Quote:
Originally Posted by Joe Crocker
So the problem for you is that I don’t show how the male gaze of the narrator is shared by builders of the cut. That is fair comment, I guess. [...] I had two impulses. The first verse is an image of the rounded shapely Chiltern hills and the second is about the man-made road cut through them. What links the two things is a male swagger, a kind of lust. I don’t want to get all psycho-analytic because I wouldn’t know wtf I was talking about. But there does seem to be some sort of underlying drive that links these things. Likely, I have failed to show it.
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Well, it's not really a problem for me, as such. I flagged it up, because you said your aim was to show the male gaze of the engineers, and I don't think the poem does this.
I'd also suggest that the question, S2L1-2 maybe works against your goal of suggesting the N and engineers are similar, that they share the male gaze. Or it did for me. After all the N finds the engineers surprising, even difficult to comprehend. The poem stresses his difference from them.
S2L1-2 also raises the question of the engineers' motivations. Why did they do it? And I'd say one possible answer that suggests itself is that maybe the engineers just don't see themselves cutting through a woman's form. Maybe to them, the hills are just an obstacle. Maybe they just have a job to be done and a deadline to be met.
So, while the poem raises the question of the engineers' motivations, for me, it doesn't give us any real reason to think they share the N's view of things. Especially, I think, if the reader doesn't share the N's view either.
And all that's OK, I guess. The poem can be about the N and his view of the world, including his view of others' motivations and actions. Just, as above, this doesn't seem to be what you were aiming for.
best,
Matt