Is Poetry Masculine or Feminine?

[Lightning Rod]

Is Poetry Masculine or Feminine?

There are popular rumors of my misogyny
I deny them all, but this question is sure to reinforce these myths

The question is: Is poetry masculine or feminine?

I think it is masculine. Maybe I'm prejudiced.
But men write a different breed of poetry than women.

The man to woman ratio among great poets is similar to the ratio in great painters. About 1 in 10.

I'm not saying that women can't write great poetry, but there are poets that I call 'poetettes' (these are mostly women but some male poets fall into this category as well) They mean well. They don't want to hurt anybody's feelings. They use words like translucent and gossamer. They are wistful and dreamy. That's all very fine, but not really my idea of poetry.

I'm from the Whitman school. Sure he was an old queer, but his poetry was wildly masculine. It confronts you. It pushes you around. It wants to laugh and have a drink with you. It is engaging and not fey and passive and frilly. It talks about real life.

Even some of the best women poets were queer. Sapho, Gertrude Stein.
Others were very ballsy ladies, Plath, Parker.

But I think poetry is a man's game. What do you think?
Maybe we should do it like they do it in sports. In golf there is the PGA (Professional Golfers Association) and the LPGA (Ladies Professional Golf Association.)

(Lightning Rod ducks for cover)

[Doreen Peri]

I donno if you're a misogynist or not.

But you're definitely a sexist.

Poetry is a man's game?

WTF? Are you on drugs?

Jesus.

Sexist. No doubt about it.

*shaking my head*

I can't believe you even made this post.

[Lightning Rod]

(tsk, tsk, name calling)

doreen, you don't by any means fall into my 'poetettes' category
you are one of the best contemporary woman poets I know of
that's because you have balls...haha

[Doreen Peri]

Well thanks for the compliment about my writing.

But my writing isn't masculine. Not one bit.

Calling you a sexist when you're being a sexist isn't name calling. It's just telling it like it is.

[Lightning Rod]

this statement eludes me:
"Calling you a sexist when you're being a sexist isn't name calling"

I realize that it isn't libel if it's true, but this is not about legality, it's about politeness. As I understand the conventions of our site, name calling is discouraged. Follow your own rules, doreen.

If you want to disagree with my contentions, then tell me why they are wrong. I'm not a sexist. I'm just a keen observer of life.

[Doreen Peri]

Sorry. I'll rephrase it.

The statements you have made about women poets are sexist.

Maybe you're not a sexist, but by definition, the statements you made in your post are sexist.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sexism

1: prejudice or discrimination based on sex; especially : discrimination against women
2: behavior, conditions, or attitudes that foster stereotypes of social roles based on sex

The way you define the poetry that women write fosters stereotypes and is discriminatory.

I'm just calling it as I see it. Sorry I called YOU a sexist. I should have said the statements were sexist.

Bowing out. Maybe others have some input here.

[judih]

What a bizarre statement?
If words are available to all humans who have been recruited into language, then verbal expression is likewise available to all.
Those who write poetry are those who choose to write poetry.
male, female, transgender, androgynous, what does it matter?

If you count poets, then don't forget that for a long, long time, literacy wasn't freely available to women. We had to learn on the sly and then we wrote and called ourselves men, just to be read.

It's a long history of being pushed aside.
Now? today?
i'd say that some poetry is more yin or yang, because the old so-called gender differences are being washed away with the tide.

When i was in Toronto at a poetry slam, the poets on stage were mostly gay and spoke about coming out or staying out.

i'm not into categorizing. What's the point?

[emel.scott]

hmmmm, Easy to say most of the great poetry is by men when it is men who held all the worldly power, got the education, made all the business, editorial and marketing decisions, etc.

I know men are genetically predisposed to be physically stronger but I've never heard of an inherent advantage in linguistics or the arts. Seems to me, those are strictly circumstantial.

I think your premise is flawed LRod. First you have to compensate for man's ten thousand year head start. Which was only justified during primitive conditions because men could physically kick ass and women had to bare children, menstruate, etc..

Check back with me in a couple thousand years when women (and other genders) have had the same opportunities as us swingin' dicks for a while longer. That is, if we're not blasted back to the stone age and have to start all over again.

Scott

[WIREMAN]

this has been one big delete session for me and i've decided this topic ain't worthy!

[Doreen Peri]

I don't blame you, WIREMAN.
I totally agree.

emel.scott and judih~ right on brotha and sistah
let's make some poetry!

[Lightning Rod]

judih, the language has been available to women for as long as it's been available to men. This is a bogus argument. My point was that if you look at the history of the craft, most practitioners and the best poets have been men. If you can disprove this observation, please do it. That's not a sexist statement. I'm all for gender equality, but there are differences in the genders, all of them.

scott, I just don't buy the lack of opportunity argument. I think it's a myth that women were kept barefoot, pregnant and ignorant until the 1960's when they invented the birth control pill. There were literate women in biblical times. I don't think women need a few thousand years to 'catch up'. They are smarter than men in most every way. If I'm a sexist, it's in favor of women.

thank you both for your intelligent and pertinent comments

[hester_prynne]

Lrod, you've put your foot in it this time, and shown your own misconceived selfness quite directly.

Try reading a little Virginia Woolf....who constantly wrote and pleaded for women to have the freedom to write more openly, creatively, even in her time, which was not long ago. She told women, at college commencement speeches to come out from behind the male gendered names they used on their works in order to safely sell them for publication....she wanted women to be released from their catering to men, required by society, so they could write. Hell, she wanted them all to be granted a guareenteed 400 a year so they could be writers and lose the responsibility and second class "shut up" citizenship awarded them at birth. Even today, a woman who rejects this mold is considered "out of line", or a "bitch" or a "freak", the bad women to play with but never marry for god's sake.......too smart, too needy of independence for a man to tolerate......ugh.
Woolf was pleading with women to write openly about their perceptions, their lives, to come out from the shadows of the droll male control of literature, much of which was written from a stereotyped view of what women consisted of in their unfortunately small conditioned rank in society, and this continues today. Men missed out on alot due to their fears of investigating the real woman, what was on her mind, her poignancy, and the injustice of her "place" in society, defined by men who had no idea, and wanted no idea, and it is obvious here that you too also lack courageous and deeper insights on this subject. I'm rather surprized at this and ashamed of you.
Indeed, this is a sad thread to read.
But I brighten when I go back to the poem you wrote about the little girl on the playground who carried you around the playground....a very telling metaphor with a huge amount of truth in it, perhaps more telling of a truth than you even realized. How many women in your life have carried you around throughout your life since? Will I be admonished for seeing it that way and thinking...if he only knew what he is revealing here? Is it not okay for me to say that? Must I rather indulge you in your oversights?


Apologies are due here, and caution. I see your statements as hollow, arrogant, and mostly stupid and the stupidity of them does make them less offensive.

But you do need to think this one through again, and retract. Or at least telling us you were kidding the whole time would help, tho it is not a subject to kid about my friend.
H

[Lightning Rod]

theda,

you know me too well, darlin'
(or not well enough)

I started this thread in an attempt to start a discussion about gender and creativity. I purposely posed it in an arch and perhaps opinionated way. Perhaps I got a little more than I bargained for.

If I said that some of my favorite poets were women, would that help? No, that's too patronizing.

Yes, my dear, women have carried me around all my life. Since before birth. I would be stupid and blind not to recognize what wonderful things women have done for me in my life. I don't know if it's because I'm lucky or good. But just as they have carried me, I have carried them, and I still do, it only in my heart.

no kidding

[Doreen Peri]

OK so men are better poets and there's not anything a woman can do about it. A woman, because of her gender, is automatically an inferior poet.

Well then, I say all women should just put down the fricking pen and stop this writing nonsense.

It's futile and insulting to the reader who is well aware that it is inferior literature. Women shouldn't even bother with it. They'll never be as good as men.

I, for one, am now completely convinced of this fact and hereby hang my ink pen out to dry, put my keyboard in a locked drawer, and I'm off to go swimming.

At least at the pool, I can wear a little string bikini and be respected for what I have to offer.

[Lightning Rod]

good choice doreen
just be a babe