Birds and Gender

Today in the mail a sea bird from the beautiful Miss Loudon. She flew around my room and landed right here by my bed. A wonderful present.

Also in the mail “From the Bones Out” by Marisa de los Santos. I really like what she is doing in this book. Marisa has what Richard Howard calls, la condition fe’minine. in other words, she is not afraid to be a girl. A woman. So many other women artists it seems try to embrace their art by losing their gender, or believe that gender has no place in creation. I don’t understand this.

I don’t understand how you can BE a woman and not write about being a woman. For example, Richard Silken in his book “Crush” writes about being a gay man. What if he omitted that? Would his book be as powerful? Hell no. Yet it seems so many books by women try to sound like their male counterparts, as if they equate the feminine with something less desirable.

In a powerful way race, gender, sexuality matter. I mean they matter in the fact that they make our world smaller. I can read Langston Hughes and even though he is a black man I can relate to his words. Sometimes his words can be my words, with his writing I am able to fit in his skin.

Can motherhood be powerful? Can a woman in her fullest be sexy? Sharon Olds says for years she would get rejection notices that read this kind of journal does not except these kinds of poems. I am reluctant to bring up Sharon b/c you may confuse what I am trying to say with confessional poetry and gender has nothing to do with confession.

Silken is confessional in “Crush” yet he is powerful. He uses lines breaks and the page to set up fresh images and above all he is not afraid to be who he is. The last two books to really shake up the poetry world in my opinion have been “A Clerk’s Tale” and “Crush.” Why? Is it because they are gay men writing about love? Poets have writing about gay love for a very long time so I don’t think this is the answer. I think we as a society have forgotten the power of personal identity, when we tapped into that, claim it as our own we become unstoppable.