The thread would make a wonderful short story, and like all wonderful short stories it would almost certainly raise more questions than it answers.

Christopher
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As for the picture on the book, perhaps Eva (not Eileen) Salzman will come back and talk about why she chose it.
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My continual complaint on this thread has been that we were, all of us, unable to register the plot of what we were talking about, that something was going on much deeper than whether or not women writers were getting their fair share of the laurels, in the U.K. or anywhere else.

Is it irony, really, the choice of this angry painting? Or does it express a level of uncomfortableness and frustration that’s going to make it hard to talk about anything straight, I mean anything at all?

I feel so sorry for parents in the predicament that is depicted with such ferocity in this painting, and I see them in it everyday where I live on the moon, as you do I’m sure in Maine. But it has more to do with neglect in the family than it has to do with gender, this child’s gesture–and the hard part for women is just that so many of them have to pick up the pieces all alone. But the tragedy is the child, not the father or the mother– who were almost certainly responsible for the monster, and still get away with it, however he howls. Because this child is now angry at the whole world, he’s just anger, that’s all, and he will do anything he can to make even his own life the worst.

My doctor wife gets a lot of young American mothers with single children and a back-pack full of toys coming here to study herbal medicine with her, health and well-being. The child is often like this, pulling up the flowers for attention, peeing all over the beds for the thrill of the embarrassment she knows it will cause her mother. So why is she doing this? What’s the joy of travelling so far to study health and well-being when you’re sowing neither at home?

And where is the man? Goodness knows–it’s not really a subject that comes up much when you’re looking so hard for another!

So there are terrible ambiguities here, as there were on this thread. We’ll keep working on them, all of us—of course we will. But the level of suffering’s the matter.

Christopher
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http://www.paris-update.com/fr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=605:ellescentrepompidou&catid=35:museums&Itemid=55

the article is called Affirmative Art Action

this is from the earlier post:
dear Annie ‘n all,
check out this link to a review of a 500 woman exhibit at the Pompiudou in Paris. It makes some points & poses some questions that pertain very much to all we’ve had on the table here. See :

http://tinyurl.com/lnzfo5
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Chris Wiman, I appreciate your commenting, and I’m very glad you are aware and conscious of the situation as regards POETRY. Having edited journals and books myself, I know that men do send contributions in much greater proportion than women. Still, given that fact, how much does any given submission pool mandate an editorial commitment to reflect the pool’s gender (also racial, class, age, aesthetic, etc.) proportions in the finished publication?

Christopher Woodman, thanks for your remarks on the cover of Eva’s book–I hadn’t really registered the “plot” of the image before. I take it as an ironic commentary on the persistent prevalence of seeing domesticity as women’s work–though in my own household, as I’m sure in many others, dealing with this spilly situation would equally be men’s work!
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This thread has not been notable for it’s content, and certainly not for its eloquence or wit. On the other hand, I would say that the rough shoving (some of which has been removed) along with all the other on-line contortions that have undermined the drift have perhaps been more revealing than what could have been said anyway. Indeed, who would venture a summing up of this? I mean, what is it? What’s this all about?

I’ve been following the thread quite carefully, and in coming in and out several times a day I’ve found myself face to face with the cover of Eileen Salzman’s and Amy Wack’s book. Powerful. Women’s Work, Modern Women Poets Writing in English, says the white title boldly rising up against the no-nonsense blue. An arresting manual, information that you need. And then my eye at table level has to deal with yet another blue-stained problem, the kitchen table on which one of those accidents is just about to happen that makes one wonder why human beings have children at all. Because that’s a very angry child, a mean child, a disturbed child even with a side-look at the disaster he’s occasioned yet again–without his fingers being involved at all, mind you, exactly like the basketball or football player who has just committed a deliberate and very dangerous personal foul against a rival player. Like that guilty player the child throws his hands up in the air to prove he didn’t touch anything at all!

Yes, arresting–it’s a cover you aren’t likely to ignore or forget. But what’s the message? What’s it telling us about women’s work, or how women poets work, or why any woman would want to do such work–or what needs to be done about the problems arising? Or how to discuss them?

I don’t want to venture an answer on any of that either. I just want all of us to have a look, and next time this comes up remember.

(Profound–a remarkable book cover.)

Christopher
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http://tinyurl.com/lnzfo5

to read this article on Affirmative Art Action.
I still don’t like ascribing poetic qualities etc. but good to know and consider what’s on the rialto

my best,
margo
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I tend to think in terms of absolute page count rather than numbers of male/female poets. If you’ll look at that June issue you mention, for instance, while it’s true that there are more men than women, I think you’ll also find that the pages (of poetry) are equally distributed between them.

Still, I don’t dispute the fact that we do sometimes publish more men than women, and I’m never happy about it. The fact is, we get between two to three times more submissions from men than we do from women.

As for critics, that issue has been well-covered in the magazine already. We wish we had more women critics and are always on the lookout, though we are very proud to have two of the best critics, of any gender, as regulars: Daisy Fried and Ange Mlinko. Both have great pieces upcoming.

And letters, well, there’s nothing we can do about that proportion — unless more women start writing in!

Thanks for all your great comments on this site.
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So you women, get hold of it. Of course you need to fight for your rights, but in doing so like men you have to understand that there’s no getting something without giving something equally precious back.

Men are perhaps learning that faster than you are, at least if this thread is anything to go by. Read it and tell me if I’m not right on that!

Christopher
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Well, actually, almost no one doubts that either global warming or sexism exists. They argue about its causes. Most scientists believe that global warming has been caused by human action; a vocal minority do not. But that average global temperatures have been increasing for over a century is not really in doubt, nor does environmental science lack for evidence that this is so. Your fallacy is to assume that an alleged underrepresentation of women in, say, a particular magazine were all that needed to be shown in order to prove that men are nefariously conspiring to silence women poets. The inane back-&-forth in the comment thread to this post demonstrates this confusion better than anything else: caricature doesn’t help anyone’s cause (“I just knew the men would show up to shout us down!”). Your posts have grown increasingly cartoonish & two-dimensional, & reveal a singular unwillingness to begin to understand the complexities of gender inequities. In fact, they often reinforce sexist norms of victimology that I’m sure you don’t support.
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I have come back online after my travels to find many many comments on this thread. I am working on some new posts for Harriet so can’t spend a gigantic amount of time here, but want to acknowledge everyone’s lively energy and interest in this topic. Thank you all for your care and concern for fairness, however it has been manifesting. I have specifically addressed Roddy’s points about the UK poetry scene in a reply to his comment above. Here are few more general points:

The purpose of this post was never to assert or argue whether or not sexism exists in poetry or anywhere else, but simply to announce the founding of the Poetic Justice Forum. The forum is an activist site where those who believe sexism is a concern in the poetry world and would like to do something about it can discuss and work towards effecting change in specific cases.

I appreciate the efforts of those who have cited various contests or magazines that are predominantly female to show that sexism doesn’t exist in the poetry world. One could play that game back and forth forever, citing particular lists as evidence on one side of the case or the other (and I have done some of that in response to Roddy’s comment). But really, there is no court, and there are no judges. Like global warming, sexism is real in its effects, and action can be taken against it by some even while others are arguing whether it exists. The arguments do not change the vital importance of action for those who feel the reality of the threat.

Two more specific responses: women running poetry institutions does not automatically mean sexism does not exist. Poetry institutions or groups have often been run by women, for example Harriet Monroe, Amy Lowell, and Sylvia Beach. More often than not, these women have spent much or most of their effort promoting male literary careers. This is not to imply that it’s not a good thing that women are now in many positions of power in the poetry world, but simply to say that women running institutions does not guarantee a righting of the situation. Hard as it may be for men to understand, since men have so much practice and expertise promoting each others’ work, sexism is so insidious a disease that having women in positions of literary power is not necessarily a guarantee of fairness towards literary women. It can help, but enlightened men can help just as much also.

Finally, whatever particular gender-equal contests or tables of contents one chooses to cite to the contrary, things in the US are not necessarily a lot better than in the UK. As always, what mostly seems to missing is serious critical attention to women poets. Look at the closest example to hand, the Poetry Foundation website itself, just a click away. You will find that the current mainpage of the Poetry Foundation website includes NO articles by or about female poets, but eight articles by eight men, six of them about male poets: Tom Sleigh on Thom Gunn, Josh Weiner on Thom Gunn, Jason Boog on Kenneth Fearing, Robert Polito on Kenneth Fearing, Justin Hopper on Mark Nowak, Franklin Bruno on Langston Hughes, and pieces by Harold Norse and Tao Lin. If the genders were reversed, it would probably be called a special women poets issue, but in the world of a prestigious poetry site male predominance is just business as usual; most of us barely notice. It’s just the way things are, the way they have been for a long time. In fact, in the last few years, I’ve heard women a few decades older than I am remark on a number of occasions that the situation has been backsliding, that things were more balanced in terms of the gender of contributors to high-profile magazines such as the New Yorker in the 1970s than they are now, and that now things look more like they did in the 1950s.

Looking at Poetry Magazine itself, I’m sure it’s not as bad as in the 1950s, but still there is a consistent male slant in the contributions of poetry, criticism, and letters. The current June 2009 issue includes contributions by 8 men/5 women. Turning to past issues, the May issue had 12 men /4 women, April had 22 /8, March had 15 /8, February 21 / 12, January 19 / 8, and December 2008 had 11 / 7.

Given that women are probably more than half of those publishing poetry today (certainly more than half of MFA students), clearly something is preventing full representation of women in the site and the magazine. It could be internal/psychological or it could be external/socio-political, or a combination, but something is wrong. The posting climate on Harriet, in which as I think it was Terreson pointed out, half the comments on a thread devoted to women’s poetry (and far more than half on most or all other threads) are from men, is related. It’s not necessarily anyone’s fault, but it’s a fact, and the first step would be for it to be accepted as such. It’s not a matter of blame but of description.

Rose’s comment was of course sarcastic.
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As you know, Eva’s introduction cites pages and pages of statistics. I pulled just a couple at random. You may quibble with those particular ones, but I’m surprised that you think sexism is a thing of the past in the UK poetry world. I am no expert at all on the scene—I merely listened to what women there told me about the imbalances in publishing and prizes and about the fact (a pattern also extremely common in the US) that women at the peak of their careers tend to be less recognized than either very old or very young women, who presumably present less of a threat to the male-dominated status quo. So it’s not just a matter of how many women, but of which women are being used to even out the statistics: those who have the potential to build on existing power and influence, or those who have published just one or two books? But even looking at raw statistics, I just doublechecked quickly now on the most famous poetry prize I know of in the UK, the TS Eliot Prize, and the most famous poetry publisher I know of in the UK, Faber & Faber. The TS Eliot Prize has been won 12 times by men and 4 times by women in the last 16 years. As for Faber & Faber, the first page of the poetry portion of their website lists 13 men poets and 1 woman poet (a ratio even more male-heavy than that of the poetry list of the most famous poetry publisher I know of in the US, Farrar Straus and Girous, which publishes 58 men poets and 12 women poets.)

I am touched by the passion with which you are defending the UK poetry scene. Clearly you feel that sexism is unfair and should be ended, or you wouldn’t be defending the scene so much. That’s wonderful. Please don’t feel personally attacked. Nobody is holding you, or any other male, personally responsible for the situation. Centuries of complex factors have led to it, and each of us, female and male, is responsible. Now it’s not a matter of blame, but simply of describing the situation, seeing it clearly, and taking steps, however small, to change it.
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It meant a lot to me that Annie chose me at the opposite ends of the earth to relay all the way back to you a message that says this thread is alive and well. And that’s what matters, getting at the meaning, not in the final word.

“Hi

I am out of town with no email and can’t post on harriet from my blackberry

Will reply to all on my return

Please post this message there

Many thanks

Annie”

June 14, 2009 3:57:02 AM GMT+07:00
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Terreson
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If you don’t come back in now, Eva Salzman, Jane Holland, and your new associate Annie Finch (who initiated this thread, of course), you have no one but your selves to blame.

Men have come a long way in this. We don’t have a problem with you’re running the show at all, and we love what you write. The problem is, do you think there’s a place for us on your planet?

Thanks, Desmond.

Christopher
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Know one is obliged to read anyone else and can scroll past, but in this PC age where anyone can get upset by the amount of text on a screen written by a poetry bore, what does it say about tolerance?

Here are some more stats, culled from poets on fire where a thread of this name has been trundling on and it soon became apparent, from the very people who work in Poetry UK, that the structure of most poetry organisations, is run by women – who stated it was.

All these organisations are headed/run by women.

Apples & Snakes: (UK wide performance body) The Director
Arc Editor
Arts Council England: Head of Literature
Arts Council Regional Literature Officers
North West
East: Lucy
North East
Yorkshire
South West
South Eastn
Arvon Foundation
Booktrust CEO
Borders (central poetry buyer)

British Centre for Literary Translation
British Council Director of Literature

Chatto Editor
Creative Arts East
Faber and Faber
Foyles (buyer for poetry)
Free Word centre Director
New Writing North
Poetry Book Society
Poetry Society
Poetry Translation Centre Director
Poetry Trust Editor
Polygon Editor
The Reading Agency
Renaissance One Director
Seren Editor
South Bank Head of Literature
Spread the Word Director

~

Once it was firmly established that far from men running thngs, Poetry Admistration and the doling out of monies and puyblishing opportunities in the UK was dominated by women, the debate turned to women having confidence in the light of centuries of male domination, which i think may be the more pertinent reality going on here.
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Terreson,

As Pope said, ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing…’

The thing about stats is they ‘suggest stories,’ but the stories they ‘suggest’ could be radically wrong.

I sometimes feel like I’m talking to a wall here. I sometimes think poets today are in the field because they don’t like to think things through; they are full of inspired prejudices (mild ones) and would rather describe the world than listen to it–I know its a cliche in the poetry world about how important ‘listening’ is, but I wonder how many really do it; and not just ‘listening,’ but thinking through what they’ve heard. I guess that’s my theme: thinking through. Well, I guess it comes down to psychology, too. In Poe’s short story, ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ in order to get his servants to *leave* the master insists they *remain* while he is away. We oppose other schools and philosophies, we find ‘our own voice’ and stick to one school, rather than embracing all voices and all schools to build a true philosophy. We seal ourselves in, set ourselves apart, like the fools in ‘The Masque of the Red Death.’

Anyway, the people with the most posts could be those who have had the most coffee; it could have nothing to do with gender, especially since the sample is small.

Also, there’s a tendency to fault those who have a lot of posts–as if they were somehow unfairly ‘dominating’ a thread, when the very opposite might be the case–those with the most posts are merely ‘following through’ on the discussion, responding to others, showing real interest, instead playing ‘hit and run’ and being cynical, or anti-social.

You said it’s the hand (the person) behind the gun (the technology) which is most important, and the same, Tere, could be said about the person behind the statistics–the interpretation of the statistics, which might take some a time in terms of number of posts.

Thomas
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I’d say that the real problem in this thread has not been your numbers but the fact that Roddy Lumsden’s major contribution addressed to Annie Finch and Jane Holland on June 6th at 11.56am never got answered. As he was the only expert to come up with the current figures he really deserved better.

He wrote: “Here is some more ‘hollow bean counting’ for you, with regard to pertinent anthologies – ones which select from contemporary work:

First the two most recent major American ones:

American Hybrid – 44 women, 31 men
Legitimate Dangers – 41 women, 44 men

My own forthcoming anthology Identity Parade, a UK/I equivalent of Legitimate Dangers has 44 women, 41 men. The recent City State anthology of London poets has 11 women, 15 men and Bloodaxe’s new younger poets anthology has 11 women and 10 men. Also, women now publish more books of poetry here [UK] than men.”

Roddy Lumsden also wrote: “In wider discussions on this issue over here, only a small number of women poets appear to believe in widespread and institutional sexism in UK and Irish poetry at this time (I realise that it was a serious and shameful issue in even recent decades) and two of those are the women you have mentioned in your article, yet it seems that Jane (see above) and Eva (note the gender ratios during her time as a PBS Selector) both also struggle to break past the ‘third’ barrier when in positions of some power.”

Another man, O.K, but look what he’s done and is saying.

What he got back is this from Eva Salzman. the author of the study that had maintained just the opposite: “It is interesting to see how, yet again, in this area of discussion, the central focus becomes the legitimacy of the issue and of course those who dare speak out about it.” (June 6th, 12.02)

Finally, this is what you, Terreson, came up with yourself in response: “I may get my hand slapped for this, which is okay. But by now into a fourth generation of the same table talk, were I a woman poet I would be tempted by the final solution. Let’s borrow from Tolkein and call it the Ent solution. I would walk away, disengage, boycott the scene and then create my own. That is exactly what I would do.”

It would seem to me that those who didn’t want to consider the actual statistics did just that. One women said in parting, “This is scary,” and the other scolded Annie for having even entered into the discussion at all.

No, I’m afraid you’ve got yourself a very dead horse that just won’t go galloping.

Christopher
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To date I count 7 women and 12 men posting to this thread. That is 1.7 men for every woman. So what does this say about an issue concerning women poets in the essential way? What does this say about the composition of Poetry Foundation?

But the stats get worse. The 7 women who have posted have produced 14 posts. The 12 men who have posted have produced 61 posts. That comes to 4.4 posts by men for every woman’s post. This strikes me as disturbing, about women participants, about men participants, and about Poetry Foundation. It actually makes me wonder just how woman friendly is the Foundation.

Something else disturbs me. Three men posters account for 32 of the 61 man posts, which is half the count of man posts. So that is half the thread dominated by three men.

Numbers do suggest stories.

Terreson
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I’d like to comment quickly on your Tor House numbers:

The sexism question really transcends statistics, because the bottom line is always elitism; the queen doesn’t care if her slaves are male or female.

What may matter to the queen, however, is the gender of the next-in-lines.

And, let’s say instead of a queen, you have five males who are ruling as a gang. Now it gets more complex, especially if the male gang is clinging to, or aspiring to, power, etc. In this case it may very much matter whether their slaves are male or female, or whether the next-in-lines are male or female.

You see…so it’s not just a counting game. It’s more subtle than that. It isn’t the mere fact or number of gender, per se, which warrants our attention, but rather how power uses gender which should be the object of our study.

Thomas
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Eva Salzman wrote: “Good to see this issue getting an airing and to see men concerned with it. Thanks Annie, Jane!”

Roddy Lumsden wrote: “Women now publish more books of poetry here [in the U.K.] than men.”

Eva Salzman wrote: “I posted an excerpt from Intro to Women’s Work on Eratosphere, with samples of some pretty shocking anthology figures [in the U.K.] and so maybe don’t need to post here.”

Roddy Lumsden wrote: “I know this discussion is more complex than the anthology stats [in the U.K.] – though they are central to Eva’s case – I look forward to an overdue reply on this from both Annie and Eva.”

Eva Salzman wrote: “The anthologies with the imbalances I mention are, well, all of them. Go and look”

Polly Clark wrote: “Dear Lord, this is scary!”

Rose Kelleher wrote: “Annie, don’t you know you’re not supposed to discuss such things?”

And that’s what this thread is about, and even if it comes to nought it’s still worth trying. So I say let’s go on.

Christopher
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For ’09: 3 men; 2 women (a woman placing first). The final judge: Diane Thiel.

For ’08: 2 men (a man placing first); 3 women. The final judge: Robert Pinsky.

For ’07: 0 men; 5 women (obviously a woman came first). The final judge: Al Young.

For ’06: 1 man (first place); 4 women. The final judge: Dorianne Lux.

For ’05: 1 man; 4 women (a woman placing first). The final judge: Naomi Shihab Nye.

For ’04: 4 men (one in first place); 1 woman. The final judge: Billy Collins.

For ’03: 4 men (one in first place); 1 woman. The final judge: Pattian Rogers.

For ’02: 1 man; 4 woman (one in first place). The final judge: John Haines.

For ’01: 1 man; 4 women (one in first place). The final judge: Jane Hirshfield.

Nine years makes for a pretty decent data base. Science often works in a significantly smaller range when looking for statistically important trends to tell stories. So what do we get?

In 9 years we have 16 men placing in the contest and 24 women placing.

In 9 years we have 4 men placing first and 5 women.

In 9 years we have 4 men the final judges and 5 women.

But stats., just like poetry, can lie. So perhaps we should look more closely at the judges for a bias.

’09: Thiel’s judging favored the men.

’08: Pinsky’s judging favored the women.

’07: Young’s judging favored the women. (a shut out for the guys).

’06: Lux’s judging favored the women.

’05: Nye’s judging favored the women.

’04: Collins’ judging favored the men.

’03: Rogers’ judging favored the men.

’02: Haines’ judging favored the women.

’01: Hirshfield’s judging favored the woemn.

So over the course of 9 years 3 men judges selected more women than men (3 to 1).

Over the same course 3 women judges selected more women than men (3 to 2.)

Statistically (quantitatively) I would say no bias-trend is shown towards the male gender. While the trend seems to be in favor of the women selected, once the error factor gets taken into account (maybe a judge was having a bad hair day or was preoccupied, etc.), there is nothing significant here that would stand out on a bar graph. Except that 24 women to 16 men does stand out in the overview. (let me be clear. i am into the facts only. just the facts, ma’am.)

I don’t know. Maybe Tor House is an exception to the rule, which would be surprising given that Jeffers was a man’s man. Maybe the west (left) coast of America is an exception. Ain’t nobody going to know until somebody starts compiling numbers for the analysis. Poetry Foundation, with its archives presumably going back to 1912, could offer up quite the data base. Year by year by year. And what about other established mediums?

Terreson
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Isn’t that how stars are formed?
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How would Dorothy Parker have put that?

Thomas
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