Annie Finch — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:38:18 +0000

Hi Bill, thanks for the reply. I address this issue at the end of the post, where I say that I would like to see some men define themselves consciously as “men poets,” and that i would be very interested in the kind of poetry that would result. In the comments, I discuss this issue further with Ange Mlinko and refer to an anthology of male poets which Fred Moramorco, the editor, drops by to comment on. I also, I hope, make clear that this is not something that seems a particularly good idea for all men poets, any more than I’d like to see all women poets necessarily think of themselves as such. It’s a matter of choosing your authentic poetic path and whatever sense of eslf inspires that path. Annie

By: William Kammann

William Kammann — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 01:28:02 +0000

Unless it’s “greatest living” I guess poet should do. After the Hartford firemen it’s only baggage isn’t it? Trunks and all.

By: John Oliver Simon

John Oliver Simon — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:42:58 +0000

Hey Bill,

This same marker-discussion rears its elephant snout when we come to “minority” poets.

When I reviewed Juan Felipe Herrera for Poetry Flash in 1987 I saw an interesting distinction that as a Mexican-American, Juan Felipe carries the badge (which can also be read, defensively, as a chip on the shoulder) of being a quote-unquote Chicano Poet, whereas his Mexican compadres Alberto Blanco and David Huerta, whom I reviewed with him, can simply act out in the world as “poets,” focusing largely on aesthetic issues rather than identity.

Nathalia Toledo, however, who writes bilingually in Zapoteca, for all that she is the daughter of the famous painter Francisco Toledo, gets to carry the baggage of being “una poeta indígena.”

Ron Silliman argues that there’s no such thing as a “poet” per se, that everybody carries the marker of their lineage. This always struck me as a cover for the general unreadability of the langpo product. I dunno.

I like Annie’s phrase “dynamic disequilibrium.”

Probably the visibility of these chips, elephants or baggage have faded just a little over the past two decades. The unwieldiness of the metaphor indicates our persistent discomfort with the Other.

To say nothing of the women in the room. As is our male privilege.

Maybe soon we’ll get to a place where we don’t need no steenking badgers. Ya think?