[Roger Slater]

I think Finch isn't saying the incorrect things that Mark is using illogic to knock down. She writes:

My own concern with these ratios is not so much with the proportions themselves—after all, men have the momentum of having published poetry for centuries longer than women, and to focus on the numerical difference between a third and a half, however frustrating and annoying that situation on a personal level, might seem akin to hollow bean-counting—but with what these numbers imply about the prevailing climate of poetics.

I don't see her shrilly ranting about any sort of "patriarchy." Her sin is having come close enough to one of Mark's reactionary hot spots to have triggered another of Mark's "this is what's wrong with literature and why I am not a more respected and valued poet and educator" rants. The numerical differences that Finch notes do raise a good question, and Mark's insistence that it is NATURE is no more based in fact than other answers that have been offered. Camille Paglia's views are also not scientific proof.

What do these numbers imply about the prevailing climate of poetics? Nothing at all?

Annie Finch is not, as far as I can tell, a man-hater. When she is an editor, she accepts work from men as well as from women. She is merely commenting on a numerical fact and speculating about what it might mean. In a world whose history proves, beyond any doubt, widespread gender discrimination, much of which has only eroded in the last forty years or so (by virtually any metric), it is certainly not silly to inquire whether that may be part of what is happening in poetry. The glib insistence, with rolled eyes and exasperation, that no, it's that men and women are different, is sloppy and prejudiced thinking, whatever the true answer may be.