Gail White was born in Pensacola, Florida in 1945. She graduated with honors from Stetson University, and, shortly thereafter, married the historian, Arthur White. They moved to a house on the banks of Bayou Teche in Beaux Bridge, Louisiana, where, working as a medical transcriber, Gail has gained an impressive vocabulary of medical terms. Pet cats figure prominently in the White household.

There have been eight Gail White chapbooks, and, in 2001 from Edwin Mellen Press, a full-length book, “The Price of Everything,” which, as a sought-after, out-of-print rarity, has commanded some high prices of its own. Gail’s new collection, EASY MARKS, came out in April from WordTech Communications (aka David Robert Books). For links to more poems, reviews, and information, visit www.gailwhite.org.

I can’t recommend highly enough Julie Kane’s article in V.1, Issue 1 of Mezzo Cammin (http://www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.ph...cism&page=kane). Julie has provided a sparkling, smart exploration, with extensive notes and bibliography, of the contrasts between Gail White, Wendy Cope and Dorothy Parker, as well as an in-depth appreciation of Gail’s work. Here’s a passage I like very much:

“White is not ‘sad.’ She does not tell stories. Her poetic voice seems unusually tough, self-confident, and astringent. The disturbing quality that all of these critics are pointing to but are not quite able to name is that White violates our cultural norms and expectations for ‘women’s humor.’ By refusing to create a victimized female persona as the target of her own wit, White claims a new authority for the woman light-verse writer: the right to assert herself as a satirist, as a clear-eyed critic of the world around her—a role that men have occupied almost exclusively for more than two millennia.”

Elsewhere, Julie wittily identifies Gail White as “the George Herbert of disbelief,” and points out White’s endorsement of Coleridge’s belief that “a great mind must be androgynous.”

Perhaps Auden’s characterization of Phyllis McGinley applies more to Gail White than any other poet in our group. I selected some of my own favorites--

--from the ‘nuff said department:

ON LOUISIANA POLITICS

The politician, like the tabby’s young,
Attempts to clean his backside with his tongue.

More about cats:

DIALOGUE AT A WEDDING

“Who would have thought she’d pick a younger man?”
“And foreign! Did they meet in Sicily?”
“In Rome. A tourist guide, I understand.”
“Italian men—they could excite a tree.”

“Well, he’s good-looking, I’ll say that for him.”
“Handsome enough, but not a patch on Jim.”
“He only wants her money.” “Is that news?
He’ll be unfaithful in his wedding shoes.”

But while they filtered her through many minds,
Not one had mastered the essential fact:
A heart in freezing weather, like a cat,
Will make a nest of anything it finds.


Mothers & daughters:

MY PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF NOT BEING ASKED TO THE PROM

I never minded my unpopularity
in those days. Books were friends and poets (dead)
were lovers. Brainy girls were still a rarity,
and boys preferred big bosoms to well-read
and saucy wits. I look back now with pity
on the young Me I didn’t pity then.
I didn’t know that I was almost pretty
and might have had a charm for older men.
And my poor mom, who never bought a fluffy
ball gown or showed me how to dress my hair—
she must have wondered where she got this stuffy
daughter. She didn’t say it, but her stare
asked whether genes or nurture were to blame.
(But I got married, mother, all the same).

White has said the following is one of her personal favorites for its depiction of the experiences of all office workers and the accuracy with which it reflects her view of small children:

THE CYNIC AND THE BABY

Marleen has brought her baby (eight
weeks old) to meet her office mates,
who duly gurgle and exclaim,
“Oh, what a darling!” “What’s her name?”
“Look at those eyes!” “Oh, could I hold
her for a minute?” “She’s HOW old?”

It seems a small and noiseless pulp,
able, for skills, to blink and gulp,
but in its flannel sheath I see
the upstart shoot supplanting me.
The brain inside that fuzzy head
will read and brood when I am dead,
add up its checks, and order drinks,
and say the Opposition stinks,
and ponder love, and fame, and chance,
when I am fertilizing plants.

They’re coming, a relentless tide—
babies that sweep my life aside!
Youth can’t be stopped—no law nor creed
Will stultify this urge to breed.
But to the last I can refuse
assent to lives I did not choose,
refuse to cry, “How soft, how cute!”
when knives are hacking at my root.
Baby and death have toothless jaws—
each smiles, but oh it gnaws, it gnaws.


PARTYING WITH THE INTELLIGENTSIA

Poets will drink you out of house and home,
no matter how much booze you’ve squirreled away,
and afterwards they simply won’t go home

till fading darkness warns of coming day
and then they burble “Goo-bye! Time to g’ome!”
Poets will drink you out of house and home.

Arhictects aren’t much better, by the way,
and theater people have IQ’s of foam.
At 3:00 a.m. they simply won’t go home.

These artsy types want someone else to pay
for dinner, want to use your car, your comb.
Poets will drink you out of house and home,

leaving your living room in disarray,
swearing they find your house a pleasure dome.
Even at dawn they simply won’t go home—

some have passed out, others regroup and bray
a chorus of “Wherever I may roam.”
Poets will drink you out of house and home
and afterwards they simply WON’T go home.

WHY POETS DRINK: AN ESSAY

Poets (male) hang out in bars
and drink to hid their psychic scars,
to show that macho need not be
effeminized by poetry.
Society assigns no worth
to all their words that strain for birth,
and though they labor long and hard,
the poem must be its own reward.
But self-esteem, in these rough days,
is linked to income and to praise,
and those who earn no dollar signs
are only housewives in their minds.
So poets (male) hang out in bars
and drink to hide their psychic scars,
and boast of all the women’s beds
they conquered only in their heads.
Hard liquor fuels their inner spark
As Rouen’s fire fed Joan of Arc,
And who can sort, with critic’s tools,
the martyrs from the god-damned fools?


Here is my Q.E.D. for Auden’s axiom:
POST DIAGNOSIS

So now they know. She, and not he, will say
who gets the cuckoo clock, will give away
the books, the silverware. So much to give
from two shared lives. But only she will live.

Her picture of her future (tender, brave,
devoted) always ends beside his grave.
When his life ends, he feels—and she concurs—
nothing will go on happening in hers.

But she must look ahead—and while he sees
a mist of sweetly mournful memories
in that remote expression on her face,
she sees new uses for his closet space.

THE GROWER

My death grows older like a tree,
ring by ring, invisibly,
I bear its weight, and feel within
its outward pressure on my skin.
My life retains its childish mind,
cries “Give!” to anything that’s kind,
believes that it will always wake
to worlds made lovely for its sake,
and confidently plans ahead
for days and years, well-loved, well-fed.
One hates to shock the silly thing
by severing its kite and string,
so still my youthful life endures,
waiting till my death matures.


GOTHIC CATHEDRALS

They lie across France
like God’s love letters:

Something he can read and say,
“Anyway, they loved me once.”


HIT IT, GAIL!

SOME THOUGHTS ON WOMEN'S POETRY

I'm immensely proud of my contemporaries on the island of formal poetry by women. We are getting parity on the printed page with guys, the poetry by us is grand, and we have some superb books out there. I also love anthologies of women's poetry, and make no apologies for them, as they give me a chance to see a lot of our work in one place. And I'm especially proud to be included in the group on this thread, among both old and new friends.

Having said that, I'll add that I am somewhat ill at ease with the concept of “women's poetry” as a different entity from “men's poetry.” I've always adhered (even when it ceased to be the fashionable feminist viewpoint) to Coleridge's belief that “Great minds are androgynous.” I see little difference between estrogen-powered poetry and testosterone-powered poetry, except in the specialized areas of war (for men) and maternity (for women). Admittedly, maternity plays a larger role in poetry now than it did a century ago, when (as Carolyn Kizer put it) our geniuses were “old maids to a woman”.

But supposing a literature class was handed some poems they had never seen before, without the authors' names. Would they be able to tell that a woman wrote Emily Bronte's “No coward soul is mine”, or that a man wrote A.M. Juster's “The Secret Language of Women”?

In fact, I invite you to listen to an issue of Measure blindfolded and see how often you can guess the sex of the authors correctly.

Imaginative writing is about being able to put yourself in another person's place – to write about old age when you are young, or create believable males if you are female. Dorothy Sayres was once asked how she was able to write convincing dialogue for scenes in all-male settings, and she replied that it was no problem, since she thought of men as being as intelligent as women. One hopes that all writers today think the same.

So yes, I think the age of woman writing as “the feminine human being” has arrived. (I have just been re-reading Simone de Beauvoir, & have been reminded once again of her famous remark that “when women start acting like human beings, they are accused of trying to be men.” This too has passed, one does hope!)

I'll conclude these opening remarks by adding one of my favorite poems on this topic:

TUMPS (by Wendy Cope)

Don't ask him the time of day. He won't know it,
For he's the abstracted sort.
In fact, he's a typically useless male poet.
We'll call him a tump for short.

A tump isn't punctual or smart or efficient.
He probably can't drive a car
Or follow a map, though he's very proficient
At finding his way to the bar.

He may have great talent, and not just for writing --
For drawing, or playing the drums.
But don't let him loose on accounts – that's inviting
Disaster. A tump can't do sums.

He cannot get organized. Just watch him try it
And you'll see a frustrated man.
But some tumps (and these are the worst ones) deny it
And angrily tell you they can.

I used to be close to a tump who would bellow
“You think I can't add two and two!”
And get even crosser when, smiling and mellow,
I answered, “You're quite right. I do.”

Women poets are businesslike, able,
Good drivers, and right on the ball.
And some of us still know our seven times table.
We're not like the tumps. Not at all.

I met Gail White some thirty years ago in the pages of The Lyric, and had the good sense, when the chance came up, to award her one of the annual prizes. Of course, she wrote me a great letter. Between us, we now have such an accumulation of correspondence that one of us (Gail) had better get famous enough to qualify for a section in some university library, where an as-yet- unborn graduate student can sift through it all and come up with a winsome thesis on Literary Women of the late 20th Century.

Or, as we tell each other, "The last one to die has to edit the letters." Which way does that incentive work?

Now that I'm retired, perhaps I'll follow Gail's lead once again and become a more regular reader and contributor on Eratosphere. It's never too late to get "famous."

And it's always a pleasure to read Gail's poems and Gail's thoughts.

Gail's poetry makes you smile even as your eyes are watering up. I just turn into one big Oh--h-h-h-h.

That is what a real poet does with her/his reader--squeezes mind and heart at the same time.

Gail is one of my very top favorite poets. And she's one of the best readers I know. She laughs at her poems as she reads them--she's just irrepressibly delightful.

Invite her to a venue near you.

Having already written that L-O-N-G article Leslie mentioned (above) about Gail and her wonderful work, I don't know what else I can do to convey my admiration, except maybe turn a few cartwheels and set off fireworks. Yay Gail!

You can probably feel the heat of my virtual blushes as I read these flattering remarks. Thank you all!

I sometimes describe the poetry scene to nonpoets in this way: Picture American literature as an ocean. And in the middle of that ocean is an island where the poets live. And in the middle of that island is a pond where the formalists hang out. And in that pond we all know each other.

It's a great pond, with a wonderful croaking chorus.

Gail, you crack me up. Isle Royale is the largest island on Lake Superior. There is a substantial lake on the island, which has an island on it. On that island is a tiny lake, which has a little rock that protrudes above the water, and yes, I guess that's an island too. The largest island on a lake on the largest island on a lake which is on the largest island on the largest lake in the world: Formalism.

Please tell us about your early collaboration with Katherine McAlpine, who wrote:

Sitting at Christmas dinner you're appalled
to note your baby brother's going bald.

It sure doth rankle that such delightful poetry, unique in its own right but on a caliber with Dorothy Parker or Phyllis McGinley, does not enjoy the publication opportunities that they did. Gail should be the wit of The New Yorker.

With pleasure, Tim. Katherine and I co-edited "The Muse Strikes Back: A Poetic Response by Women to Men" (Story Line Press, 1997. Now available from Alibris for $8.00 -
Advt.)

This was Katherine's bright idea. She wrote me that she had written some pieces she called "reply poems" and she noticed that I had done the same, and did I think there were enough similar poems out there to make a book? At that point you could have seen the cartoon light bulb going off over my head. I thought the idea was perfect for Story Line Press. They liked it, and we had collected the poems, got the permissions, and had it in print in the record time (poetry-wise)of two years. Without using computers.

I still love this book. It has 7 poems of Alicia's and 5 of Rhina's, from the days before they won their Wilbur prizes. Plus a lot of other good people.

Katherine is a fine poet, great with light verse, but I've also heard her read a tragic sonnet sequence about a Dutch wife and mother living through (and dying in) World War II that would chill your marrow. The last I heard of her, she was living in Eastport, Maine, enjoying the frosty solitude, and writing a novel about her eccentric neighbors.

This is one of my favorites of Gail's - she reads it well, too.


The Gypsy Woman Tells Your Fortune

You will make a juorney over water.
How large a body of water
I cannot say.

You will marry once for love
and once for money,
and whichever comes first,
you'll wish it had been the other.

You will eat too much salt.
Doctors will begin telling you
to slow down.

Something you never heard of
will kill your parents.
You will not be ready to take their place.

Your job will be less satisfactory
than you thought it would be.
So will your children.

Your car will break down
when you can least afford it.

When all else seems hopeless
you will meet a mysterious stranger.
it will be you.

Gail is the best living American satirical poet I know, male or female. It is a mystery to me that she isn't as well known and well loved as Wendy Cope is in the UK. I attribute that failure of recognition not to her gender, though (for Sam Gwynn is also not widely known and also excellent in that field) but to America's general disdain for humorous verse. Someone like Billy Collins is allowed to be funny and wildly popular because he writes in free verse, the only acceptable form of contemporary poetry to the vast majority of Americans who care about poetry. We're never going to see another Ogden Nash or Dorothy Parker in terms of general appreciation until the prejudice against writing in form is broken and works like Gail White's are published in popular journals, the way Parker's and Nash's were.

Susan

I've been forcibly absent from my computer for four days or I would have already said that discovering Gail's poems was one of he greatest delights on this forum. I wish I had written the poems myself but since I didn't I'll have to endure the thought that some impostor called Gail White is writing them;)

Thank you so much Gail! Sanity and depth in one poet is an uncommon thing.
Janet

To Susan McLean: Susan, you hit the nail smack on the head with

"Gail is the best living American satirical poet I know, male or female. It is a mystery to me that she isn't as well known and well loved as Wendy Cope is in the UK. I attribute that failure of recognition not to her gender, though (for Sam Gwynn is also not widely known and also excellent in that field) but to America's general disdain for humorous verse. Someone like Billy Collins is allowed to be funny and wildly popular because he writes in free verse, the only acceptable form of contemporary poetry to the vast majority of Americans who care about poetry."

I believe the same can be said of X.J. Kennedy, who had to publish his humorous verse in a separate volume, the recent PEEPING TOM'S CABIN. When humorous verse is formal, it is generally dismissed. Thank goodness we have LIGHT (even though they won't print the "f" word). I wonder what U.S. publishers would have done with Larkin's "This Be the Verse."

Now, on the subject of whether or not there is, as Tim Murphy says, a phenomenal eruption of terrific contemporary poetry by women, I'm beginning to think it has more to do with formal poetry than anything else. Just look at all the sonnets! I'll have to bring this up elsewhere. Meanwhile, Tim, it doesn't seem as though too many men (other than F. Osen and Quincy Lehr, who wanted to stay out of it) are finding your observation particularly approachable.

Gail might have a way to go before she overtakes Joe. One of the pleasures of this affair is re-reading all these poems by splendid poets. If I were editing an anthology today, and watch it, I might, it would be 52 percent women. When in human history would such a choice even have been considered by a man? I stand by my email: an astonishing efflorescence.

I do appreciate all these kind remarks. But I think I know another reason why my Rich & Famous Contract has been held up in the mail-- I'm not a very prolific poet.
One of my writer friends used to say that "A page every day is a book every year". If I were even writing a poem every week, I could be bombarding the world with submissions! However, I'm one of those poets who have to wait till inspiration strikes, and sometimes it's a long time between jolts.

That's me, too, Gail. Oh, yes, Tim, do your anthology! And, speaking of Gail White, here are two more poems which are typical of her work, and which I meant to include at the beginning of this thread. They are quite appropriate here:

POSTCARD TO MISS DICKINSON

I’m Somebody? Well, no—
Perhaps a half one, though,
While you’ve been somebody for years—
Perhaps you didn’t know?

How dreary to be Nobody!
How fetid, like the Bog
Where chortling frogs exult above
The stifled Pollywog!


A VISIT ON ALL SAINTS DAY

Hello. I’ve brought your favorite flowers again.
How is it going under there, my dead?
On this side, we’re no better off than when
you walked beside us. (Yes, I know I said
the same last year.) The human race is not
improvable. Ask any saint you meet.
We’ve gone to war again without a thought.
Our leaders shuffle bribes, our heroes cheat.
Your children haven’t turned out awfully well,
but who expected it? You’re not to blame,
and anyway I don’t believe in hell.
Goodbye for now. I’m always glad I came.
I make no promises about next year,
but one way or another, I’ll be here.

Hey, Tim isn't the only man reading these poems. I've been dazzled reading old favorites and new ones on this thread, too, by poets I've admired for years. Since becoming a poetry editor, I've published some poems by several of the women poets on this thread (and have one I haven't yet contacted on my mental to-contact list).

Hurray! Thanks for checking in, Paul.

Janet Kenny has it exactly right: "Sanity and depth" just about sums up Gail's work. What those words imply, of course, is the capacity to think opposites at the same time without flinching or forcibly shutting one eye, and the grace to admit that there may be no clean resolution, and the degree of detachment to live with that, and even laugh at such a predicament. I think Gail is a national treasure, and yes, far better than the more famous satirists of the '20s, of either sex.

I no longer even remember when or how I first encountered Gail's work. This likely has less to do with my mental faculties than it has to do with the fact that Gail has become one of those rare feeler/thinker poets of whom I think, "She was always there." She is a lover of truth, and to experience her poems is to say -- "Yes! Of course, but why didn't I think of telling it this way?" Gail has the ability to craft a phrase which "rings in the mind like a silver coin."

Partial to her, I'm sure, because I am a fellow Louisiana stateswoman, I live a scant 45-or-so minutes from her home in Breaux Bridge (the very name of her home is poetry), and in my opinion, she "does us proud."

As assistant editor to the journal Iambs & Trochees, I looked forward twice a year to receiving possibly another White poem in my printer's "blues" -- the preliminary copy of a publication which must be examined and corrected, prior to its final fate at the press.

Here are two poems we had the privilege of publishing, from Journal IV Issue 2 of Fall/Winter 2005. I trust Gail won't mind and somehow, I don't believe there would be any objection from Bill Carlson, my former editor, may he rest in peace.

To My Lover, After Our Discussion Of Poetry

When you came in last night and said, "What's that
you're writing?" and I answered, "Poetry",
you told me that I couldn't feed the cat,
much less indulge in truffles and Chablis,
on what I'd earn by that. So now I know:
you need a higher income in your bed,
a lawyer or a lady CEO.
The worst you think of me has now been said.
While you're at work tomorrow I'll clean house,
pack luggage, do the laundry and my hair.
When you come home you'll find that I've moved out,
taking my unproductive life elsewhere.
We're through, my love. But since you knew no better,
I've left this poem and not a Dear John letter.

Crouching Female Figure: Pompeii

At first they were not much afraid,
but through the hours the ashes fell,
layer on layer overlaid --
the soft gray snow that falls in hell.

When panic came, her mistress said,
Lucilla, take the child and run.
But when she stumbled, both were dead.
Ashes had eaten up the sun.

Now, in an iron carapace
of ashes, here she crouches still,
trying to shield the baby's face
while tourists photograph their fill.

Could God explain in layman's terms
what vices necrotized Pompeii,
when urban gods and rustic herms
were ashes in a single day?

No law, no logic eases pain
or stops the tidal wave of death.
Sinai and Etna both can rain
ashes that suffocate our breath.

There is a wisdom in these poems, and a compassion in the detail, that elevates them well above Dorothy Parker.

I'd like to second Leslie's recommendation to read Julie Kane's article on Gail. It's also wise work:
www.mezzocammin.com/iambic.php?vol=2006&iss=1&cat=criticism&page=kane

Here's my modest proposal: Gail White for US Poet Laureate.

During our correspondence, Gail, you mentioned the poem, "Women" by Louise Bogan:

WOMEN



Women have no wilderness in them, 

They are provident instead, 

Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts 

To eat dusty bread. 



They do not see cattle cropping red winter grass,

They do not hear 

Snow water going down under culverts 

Shallow and clear. 



They wait, when they should turn to journeys, 

They stiffen, when they should bend. 

They use against themselves that benevolence 

To which no man is friend. 



They cannot think of so many crops to a field 

Or of clean wood cleft by an axe. 

Their love is an eager meaninglessness 

Too tense or too lax. 



They hear in any whisper that speaks to them 

A shout and a cry. 

As like as not, when they take life over their door-sill 

They should let it go by. 


--
1923. from Body of This Death.

Gail, what do you make of the poem? Does it offend intentionally, as perhaps, an exposé of stereotypes? Or is Bogan sick and tired of the women she's been encountering, and longing for the company of men? I'm not sure I understand what the last two lines mean. I'd love to know your thoughts on this.

I mentioned this poem because I find it beautifully constructed, a joy to read, and thoroughly aggravating.

Personally, I can still count cows in a field, and I will match inner wilderness with any man in the room (and not on drugs).

I've always understood the last two lines to mean, "When women finally fall in love and trust some guy, they're usually making a mistake." She just feels obliged to put it more subtly than that.

Any opinions from anyone else?

Sorry, I should have asked my other question later.

As regards the Bogan I do hope stanzas one and two are ironical but by S3 it is becoming serious and the last two lines are very serious. It's obviously written out of personal pain. I know nothing about her life. I think it's about the conditioning of women and the lives they live as a result of that conditioning. That was especially true at the time the poem was written and in my own semi-rural New Zealand childhood it was still true.
Janet




[This message has been edited by Janet Kenny (edited November 20, 2008).]

I agree with Gail's paraphrase of Bogan's "Women," which has always been one of my favorites. In fact, if any of you haven't read Bogan's _Blue Estuaries_ you are in for a treat when you do. I go back to that book all the time.

I find this to be a pretty poem, but cannot share in the speaker's assessment of womanhood. Moreover, it seems to me that in more than one spot, the poem is subtextually inconsistent with itself (e.g., the opening observation that women lack wildness and passion, yet ending on a note which would appear to encourage rejection of life).

I met up with this poem in my college days, and responded to it immediately and viscerally. At the time, I was living among women (it was a large women's college whose name you wouldn't have recognized then) who declined to attend a free campus performance by Artur Rubinstein because it was their hair-washing night. Women who spent their weekends scurrying off home to obey their boyfriends. Women who wondered what on earth Betty Friedan (also a guest on campus) was going on about.

So...I suppose I understood the first line of this poem to be Those women. Obviously not MOI.

I took to Louise Bogan immediately.

Blue Estuaries is a great little book, and Americans haven't produced very many. I agree with Gail's reading. I think Bogan is a supreme example of a writer who produced powerful, outwardly directed poems out of depression, and ultimately the alcohol that killed her.

Gail, I've admired your poems for years and it's a real pleasure to be on this panel with you. I sympathize with what you say about the effect of not being prolific on a poet's chances of recognition. I think T.S. Eliot once said something about how, if you wanted to be a famous poet, you either had to write a great deal or write very little. But he put himself in the latter category, so I don't give much credence to it!

I'm another fan of Bogan's The Blue Estuaries who never understood the last lines of "Women"--thanks for your gloss. In rereading The Price of Everything, I noticed that one of your own poems is provocative in a bit like the way Bogan's is. The speaker wittily disparages famous women poets, settling on a male poet for a Muse:

Searching for Muses

When I needed you, you weren’t there,
Anne Bradstreet (maybe just back from prayers
and packing the children off to bed
before you forgot what the pastor said).
What can a post-modern poet do
with a pious domestic wife like you?

When I needed you, you weren’t there,
Emily, having just flown upstairs
to hide from company out of sight
or change your dress to a whiter white.
What can a post-modern poet do
with a sad neurotic cliché like you?

When I needed you, you weren’t there,
Edna, combing your bright red hair
just before going out on a date
with your newest courtier--gay or straight.
What can a post-modern poet do
with a wayward scatterbrained nymph like you?

But Coleridge sits on the edge of the bed--
I admit he’s stoned, and his eyes are red,
but he still looks ready to talk all night
and tune each rhyme till it rings just right.
Dorothy Wordsworth liked him, too.
I need company. Col will do.

You and Katherine McAlpine have interesting things to say in the introduction to The Muse Strikes Back (where this poem doesn't appear) about what happens when the genders of poet and Muse are reversed. I was wondering if you wanted to talk a little about what inspired this poem, or what it means for a woman poet to search for, rather than be, a Muse.

What a fabulous poem, Gail. Thanks for posting Yekaterina.

There is so much going on here that I am dizzy trying to absorb it all, but I would like to offer another Bogan poem that knocked me off my feet and then became a favorite to return to. To save time, I am copying from the Internet but it is in "The Blue Estuaries".

Medusa

I had come to the house, in a cave of trees,
Facing a sheer sky.
Everything moved, -- a bell hung ready to strike,
Sun and reflection wheeled by.

When the bare eyes were before me
And the hissing hair,
Held up at a window, seen through a door.
The stiff bald eyes, the serpents on the forehead
Formed in the air.

This is a dead scene forever now.
Nothing will ever stir.
The end will never brighten it more than this,
Nor the rain blur.

The water will always fall, and will not fall,
And the tipped bell make no sound.
The grass will always be growing for hay
Deep on the ground.

And I shall stand here like a shadow
Under the great balanced day,
My eyes on the yellow dust, that was lifting in the wind,
And does not drift away.

Louise Bogan

I am pretty sure that Louise Bogan was a poet I read as a teenager in The Ladies Home Journal, which was always available at my aunt's home, but not at ours. I do believe though that she was also included in anthologies which were werre availabe at home. In the small town where I grew up the school library was the only outside source for books and these were selectively chosen so as not to corrupt.

But Louise and Edna somehow slipped through all the filtering nets and found a home in my brain. Mostly, I think through LHJ.

The book "A Poet's Prose" proves that a poet can also write prose. I see that it is time for me to buy her biography.

I am sure that there are among the guests featured on this current discussion, women poets whose poems who inspire girls and young women who are seeking their identity. Isn't that an amaing thought!

Janice

Needless to say here for I have said it elsewhere, but just for the record, I am a nonregistered member of the Gail White fan club.

The appreciation of Bogan's "Women" is a generational thing, I think. The poems spoke to me at once because I grew up surrounded by women who would not color outside the lines to save their lives--in an almost literal sense--and who expected the young (like me) to live the same way. It must be hard now for young women to imagine themselves in such a situation, or understand fully the frustration and irritation that Bogan is conveying in that poem.

There's a beauty by Elinor Wylie that conveys something very similar:

Let No Charitable Hope

Now let no charitable hope
Confuse my mind with images
Of eagle and of antelope;
I am in nature none of these.

I was, being human, born alone;
I am, being woman, hard beset;
I live by squeezing from a stone
The little nourishment I get.

In masks outrageous and austere
The years go by in single file,
But none has merited my fear,
And none has quite escaped my smile.

The body language that goes with this poem strikes me as something between an uptilted chin and an upraised finger. There's a lot of anger in it, under that courageous final smile, and a degree of contempt for the unnamed source of the hardness of life as she perceives it.

And of course there's Charlotte Mew in England, another woman who deserves to be read much more.

Gail:

Will you cudgel your brains and find that poem of yours that was in Light about 10 years ago about silk stockings?

I'm sorrier than ever that I didn't think of devising the little interviews for Rhina and Gail when I started hosting this topic. I suddenly came up with the idea when it came time to post Deborah and Alicia. I liked it, and I've stuck with it. As a finale, Julie Kane and Susan McLean will be posted sometime next week. BUT, to have a better idea of where Gail and Rhina have sprung from, I'll just have to re-recommend Julie Kane's article on Gail in Mezzo Cammin, Volume 1, Issue 1; and my piece on Rhina in Mezzo Cammin, Volume 2, Issue 1 (in the archives, under "criticism"). To Rhina & Gail: Next time.

Just to say how much I enjoyed rereading Gail's "The Gypsy Woman Tells Your Fortune". This seems timeless already. I'm worried about Frank though. Why did he type it out (with three misprints) when it's available on the net?

Duncan

I appreciate Rhina's quotation of Elinor Wylie's poem, which is one of my favorites. In fact, if I ever assemble enough poems for another book, I plan to call it "Little Nourishment". (I live by squeezing from a stone/The little nourishment I get) - how true!

Deborah, I'm not sure what you mean about the silk stockings. The only thing I can ever remember writing about stockings was a steal from Herrick:

Whenas in silks my Julia goes
They cling unto her pantyhose.

Gail: That's it! Thank you! This little number is the quintessence of you.

I feel so 'late to the party'. I want to comment on Gail's thread and some of the others and fully intend to do so by Christmas. November has been busy as hell for me and so I'm just now getting around to reading these threads.

Anne, feeling, as my great-aunt used to say, 'swimmy-headed'