Wednesday, January 14, 2004

 

So, I'm reading Kimiko Hahn, who is a poet who strikes me as writing poetry consciously from a female perspective...or rather, to expose and publicize "femaleness." Mosquito and Ant takes its name from a writing style used only by women, and in the book she discusses to some extent her fascination with The Tale of Genji, and the time it was written in, when women, although formally encompassed by restrictive rules, were weilders of great cultural power. It was through female forms of expression that the modes of art were set. In Earshot, by contrast, there are a number of poems that seem to address the question of whether art made by women can ever be "perfect," due to the fact that women (straight women) at least, must detach themselves from the mother and learn to love the opposite sex. Men go straight from mom to girlfriend, and so don't deal with this psychological damage.

I still don't know what to think of that, but I was thinking of "female" modes of expression, or "gendered" writing. I don't know that I'm all that conscious of being a woman in my writing, although I suppose it's always lurking there for the canny eye to find. But I haven't really, to my mind, addressed problems confronting women so much as problems confronting people. Of course, I view "people" from my own perspective, which is a gendered one.

I wonder how much it shows. The poems I probably think of as most gender female are my Calamity poems, an ongoing series about a "character," who fills in as my Byronic "I" (that is to say, the "I" that is not actually supposed to be me, but is some weird funhouse version of myself and several other entirely mythical personae) and the poems from my first, failed attempt at a series, which was about chance and divination.

Here's one:

Pajarito

Pajarito de mi alma,
I'm going to stop listening
to the purple crooners coming
out of car radios, their voices breathy as feathers,
predicting heartbreak and release
and the best ribs in town,
blue-black tunes for when the
dashboard is wavy with reflections of
streetlight and rain.

I have a little black bird for you, pajarito.
There are crows out on the front
lawn. In this country, we've had to give
up considering them
prophecies of death. There's
so many, we'd all be underground
if they had their way.

Hear that thunder? It's the
angels, bowling. They
always get splits. That's why
the time between the crash
and the light will tell you
how many years till you get married
or until an eagle steals you away
in his talons. I forget which.

Pajarito, pajarito de mi corazón
flap those wings and bring me some coffee,
tell me what happened at the office today,
I already know what's happening tomorrow,
you know, pajarito, pajarito,
there are two halves to the now I'm in.

_________________


Is it particularly feminine? It strikes me that way when I think about it, bu I've never thought much about this aspect of my work, and maybe I'm reflecting more feminine more generally than I think. But what do you think? Or about gender and language? Is it possible to have genderless expression? Or is that a somewhat silly thing to strive for? I'm not sure what good it would be...

posted by Reen |link| 0 comments

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