[Erik Olson]

I was pleased that this conversation prompted me to rediscover two excellent women poets of different times and styles, both however of great perspicacity in their own right, manifested in good poetry. Anne Carson I happened on, having put my nose into The Oxford Book of American Poetry today. I noticed that all her poems in said anthology betray “Big question” subjects even from their titles; assuming the existence of God is a big question…(from the Truth about God: My religion, God’s Woman, God’s Mother, God’s Justice). The bigness of the titles belie the playfulness and lightness of her angle by which she investigates these matters with wit. I’ll venture there is a playfulness and lightness of touch in the approach to the biggest questions of humankind to be found.

God's Work
Moonlight in the kitchen is a sign of God.
The kind of sadness that is a black suction pipe extracting you
from your own navel and which the Buddhists call

"no mindcover" is a sign of God.
The blind alleys that run alongside human conversation
like lashes are a sign of God.

God's own calmness is a sign of God.
The surprisingly cold smell of potatoes or money.
Solid pieces of silence.

From these diverse signs you can see how much work remains to do.
Put away your sadness, it is a mantle of work.

Her work is at once, very personal and at the same time universal, deep without ponderousness and playful with depth. You'll notice how the abstract interchanges with and is manifested in the concrete, thus we go from the general in one line, specific in the next and back to general in the last:

God's own calmness is a sign of God.
The surprisingly cold smell of potatoes or money.
Solid pieces of silence.

I think there is also something else to be said about the idea that abstract words like “solitude”, “fate” "dullness”, “love, "death,"” “folly” are necessarily everywhere used ponderous, dull, or pompous in effect. Of course any selection of words can be any number of things, but abstract words such as these can be used in no such way at all. In light verse, for instance, big conceptual words can be used for satire, and a whole array of effects not at all necessarily dull, ponderous, pompous or really any thing, it's all about the context. Of course, where matters of taste are concerned any one may differ from myself and the opinions I have related.
I love the way Anne Finch (among the first full-fledged woman poets to be published and widely circulated in England) goes form abstract conceptual ideas to specific and personal imagery, and matter, form didactic genius to confessional, etc.
Note: Anne Finch suffered from recurrent bouts of depression, also known as 'spleen', 'melancholy', or the 'vapors'. The description given in this poem was admired by contemporary physicians for its clinical accuracy (talk about a dose of truth finding its way in poetry). Her poetry sparkles with witty commentary and playful humor. She writes with clear conviction of what she observes of life and experiences, is now confessional and now universal, or both; she treats big truths with the same rhetorical facility as her male counterparts, yet is no mere imitation of male writers but her own voice. That voice, direct, personal and immediate. It has been suggested that she may be the best woman poet in England prior to the nineteenth century (McGovern, 1992). The poem was her best known and most widely acclaimed work during her lifetime, canonized today, etc. At her best she exalts and really is that heroic tenor heroic poetry's lofty strains would be. Reading it I find truth aplenty involved and flashing in every line. Satire arises at times too even.

The Spleen

What art thou, SPLEEN, which ev'ry thing dost ape?
Thou Proteus to abused Mankind,
Who never yet thy real Cause could find,
Or fix thee to remain in one continued Shape.
Still varying thy perplexing Form,
Now a Dead Sea thou'lt represent,
A Calm of stupid Discontent,
Then, dashing on the Rocks wilt rage into a Storm.
Trembling sometimes thou dost appear,
Dissolved into a Panic Fear;
On Sleep intruding dost thy Shadows spread,
Thy gloomy Terrors round the silent Bed,
And crowd with boding Dreams the Melancholy Head:
Or, when the Midnight Hour is told,
And drooping Lids thou still dost waking hold,

Thy fond Delusions cheat the Eyes,
Before them antick Specters dance,
Unusual Fires their pointed Heads advance,
And airy Phantoms rise.
Such was the monstrous Vision seen,
When Brutus (now beneath his Cares oppressed,
And all Rome's Fortunes rolling in his Breast,
Before Philippi's latest Field,
Before his Fate did to Octavius lead)
Was vanquish'd by the Spleen.
...
Now the Jonquil o'ercomes the feeble Brain;
We faint beneath the Aromatic Pain,
Till some offensive Scent thy Pow'rs appease,
And Pleasure we resign for short, and nauseous Ease.

In ev'ry One thou dost possess,
New are thy Motions, and thy Dress:
Now in some Grove a listening Friend
Thy false Suggestions must attend,
Thy whisper'd Griefs, thy fancy'd Sorrows hear,
Breath'd in a Sigh, and witness'd by a Tear;

Whilst in the light, and vulgar Crowd,
Thy Slaves, more clamorous and loud,
By Laughters unprovoked, thy Influence too confess.
In the Imperious Wife thou Vapors art,
Which from o'erheated Passions rise
In Clouds to the attractive Brain,
Until descending thence again,
Thro' the o'er-cast, and show'ring Eyes,
Upon her Husband's soften'd Heart,
He the disputed Point must yield,
Something resign of the contested Field...

The Fool, to imitate the Wits,
Complains of thy pretended Fits,
And Dullness, born with him, would lay
Upon thy accidental Sway;

Because, sometimes, thou dost presume
Into the ablest Heads to come:
That, often, Men of Thoughts refined,
Impatient of unequal Sense,
Such slow Returns, where they so much dispense,
Retiring from the Crowd, are to thy Shades inclined.
O'er me, alas! thou dost too much prevail:
I feel thy Force, whilst I against thee rail;
I feel my Verse decay, and my cramped Numbers fail.
Thro' thy black Jaundice I all Objects see,
As Dark, and Terrible as Thee,
My Lines decry'd, and my Employment thought
An useless Folly, or presumptuous Fault:
Whilst in the Muses Paths I stray,
Whilst in their Groves, and by their secret Springs
My Hand delights to trace unusual Things,
And deviates from the known, and common way;
Nor will in fading Silks compose
Faintly th' inimitable Rose,

Fill up an ill-drawn Bird, or paint on Glass
The Sov'reign's blurred and undistinguished Face,
The threatening Angel, and the speaking Ass.

Patron thou art to ev'ry gross Abuse,
The sullen Husband's feign'd Excuse,
When the ill Humour with his Wife he spends,
And bears recruited Wit, and Spirits to his Friends.
The Son of Bacchus pleads thy Pow'r,
As to the Glass he still repairs,
Pretends but to remove thy Cares,
Snatch from thy Shades one gay, and smiling Hour,
And drown thy Kingdom in a purple Show'r.
When the Coquette, whom ev'ry Fool admires,
Would in Variety be Fair,
And, changing hastily the Scene
From Light, Impertinent, and Vain,
Assumes a soft, a melancholy Air,

And of her Eyes rebates the wand'ring Fires,
The careless Posture, and the Head reclined,
The thoughtful, and composed Face,
Proclaiming the withdrawn, the absent Mind,
Allows the Fop more liberty to gaze,
Who gently for the tender Cause inquires;
The Cause, indeed, is a Defect in Sense,
Yet is the Spleen alleged, and still the dull Pretense.
But these are thy fantastic Harms,
The Tricks of thy pernicious Stage,
Which do the weaker Sort engage;
Worse are the dire Effects of thy more powerful Charms.
By Thee Religion, all we know,
That should enlighten here below,
Is veil'd in Darkness, and perplexed
With anxious Doubts, with endless Scruples vexed,
And some Restraint imply'd from each perverted Text.

Whilst Touch not, Taste not, what is freely giv'n,
Is but thy niggard Voice, disgracing bounteous Heav'n.
From Speech restrain'd, by thy Deceits abused,
To Deserts banish'd, or in Cells reclus'd,
Mistaken Votaries to the Pow'rs Divine,
Whilst they a purer Sacrifice design,
Do but the Spleen obey, and worship at thy Shrine.
In vain to chase thee ev'ry Art we try,
In vain all Remedies apply,
In vain the Indian Leaf infuse,
Or the parch'd Eastern Berry bruise;
Some pass, in vain, those Bounds, and nobler Liquors use.
Now Harmony, in vain, we bring,
Inspire the Flute, and touch the String.
From Harmony no help is had;
Music but soothes thee, if too sweetly sad,
And if too light, but turns thee gaily Mad.

Tho' the Physicians greatest Gains,
Altho' his growing Wealth he sees
Daily increased by Ladies Fees,
Yet dost thou baffle all his studious Pains.
Not skillful Lower thy Source could find,
Or thro' the well-dissected Body trace
The secret, the mysterious ways,
By which thou dost surprise, and prey upon the Mind.
Tho' in the Search, too deep for Humane Thought,
With unsuccessful Toil he wrought,
'Til thinking Thee to've catch'd, Himself by thee was caught,
Retain'd thy Prisoner, thy acknowledged Slave,
And sunk beneath thy Chain to a lamented Grave.

P.S. I agree with you Mary, it's a good thing to counterbalance a preponderance of male with a greater proportion of female voices, as balance is better than imbalance.
Best, Erik