There I was, grazing peacefully in the meadow, when Tim Murphy sneaks up and ropes me into this corral called the Eratosphere, and I’m supposed to stand here and whinny about why it is that women are writing so much good poetry these days.
In his own words, here is the essence of what Tim Murphy proposed: “I figured out when I was very young that the great event of my life would be the emergence of women’s influence from man’s warlike wreckage. There is an extraordinary efflorescence of terrific poetry by women going on, unprecedented in human history. It is new, it is happening right now, and I ask you to join Leslie as your host in a discussion.”
I thought I might begin the conversation by offering a few ideas that popped into my head. When Tim Murphy first brought up this subject, I responded that, where “men’s warlike wreckage” is concerned, it doesn’t seem to me that “women’s influence” has had a speck of positive impact. However, where poetry is concerned, it is more evident that women have made a striking emergence. With the increase in the number of women editors and “women only” anthologies, as well as the greater participation of men in the raising of children and the life of the home, could it be that those day-to-day themes of domesticity and family, which male editors and poets once regarded with little interest, are now held higher esteem? This is mentioned in a couple of my responses on the interview pages. I don’t wish to suggest that the quotidian is some sort of exclusive inspiration for women. The integration of art and life is an ideal held by both genders. But: have women come to excel at it? Nor do I wish to leave the impression here that women aren't producing in equal amounts significant and distinctively excellent poems on nature, cities, mythology, history, art, politics, society, religion, science, and everything else under the sun.
Another aspect of the topic, it seems to me, is the possible role formal poetry plays. Does the “extraordinary efflorescence of terrific poetry by women” have anything to do with the expanding practice and popularity of formal verse? Does the claim apply to ALL poetry by women, or is it limited to formalism? In other words, has the “formalist movement” produced larger numbers of distinguished women poets than the free verse establishment has—and, if so, why? There has clearly been an abundance of superior sonnets. Has the rise of contemporary formalism led to an “efflorescence,” in general, of exceptional poetry by both women AND men?
In further exploration, I call on a couple of venerable voices: First, W.H. Auden, in his Foreword to Phyllis McGinely’s Times Three, suggests distinctions between the masculine and feminine imagination. He offers McGinley’s own views:
For little boys are rancorous
When robbed of any myth,
And spiteful and cantankerous
To all their kin and kith.
But little girls can draw conclusions
And profit from their lost illusions.
Auden concludes: “The masculine imagination lives in a state of perpetual revolt against the limitations of human life…Left to itself, the masculine imagination has very little appreciation for the here and now; it prefers to dwell on what is absent, on what has been or may be…In contrast, the feminine imagination accepts facts and is coolly realistic” with a “total lack of nostalgia.” McGinley “does not, like many male satirists, lose her temper or even show shocked surprise; she merely observes what is the case with deadly accuracy.”
I love the notion that women aren’t as nostalgic as men; but, is this truly the case, and how does this “coolly realistic” acceptance figure in the surge of superior poetry by women? Have women achieved a new deadpan essence in their ars poetica?
Finally, Rilke, in one of his “Letters to a Young Poet,” wrote this visionary passage a century ago:
“The girl and the woman, in their new, their own unfolding, will but in passing be imitators of masculine ways, good and bad, and repeaters of masculine professions. After the uncertainty of such transitions it will become apparent that women were only going through the profusion and the vicissitude of those (often ridiculous) disguises in order to cleanse their own most characteristic nature of the distorting influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully and more confidently, must surely have become fundamentally riper people, more human people, than easygoing man, who is not pulled down below the surface of life by the weight of any fruit of his body, and who, presumptuous and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity of woman, borne its full time in suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she will have stripped off the conventions of mere femininity in the mutations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching today will be surprised and struck by it. Some day (and for this, particularly in the northern countries, reliable signs are already speaking and shining), some day there will be girls and women whose name will no longer signify merely an opposite of the masculine, but something in itself, something that makes one think, not of any complement and limit, but only of life and existence: the feminine human being.”
Rilke’s statement addresses to some degree Tim Murphy’s question to me about when women will produce a Frost or a Wilbur. Perhaps women are beyond that question, having by now “cleansed their own most characteristic nature of the distorting influences of the other sex.” Man, I wouldn’t have thought of putting it that way. Would you? So, have women poets “stripped off the conventions of mere femininity” and evolved out of “an opposite of the masculine” into “the feminine human being?”
Are we acknowledging and appreciating to greater degrees today the essential qualities that have always been present in the poetry of women, or has something new happened? Perhaps greater acknowledgment has allowed women to become more widely published, thereby making the good poetry women have always written more prevalent now than it was a couple of decades ago. Some of us who have just come from a bad reading or flung down in disgust the latest issue of a journal containing some truly rotten poetry by women might be hard pressed to stand behind this claim. I will say, now that I think of it, that in recent years I’ve been following, with increased admiration and awe, more poetry by women than ever before; so, perhaps Tim Murphy is genuinely on to something.
We invite, of course, all Sphere members to the discussions, as we host the following specific poets: Rhina Espaillat, Gail White, A.E. Stallings, Deborah Warren, Suzanne Doyle, Catherine Tufariello, Julie Kane, and Susan McLean. I’ll open new threads for my introductions of Rhina and Gail first, and we’ll have their thoughts and ideas to react to. While I’m doing that, jump in here, everyone, anytime.
Meanwhile, the “Questions for Leslie Monsour” interview has a second page with further responses from me. Please check it out, and keep firing away on all fronts.
<u>Times Three</u>ars poetica
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