Hold on I’m Not Unnerved by Women’s Poetry

I occasionally read the Books Blog at guardian.co.uk and today Jo Shapcott caught my attention with the title Do women write ‘female’ poetry? 

I suppose my interest was principally raised because I’ve given a fair amount of consideration to the realization that my list of poetry reading as well as my favorite poets to read is weighted significantly in favor of female poets. I’ve not quite figured out for sure why though the exploration of this will likely make for a later post.

I don’t think Sharpcott really ever quite adequately defines what makes female poetry. I think I expected more of the blog post but it did come away with a couple of interesting thoughts. Sharpcott comes to this conversation by way of a panel discussion at the Aldeburgh poetry festival. I was somewhat taken back by the fact that she reported  that the women on the panel decided  it was important not to let gender dominate their writing ( at least initially ) in order that the language can lead it in unanticipated directions, BUT it was pretty clear that such thoughts are not expected of men, their poetry is set as a kind of default mode. I have trouble seeing this “default mode” she speaks of.

The second thing that bugged me about this piece was the the statement that women are happy to devour anything that is good (I hate the subjectivism of good here) male readers are sometimes nervous of poetry books by women. I suppose I was put here to be the counterbalance among men and I tend not be be unnerved by poetry written by woman.

Technorati Tags: gender in poetry,female poetry

Mary Biddinger has Done It Again or Defibrillating Your Poem While You Can

First it was How to kill a poem (before it even starts) and now she gives us How to defibrillate a poem (before it's too late).  Biddinger is cracking me up. But seriously I’m glad to know that "Just Me Being a Shithead” constitutes a poetic device.

Technorati Tags: just for poetic fun

Journal bits….

A few lines from recent journal entries:

• the legacy that lives / in us all is the blue veins of fear / that rise up from the soles of our feet.
• the blue taste of fear-  this they will remember / because they know how it feels / to the touch, they know / how it tastes and they know / how it smells.
• Reading Anne Sexton today- her poems “In the Beach House” and “Song for a Lady" I like the lyrical quality of both of these, especially the first one.

Technorati Tags: journal bits,Anne Sexton

Are we listening?

My wife was visiting my daughters in Arizona this past week and I got this test from her and as I read it come across my phone I was nodding my head… “yes, yes!” I acknowledged her message and she said what she sent me she was a quote on a poster at ASU. She said she knew I would appreciate it. She knows me well.

What she sent me was a quote from Alberto Alvaro Rios – poet and professor of English at ASU [pictured here left] and it’s a poignant expressing of the task of writing.  What she texted me follows:

“The public job of a writer is to write. But the private and secret job of the writer is to listen. Writing itself is finally clerical but listening is a life’s work. By listening we must include the sweetwork of the eye the skin the tongue the nose. This then is the true  language of writers. The language of listening.” ~Alberto Alvaro Rios.

A life’s work… This is so very much related to what my conception of being a poet is about. Listening, observing, seeing things that you might otherwise miss. Seeing things in a variety of perspectives. Searching the natural world, your own soul and the history of the human experience. Putting this all together and recording it. This is to me what being a poet is all about.  Listening and letting what you hear inform what you write.

We all have heard the mantra, Read, write, re-write..  I believe listen needs to be a part of that cycle of process.

 

Technorati Tags: Alberto Rios,listening,job of a writer / poet

Sparks!

I shot this picture recently with my trusty phone camera. Hence we are not talking the highest quality of photograph.  Still, I like it because I picture in it the  jumbled wires that crisscross the mind.  Receptors I suppose. I envision them as quiet here… I suppose because if they were busy at work thinking, I would suppose that they would have little sparking neurons racing around the receptors.

Why am I writing about this? Good question. I don’t really have an answer. Sometimes I just like to look at something and turn it into something else.  Looking at things differently is a great way to enrich one’s creative process. Hopefully my receptors are firing on all cylinders and racing around sparking new ideas, pulling from other data in my mind and creating new data.  One can hope.

Technorati Tags: creative thinking

Low Battery

This week has been especially stressful and that has to a great extent impaired my writing. For the most part, I attribute this impact more to my energy level than anything else. Stress can be quite an energy drain.

I’ve had creative bursts of ideas, just not the energy to adequately deal with them. Nor have I the energy to keep up with my reading, the energy to write those few extra lines or a few extra minutes to get every out of my head and onto the page. I’m well aware of the dangers fleeting thoughts pose. The ones you never recover. That is usually one of the first casualties of this kind of energy drain.

I promise myself to do better tonight.

What the poem wants...

Earlier this morning, I roughed out onto paper a couple stanzas of something trying to become a poem. At lunch time I revisited it and decided I think I can build upon it and take the poem somewhere when it wants to be. Right now there are more pieces of it in my mind that it wishes to connect with on a page. Later, I hope to bring them together and see where it is they wish to go together.