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

As for the picture on the book, perhaps Eva (not Eileen) Salzman will come back and talk about why she chose it.

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

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

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!

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