Comments on: Poetry Matters: Women’s Work: Toward a New Poetic Language

By: Michael Schmidt

Michael Schmidt — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 16:48:34 +0000

I think — in the spirit of dialogue — Adrienne Rich would have entered into this discussion andf edged it forward by suggesting inclusions, with examples and reasons, rather than chiding exclusions. It is a wonderfully open space, this, and David Ward has been and is a wonderful facilitator. I hope Rachel will come back and add to the picture.

By: David C. Ward

David C. Ward — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 15:33:46 +0000

Point taken Rachel. But this blog is an ongoing conversation about poetry and what I was trying to do this month was establish a modernist tradition and show how it was affected by issues of gender — and then subsequently complicate that narrative by bringing in race. The “two-ness” of the African American (as Dubois put it) adds another layer to the narrative of modernism and the way that outsiders forced their way into that tradition, reshaping it. One of the reasons I did my first blog in this series on Phillis Wheatley was precisely to acknowledge how people hidden from history were forcing their way to our attention. Thanks for reading.

By: Rachel Kubie

Rachel Kubie — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 03:58:16 +0000

You’ve chosen wonderful poets, but I reach the end of it feeling as if I’ve missed part of the article, not to find discussion of any work by women of color. I don’t think Rich would have joined this panel, however wonderful it is, with that unspoken exclusion in place.

By: David Ward

David Ward — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 20:37:01 +0000

Thanks Eavan! (And to everyone else Eavan Boland’s Object Lessons charts what I tried to say in this blog much more eloquently than I could. Essential reading.)

By: Eavan Boland

Eavan Boland — Tue, 12 Mar 2013 19:06:30 +0000

This moving and eloquent piece points to a journey
that is more and more visible as an integral part
of how poetry was written and received in its time.
I read many of these poets at a distance and I
sensed their struggle as well as the force of their
work. Here the provenance of that struggle and that work is clearly laid out. What is so helpful here is the way these different achievements -Plath, Moore, Dickinson, Rich – are connected. It’s in the connections, which are
not often so well pointed out, that the real power of
the story emerges.