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The Kings are Boring: Some Thoughts on Women's Poetry
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2009_08_014931.php
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There exists a great politesse around women's poetry; and to write critically is, in some ways, to betray one's feminine self (the part that's supposed to blink a lot and sigh into the shadows when the menfolk start talking politics at the dinner table). Two of the contemporary poets I most admire, Louise Glück and Heather McHugh, are known for this kind of treachery -- the kind of treachery I hoped (and feared) these musings would bring me to. I felt like I'd stuck my finger in an electrical outlet the first time I read Glück's "Mock Orange," with its drastic revision of erotic love's tired tropes:
It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.
I was hypnotized by the unabashed authority of the direct address. Unlike the archetypically female, reflective moon, these flowers radiate their own light. And nothing in my suburban girlhood (that I was privy to) could have quite prepared me for the next stanza:
I hate them.
I hate them as I hate sex,
the man's mouth
sealing my mouth, the man's
paralyzing body--
It's rare to hear a hatred of sex stated so baldly, whatever a poll of people's insides would show -- magazines like Cosmo feed (successfully) off of women's panic over not being sexy via shame sessions thinly disguised as self-improvement, and young women turn out in droves to proudly enact their right to fornicate in blurry hot tub scenes for MTV's The Real World (seriously -- this show is still on).
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Paavoharju: Valo tihkuu kaiken läpi
http://www.bookslut.com/features/2009_08_014931.php
<...>
There exists a great politesse around women's poetry; and to write critically is, in some ways, to betray one's feminine self (the part that's supposed to blink a lot and sigh into the shadows when the menfolk start talking politics at the dinner table). Two of the contemporary poets I most admire, Louise Glück and Heather McHugh, are known for this kind of treachery -- the kind of treachery I hoped (and feared) these musings would bring me to. I felt like I'd stuck my finger in an electrical outlet the first time I read Glück's "Mock Orange," with its drastic revision of erotic love's tired tropes:
It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.
I was hypnotized by the unabashed authority of the direct address. Unlike the archetypically female, reflective moon, these flowers radiate their own light. And nothing in my suburban girlhood (that I was privy to) could have quite prepared me for the next stanza:
I hate them.
I hate them as I hate sex,
the man's mouth
sealing my mouth, the man's
paralyzing body--
It's rare to hear a hatred of sex stated so baldly, whatever a poll of people's insides would show -- magazines like Cosmo feed (successfully) off of women's panic over not being sexy via shame sessions thinly disguised as self-improvement, and young women turn out in droves to proudly enact their right to fornicate in blurry hot tub scenes for MTV's The Real World (seriously -- this show is still on).
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Paavoharju: Valo tihkuu kaiken läpi
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