Wow, this thread has gotten very contentious since I last commented last night -- after a long tiring day in which my life revolved around everything but poetry. I didn't get a chance to read all posts, but I did catch someone use the phrase "the Jills of the world". Good, God, I hope there aren't a lot of us.
I did, however, get the chance to spend several hours attempting to revise my current post on Eratosphere and, if I'd never posted it, wouldn't have had anything to go on, so I still love this site.
I do want to add something to this argument: when I was finishing my degree several years ago, I noticed that the English dept. was dominated by women. Fiction writing classes were also dominated by women. Poetry classes were the odd exception in the gender gap; men made up at least 50% of those classes. Out of both genders, the occasional man only carried on the metric tradition (besides my sorry attempts). I wonder-- do men feel a certain attachment to the bards of old? I think of Quincy Lehr, the only modern poet I can think of who has been working on a 40 pg poem (not that I have much access to the poetry world, except through this site). Are men simply carrying on the bardic tradition?
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