Gender & Poetry

Jessica Smith always has interesting things to say, and her recent post about women and publishing has sparked some discussion over at the Harriet blog. Craig Santos Perez (whose post "'Afro Picks,'" Publisher's Weekly, & the Racialized Pun" is a must-read) asks, "do you think women’s self-promotion in poetry differs from men’s self-promotion?" Here is what I posted in the comments:

The men who have established the professional standards that govern the world of poetry are by and large men who have benefited from many different kinds of unearned privilege, including the uncompensated labor of many women (domestic, secretarial, and creative). Therefore, the question should not be “how can women learn the skills that men seem naturally to possess (self-promotion)?” Those skills, upon closer inspection, reveal themselves to be not much more than plain, old-fashioned bourgeois entrepreneurialism that is rooted in inequality. I think it is good that men are asking what they should do vis-à-vis feminism, but I think the best way to begin is through careful scrutiny of their own practices. If one finds oneself with a creative project that does not include women, one should not conclude that it is the fault of women. Rather, one should ask “what’s wrong with this creative project in that it excludes women?”

Another thing that seems important to this discussion is time (see this article about sleep as a feminist issue). Who has time and who does not. Many women I know struggle to find the time to complete their own projects, and this lack of time surely has something to do with "self promotion." I talk more about time and gender and poetry in a post I have forthcoming over at delirious hem (where Jennifer Bartlett is asking some very important questions about gender, poetry, and disability; you should check out her blog too).

related posts: responding to #s trouble ; rearview mirrors ; notes on poetry and capitalism ; womb as the title of a publication ; hex presse mission statement

ETA: Craig's new post, with incisive, thoughtful comments from the rad Reb Livingston and the fab Danielle Pafunda

the pain economy

"On a scale of 1 to 10, rate your level of pain."

robotic animals and women

I dream that I've written essays

One of the dreams was about a paper I'd written called "The Fog of Scholarship." The thesis was that scholarship creates a fog around the subject, and sometimes it fills a book or a room. Or else it is there like a ghost in conversations. In the paper I called appearances of the fog in conversations "ghostings," and talked about how the language of scholarship is both guest and host which made the term especially appropriate. This all made perfect sense in the dream, even though now it seems...foggy.

Another essay was called "Multi-colored Pencils" and it was about how constructions and representations of race are articulated in different poetry communities. I remember that it seemed urgently important that I clarify that I wasn't talking about pencils of different colors, but rather pencils that were marbled rainbow (like these or these).

Another essay was called "Compassionate Sentences for Socialists" and it was written in a sort of Mad Libs form with many blanks above fine print descriptions of what should go in the blanks. There were things like "an animal with gentle skin" and "verb to describe the sound of machines" and "a house made out of paper and grass."

I have less time to write on paper or screens. I write when I am driving, or when I am walking home from class, or when I'm falling asleep. I see the words in my mind -- shuffling and reshuffling like scrabble tiles -- but my contact with the materials of writing -- paper, pencils, keys, and screens -- seems to be for typing and to-do lists.

These swans live at the lagoon at UCSB. For the longest time there was only one. Local birders believed that it was the offspring of a pair that had migrated out of the area. When a second swan appeared, the birding listserve was atwitter with the news. So many people were glad that the first swan was no longer alone.

dead dove when I opened the door...on its back...white feathers...red feet, curled red, nails...in my hand...but is it dead? eyelid, gold eye, eyeslide. the chest is moving. I'm looking looking looking for breath. It is alive, just barely, on the brink. I feel its pulse. I show it to J. "It's still breathing." Looking closely, J says "no, no, that is just your hand moving." It was my own pulse I felt.

AfterPlath

wound the old hole fashion

a thing sparkling, yellow jacket

sting-wings, plastic sheep bobbing

horizon-green, propeller-stung

kitty hanging synthroid

_________shudder cupboard

clean cat, claws pink: meat-making

mud-hooves, cork-screw

squeal, squid's ink in a jar

the dead dove's eye

gold in her slit

More Birds

Yesterday, I noticed a gray dove outside the enclosed seabird pond area. The dove looked like the doves in the aviaries, and so I suspected that it had escaped and then found its way back. Later, June said that she had given the dove to a neighbor, and that it must have escaped from its new home and come back. I went out of the enclosure and tried to net the bird so I could get it back inside, but it was difficult and the bird eluded the small, soft net. After several more failed attempts, I decided to put some seed on the roof of one of the aviaries. As it turned out, there was a hole in the net there, and I hoped that the bird might find its way back inside. Later, I noticed that this was the case; the bird had made its way in and was flying against the screens of the aviaries.

There was also a cormorant who we needed to net so that we could remove its wing wrap. It too was elusive, but at last,when it was in the water, J was able to scoop it up. Unfortunately, it became stuck in the net. At first we though it was stuck because one of its toenails had become stuck in the mesh, but what we thought was a toenail was actually a fishhook that had embedded itself in the cormorants foot. It took us quite awhile to untangle the net and remove the hook. There was blood.

There were ten cormorants at the pond -- the most I've ever seen -- and 8 pelicans. They had planned to do a release at dos pueblos ranch, but they had to reschedule because they were doing a photoshoot at the ranch that day. It was a shoot for Playboy magazine, and it was a closed set. The birds will be released there next week.