Recently as I talked with an editor interested in publishing my work, the subject of my column at suite101.com arose. The editor wanted to know the same thing a lot of other people ask. Why women's poetry - why not just poetry?
I guess a lot of it has to do with Emily Dickinson. When I was about nine years old, I read some of her poetry in a book at the library. The one that stuck with me then is numbered as 258.
There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter afternoons-
That oppresses, like the Heft
of Cathedral Tunes-
As I read that poem, I knew exactly the sort of light she spoke of in those lines. I had seen it too, understood "the Landscape listens," a line that followed. I was hooked by that illumination, the sort of writing that sparks insight as keen as a paper cut, as poignant as the smell of cinnamon.
As I plowed my way through the educational system, Emily was revered, but not touted, not like Eliot, or Pound, or Whitman, or Auden, or many of the other countless male poets whose work has vested much beauty in this world. Now I don't have anything against male poets - quite the contrary. I am a southern woman. I adore men. I couldn't write as I do had I not studied great writers of both genders. But women's poetry has always come in slightly on the heels of the words of great men.
I don't think it's an intentional thing. I consider it a product of mindset. More men were published; more men were in business. Things just worked out that way. After all, until Anne Bradstreet, women didn't do much with poetry at all. Not in the western part of the world, anyway. While society held strict views about the role of women, and their conduct, I believe it was as much our self-perception that produced this state of affairs. We positioned ourselves as society wanted; we believed that certain behavior was simply not acceptable. In Bradstreet's time, it would have,of course, been dangerous to go against the grain. Now, it is admirable to do so.
In the process of creating a women's poetry site for suite101.com, I have met so many fine women writers, and men as well. I never intended for my topic to exclude anyone, any gender, any culture. Rather, I hoped to elevate the collective consciousness of my visitors so that women's poetry can be understood and appreciated, so that we know what came before and to whom debts of gratitude are owed.
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