Once upon a time I was hugely offended by the term “woman poet.” At the time I was hardly a poet (or plain old “writer of poems”), but I thought I was, which is all that matters. More recently, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s such a big deal after all. 
One can make a personal choice to be called or not called something, but this idea of being offended, as if some gross injustice were being committed to one’s person, is perhaps absurd. I personally dislike the term poetess, a term many relatives like to call me (more or less lovingly). I dislike it because it feels like a non-word. It’s cutesy. And I have, in the past, retorted in a mean way when someone used the word. Maybe I’m growing out of it now.
The main problem with being called a woman poet is that we don’t go around calling men who write poetry “man poets.” The poet as male is norm. I suppose that’s where the offense comes from.
Annie Finch has a great article up at Harriet, titled ‘Why I Am a Woman Poet’. One very important thing the article implies is that if it is absurd to impose the term “woman poet” on all women who write poetry, it is just as absurd to ban the term and say that no one should be allowed to use it.
The other important thing is this:
I would be ecstatic to see anthologies, forums, and panels devoted to “men’s poetry.” It would signal to me that men had become conscious that maleness is a gender and can influence men’s poetic choices and voices.
One of the most exciting literary-critical thrills I have had recently came from an experience just like that. I was outside reader for a senior thesis at Middlebury College about the use of mythology in women’s poetry. Among the excellent feminist readings of poems by Sexton, Bogan, Plath, and many others, what knocked my socks off most of all was a brilliant “masculinist” reading of Frost’s “For Once, Then, Something” in terms of the male tradition of writing about the Narcissus myth. When this kind of reading is no longer shockingly new, that may be the time I will be ready to stop thinking of myself as a woman poet. When white poetry, male poetry, and heterosexual poetry are understood to be the poetries of specific kinds of people and not of the universal Poet, then all poems will have a good chance of being appreciated for what they are–poems by specific kinds of people. When my privileged status in terms of race (Anglo-Celtic), class (upper middle), and sexuality (hetero) is just as obvious and visible a classification as my gender status, that may be the right time to stop thinking of myself as a woman poet. At that point all of us will, I expect, be more tolerant of poetry built on unfamiliar assumptions; more curious to learn about the variety of poetic traditions in which poems operate, and more literate in the varieties of possible poetic excellence.
I had a vague thought similar to the above some months ago, but it slipped away. Finch says it beautifully. We always complain when we find anthologies filled with poetry by white, heterosexual men, and that’s probably because all of it seems to have happened by chance. Like, “Hey, we didn’t really mean to exclude you (black/brown/woman/gay/etc). We were just looking for the best poetry possible and we can’t help it if they’re all men!” That is annoying. But if you had an anthology that consciously chose to look at, I don’t know, heterosexual writing by men or “what it means to be a man”, to compliment anthologies that focus on LGBT writing or the all-famous “what it means to be a woman”, life would be a lot more interesting. I’m very curious about what men think. Really.
Another interesting opinion re labels came from Joshua Muyiwa. Joshua is one of my favourite Indian poets. A curious choice for me, if you think of what I generally like to read. When I first read Joshua, I was tempted to edit out a lot of lines and read only the best. (I think he knows this.) After watching him read a couple of months ago, I changed my mind. He seems to be responding to a particular tradition of poetry, a performative, communal one. At his reading, he seemed a little nervous, but in a strange way I think that helped. That was probably the most engaging TFA reading I’ve ever attended.
Anyway, during the Q/A session, I asked him if it bothered him to be called a queer poet. He replied (I’m paraphrasing): “Not really. I’m just glad to be called a poet.”
oh yikes. your new format with the rest of the post folded in – didn’t see anything but the first paragraph when i made the comment. kindly delete, no?
Done. Though it didn’t really need deleting. : )
well, kinda, it did. it just said what you were saying below the fold. and about the finch post – not having checked comments, i was gobsmacked! 102?!
I’ve been having interesting conversations about poetry and gender recently – specifically how and why the narrative address of even the same subject seems to be approached differently in the masculine and feminine traditions of poetry and where the dissimilarities lie, and which poets don’t typically conform to gender roles and why. It’s interesting.
I also apparently repeat myself.
I think I’m understanding identity politics more and more. Terms like “woman poet” and “gay novel” and “black composer” still make me wince, but I understand why people take comfort in such categories.
It is, important, I think, to defend the right of individuals who want to squirm away labels of this sort, just as it is important to defend those who like the labels.
It’s important to me that Elizabeth Bishop is a woman, but I wouldn’t think of calling her a “woman poet”—partly, I think, because the adjective functions in an ambiguous way. A poet who is a woman. But also a poet who is for a woman readership. The latter sense doesn’t please me, nope, not at all.
p.s. I like the new design.
Interesting thoughts, Aditi. I do like the idea of there being some acknowledgement that being male influences one’s taste just like being female. Not sure I’d want everyone to get TOO carried away with it though. I remember in high school my Episcopalian boyfriend insisted I had certain opinions because I had been raised Catholic, and I was like, no, I think that because I’ve thought it through, and I’m an individual with a mind of my own. Of course HIS opinions were just his individual opinions, LOL. I guess I have a thing about being told what I think and why I think it. And also, assumptions about privilege and so on that are based on stereotypes often turn out to be ASSumptions.
I do see your (and Annie’s) point though.
“Women’s literature” used to bother me because it’s such an exclusive term–not only does one read it as writing by women, but as writing for women, when all literature should be for everyone. The more I got into feminism, though, the more it made sense–we need a women’s literature at the present moment to rekindle interest in the women writers whose writing has been overlooked in favor of men’s even those the women’s was often as good. Once this has been corrected, once good writing by women finds its way into the canon alongside the writing by men (of course the men will always outnumber women in the traditional canon), then “women’s literature” will start to mean only a piece of ‘writing of a specific kind of person’ for me, but right now, its importance comes into my mind before the literal meaning.
I agree, though, I’d like to see something about what men think. So much of the men’s poetry of the past is posturing/affectation. I suspect I’d mind being called a female poet only slightly more than being called a green-eyed poet or a right-handed poet; as long as it’s not meant to imply female poets are inferior, yes, it’s a set to which I belong. So what?
In German, all careers are assumed to be male (ex., male teacher = Lehrer) unless there’s a feminine ending (female teacher = Lehrerin). Definitely phallogocentric as far as careers/people/groups of people go (Student, Studentin, Studenten, Studentinnen).
Nice new look! For the longest time, I’ve been torn about the term ‘women’s writing’ for similar reasons as Audrey. While I feel there is a need to encourage women’s writing because historically it has been sidelined, I’m disturbed by how many people don’t read books by women because they think they are also only for women. And I’m talking about people who read a lot. As if somehow male themes are the default and universal themes which everybody can relate to, and women’s themes are ‘feminine stuff’ not worth universal attention.
Personally, I don’t have a problem being called a woman poet on occasion but I think it would be irritating if the term came with any fixed expectations / biases that tried to pigeonhole my writing into a particular mode.
The thing is there will always be people who want to group together and form a subclass whether the basis of their association is a philosophical point of view, sexual persuasion or gender. In the post this morning my wife received a review copy of ‘Mslexia’ which if you’re unfamiliar with it is a glossy magazine devoted solely to women writers. Which means I can’t submit to it. Which is fine because I’m not exactly short of magazine to submit to and there are plenty in the ads at the back of the book some of which are very specific about what they will and will not consider.
Many years ago, when my wife and I were just getting to know each other, I wrote a poem called ‘The Poetess’. The reason was very simple: a woman is talking here and there is nothing within the piece (written in the first person) to indicate that. The word identifies gender and no more and for some people – clearly those who are involved with ‘Mslexia’ – gender is an issue.
I never refer to my wife as a poetess (even though she is) not because I have a problem with the word but because I’ve never found a need to underline the fact that she’s a woman who write poetry. I’ve always held the opinion that a poem should stand on fall on its own merits and the less we know about the author the better.
My opinion on this matter is very similar to Anindita’s and Audrey’s. I used to hate terms like “women’s art” in college, because it usually carried certain implications and assumptions about the work. But I do see the purpose in highlighting race or gender, simply for the sake of representation.
[...] Aditi at Blotting Paper ponders the label of “women’s poetry.” The responses are worth reading as well. [...]
@ Cailin
We all do. : )
@ Lucas and Anindita
Glad you like it. : )
@ Rose
That’s true. I think any -ism that becomes extreme is to be shied away from. I just don’t see why Annie Finch shouldn’t call herself a woman poet if that’s what she wants to do.
@ Audrey, Anindita, AR
Mm, yes, that’s one of the main reasons I was against the “women’s literature” — the fact that it suggests it’s for women only. There’s that explanation people keep giving you, that as women, we are used to seeing things through men’s eyes because we’ve been reading canonical literature by men for centuries. We’re able to somehow accommodate both male and female points of view, whereas men find it very hard to see things from a woman’s pov. What’s strange is that after this discovery has been made, why aren’t we trying to overcome it? Sure we’re different, but we’re not that different.
I remember one of the few male lecturers I had boldly proclaiming that Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf were the only two women worth reading. I had to wonder if he’d read any women besides those two.
An extension of this idea to have anthologies for men’s writing is to have anthologies that collect poems by their focus on femininity or masculinity or androgyny. That way you can have male, female, other writers commenting on these familiar notions. Why restrict any of these anthologies to only male or female writers?
@ Jim
I would not mind being published Mslexia at all. I wish I had the guts to submit there. I think what’s offensive about a Myslexia-type mag is that there’s no suitable alternative for men. Why shouldn’t there be a mag for only male writers? We have a Cosmo and a Maxim, don’t we? And it’s not like only women read Cosmo or only men read Maxim. From what I’ve read of Mslexia, they not only focus on writing by women, but also on what women have to say about themselves. They’re not just babying women and giving them a platform to publish whatever they want to. But I’d have to read more to be sure of that.
It’s true that we don’t have to underline our gender, but sometimes it’s interesting to. If I look back at my own writing (only about three or four years worth; it’s not much) there was a period when I was focussing very much on women’s voices. But there’s a whole bunch of stuff that isn’t very feministy at all. The biggest mistake is that we (ie people in general) probably read entire bodies of work as feminist or as women’s writing, instead of looking at the different preoccupations within the oeuvre. OK, so I went off on a little tangent…