# Reading > Poems, Poets, and Poetry >  Feminist Poetry

## tinustijger

Hey y'all,

What are your favourite feminist poems?
Lately I'm into Adrienne Rich, her poem 'Diving Into the Wreck' is great! I am writing an essay about it, feministic approach  :Smile:  Enjoy the poem

Diving into the Wreck 

First having read the book of myths,
and loaded the camera,
and checked the edge of the knife-blade,
I put on
the body-armor of black rubber
the absurd flippers
the grave and awkward mask.
I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his
assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner
but here alone.

There is a ladder.
The ladder is always there
hanging innocently
close to the side of the schooner.
We know what it is for,
we who have used it.
Otherwise
it is a piece of maritime floss
some sundry equipment.

I go down.


....

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15228

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## JBI

Emily Dickinson, "They Shut me Up in Prose"

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## tinustijger

Thanks, that one is great!

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## Babyguile

_Carol Ann Duffy_ (my favourite poet!):

*Valentine*

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

....

http://www.carolannduffy.co.uk/

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## tinustijger

I like the poem but I never saw it as a feminist poem, what do you think is feminist about it?

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## quasimodo1

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/jour...html?id=177368 Article from the Poetry Foundation about contemporary women's poetry (and just how some of it is feminist or criticism of poetry that may not be feminist enough.)

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## JBI

Adolescence II by Rita Dove:
http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets...ove/poems/2201

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## Babyguile

> I like the poem but I never saw it as a feminist poem, what do you think is feminist about it?


Sorry that is not the complete poem. I think a moderator has replaced the rest with a link for some reason. I'll try again.

http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/865.html

Click the link, it's worth it  :Wink:

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## prendrelemick

Stevie Smith is a poet who observed the world from an educated woman's point of view. I'm sure she never thought of herself as a feminist, but she has an independent female voice.
Here is some of her prose that captures her look on life;

Married to a tiger.

Why do some women like to be bullied, I think to myself, lying at full lengh to enjoy the hot soft water. Now, at home where my aunt and I live, the wives are so often delighted to tell you how splendidly bullying there husbands are, and how they put the foot down here and there, and no, they will not let them play bridge in the afternoon and they will not let them smoke, "My dear husband does not like to see me smoke", thereis a great deal of pride in their voices when they say this, I have often noticed it, it is as if they would say, you may not think it but I am married to a tiger. No, I did not think it, for certainly I cannot penetrate this excellent disguise that this tiger has adopted, for certainly no better disguise exists anywhere than the disguise of a Bottle Green husband. "My dear," say the jungle tiger-bucks, "I shall go to thetiger reunion festival as a Bottle Green husband, you won't know me."

Although it is prose, it is trying to fall into verse

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## Logos

> .... a moderator has replaced the rest with a link for some reason. ....


http://www.online-literature.com/for...ad.php?t=17515

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## Babyguile

Ah. Thanks for informing me  :Smile:

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## kelby_lake

I hate Carol Ann Duffy's poetry. my dog could write better poetry than that.

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## meh!

> I hate Carol Ann Duffy's poetry. my dog could write better poetry than that.



I doubt that: she seems incredibly skilled to me. This would explain why she is now the poet laureate and your dog remains, sadly, anonymous.  :Tongue: :

http://nauplion.net/Medusa.html

Medusa is one of my favourite poems by duffy. I think everyone's felt that way at one time or another.

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## Madame X

> I doubt that: she seems incredibly skilled to me. This would explain why she is now the poet laureate and your dog remains, sadly, anonymous. :


Au contraire! Twould be folly to dispute that a dog who deigneth _not_ to write, gaineth no grand repute!  :Idea: 

I daresay this Duffys met her match.  :Brow:  Or, in the immortal words of Marianne Moore (most assuredly, a female poetess  :Wink: )  _I, too, dislike it_. Give her a look-see, if youve not already.

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## mono

Absolutely anything by Sappho, no contest, but Anne Sexton has some pretty remarkable works as well. If you have even a vague interest in feminist poetry, and have not read Sappho - read her, read her, read her!

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## Silenced Chaos

I love love love love Stevie Smith!

Quoting her very famous 'Not Waving But Drowning' will do no harm:

Not Waving But Drowning
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he's dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.


She mastered the ambiguity of identity there, so many possible explanations and at the end none of them truly satisfies.

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## kelby_lake

> I doubt that: she seems incredibly skilled to me. This would explain why she is now the poet laureate and your dog remains, sadly, anonymous. :
> 
> http://nauplion.net/Medusa.html
> 
> Medusa is one of my favourite poems by duffy. I think everyone's felt that way at one time or another.


So-called 'feminist' poetry really annoys me. Yes, we know it's great and bad to be a woman but men don't whine on about the toils of being a man.

There's just poets that can say it far better, without dragging out the same metaphors and recycling them.

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## JBI

> So-called 'feminist' poetry really annoys me. Yes, we know it's great and bad to be a woman but men don't whine on about the toils of being a man.
> 
> There's just poets that can say it far better, without dragging out the same metaphors and recycling them.


It's proportionality, and mixed politics - Feminist poetry is hardly monolithic - for instance, the French Canadian poet Nicole Brossard is a fantastic poet, whereas Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, Nikki Giovanni, etc. all seem lacking. French feminism, in a sense, to me seems to hold more aesthetic capabilities - that is because, French feminism is completely different than its American counterpart - In the US, feminism, in discourse, acts as both a rip off of French feminism, and also a mixing between racial politics and pseudo-political movements, whereas in France it seems more capable of turning out good poetry. The distinction is perhaps best seen in the novel, if you compare, for instance, Alice Walker to Marguerite Duras, or in theory, if you compare Helene Cixous to Andrea Dworkin, or somebody, but in a sense, the Cixous model, put out in the Laugh of the Medusa seems quite stronger, as a theoretical model, than, for instance, the models put out by Elaine Showalter in England, the Canadian Linda Hutcheon, or the American post-feminist Judith Butler. 

That being said, I don't deny that there has been poetry, rooted in feminist politics from any of these countries, but ultimately, as a theoretical model, something like the tradition built on Betty Friedan is going to be less capable of creating perpetually relevant poetry than one built on the theoretical model of someone like Simon de Beauvoir. By centralizing the body, and the subconscious, existential elements and sexual identity, as apposed to a sense of community shared by women, a sense of political movement and agenda, and a sense of sisterhood in opposition to patriarchy. In a sense, politically, both movements are very important, but when it comes to writing poetry, too much reliance on the later model, with little care for the former tends to spawn pretty mediocre verse - in today's day and age, I think most people who are reading verse, especially verse written by women, are almost entirely in support of equality for women already - even the most conservative critics, in terms of aesthetics, such as Harold Bloom, ultimately are in favor of equality for women - in that sense then, poetry as a medium for a political movement doesn't really seem to work - I'm a self defining feminist, I see no reason for me to really read a poem that encourages me to rise up against Patriarchy, though I am very interested, in contrast, in poetry that deals with female identity, a subject which is forever fascinating, as male identity is equally as fascinating, though is made fresher and therefore far more interesting by its lack of representation in the canon up until recent times.

In that sense then, I see no problem reading something like this as a feminist poem: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/page/poem4.htm

In a sense then, certain literary traditions treat feminism differently - I'd say more than half of the figures recognized as major to the Canadian canon (from the very first texts too, mind you) have, for one reason or another, been female, while the bulk of the male authors have, for one reason or another, held strong feminist attitudes. In that sense, the whole tradition is somewhat strange - the bulk of contemporary poets being of minority groups, and female, yet writing in a sphere that has essentially, almost unanimously absorbed feminism, creates a sort of model that, rather than encouraging change through poetry, seeks to break free of the confines of the unpoetic world, into the unrepressed diegesis of the poetic world. The verse then, is written with the assumption that the reader almost always already agrees with the politics behind the poem - with that out of the way, the argument is able to change to more interesting topics - how one is shaped by the exterior of the poem, and the real world politics, rather than a focus on how the poetic world can be used as a medium to change the real world.

In the US, things seem to be different, for some reasons, many of them rooted in, essentially, the way social change seems to work in the US. You get, for instance, your African American Feminist poetics, which work in contrast to your White Feminist Poetics, which in turn are different than your Chinese-American poetics, which, together with the former three, are put in contrast with their lesbian counterparts in respective traditions, and are labeled heterosexist, racist, or whatever in turn. The actual grouping, in terms of American criticism and poetics, seems to be more central than the actual poet - the act of being part of a major movement is more central to American poetics than elsewhere, and therefore the association of poet with movement is made to dominate much of the discourse, so that, in turn, poetry functions more as a manifesto than as a testimony or personal reflection, or a subconscious insight spilling free onto paper.

On another note, how do we decide if a poem is feminist or not? is this one, for instance: http://thomashardy.blogspot.com/2008...-of-kings.html and in the original French: http://membres.lycos.fr/poetesse/sou...heberta05.html a feminist poem? We can't really define too well what feminism, relative to poetry means, other than to know the ones with overt political tones are feminist - the problem then, becomes, in terms of discourse, deciding what is feminist and what is not - in that sense, I think people just assume everything written by a woman to be feminist, which is, or could be argued, incorrect, yet creates problems (and Ph. Ds)

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## Helga

there are many famous Icelandic feminist poets but I love one quite opposite by a man who only wrote one book of poetry about feminist hens.. very clever and funny

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## MANICHAEAN

What is a highbrow?
Is it a man who has found something more interesting than women?

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## meh!

> So-called 'feminist' poetry really annoys me. Yes, we know it's great and bad to be a woman *but men don't whine on about the toils of being a man.*
> 
> There's just poets that can say it far better, without dragging out the same metaphors and recycling them.



Yes they do, it's called _poetry_. What's John Donne doing if not whing about being a man? He's whining about being a person, ie a man as far as we're concerned. 

Hate duffy all you want, but don't hate her because she's a so-called feminist. I really don't see anything in that poem that's doing anything except being honest about a relationship.





I wouldn't trust any woman that isn't a feminist, to be honest. Or any man.

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## kelby_lake

> Yes they do, it's called _poetry_. What's John Donne doing if not whing about being a man? He's whining about *being a person*, ie a man as far as we're concerned. 
> 
> Hate duffy all you want, but don't hate her because she's a so-called feminist. I really don't see anything in that poem that's doing anything except being honest about a relationship.
> 
> I wouldn't trust any woman that isn't a feminist, to be honest. Or any man.


There's nothing wrong with complaining about being a person. It's just women complaining about men, or being a woman, as if that's the only thing women can write about.
That Medusa poem wasn't the worst- but it's just another 'I feel compelled to whine to you about every aspect of my personal life, even the bits you probably didn't want to know'.

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## meh!

I just don't see where your problem lies; it seems imagined. Loads of poets 'whine' about their personal life non-stop. You just seem to be reacting against women doing it for some reason...

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## JBI

> I just don't see where your problem lies; it seems imagined. Loads of poets 'whine' about their personal life non-stop. You just seem to be reacting against women doing it for some reason...


That's just pure ignorance - there is just as much whiny poetry by men as there is by women - in truth, there is probably more, since men have been writing poetry in large numbers for longer.

The question though, is what gets published - I'm not going to speak for the US, but Canadian feminist poetry rarely works if it is whiny - as I have said before, it generally is very personal, yet at the same time,very relevant. The speaker of the poem ultimately needs to be someone who is both personal, yet at the same time, relevant to the readership because they see themselves within her, or can understand the situation.

But of course, cultural differences and politics are staggering - there is quite a bit of purely political verse coming out these days - I think, for instance, of Nikki Giovanni, who I would argue doesn't really write poetry at all, as a whiny sort of poet, self centered with her pseudo-politics. But you don't need to be a complainer to be a feminist, and not all women who complain are feminists. The two examples I posted above, for instance, aren't whiny poems, but I think they are very powerful - you are taking a small sample, and essentially applying it to all poetry.

The poet Erin Moure, for instance, who is really hard to post about here, since she is a very, very difficult and extreme poet who doesn't excerpt well - ultimately is informed by post-modern concepts of gender and sexuality. Yet at the same time, she doesn't sit there and whine about how life being a lesbian is terrible - she uses poetry as a means of expressing cultural preoccupations and obsessions and understanding how we construct certain concepts. Unless of course she isn't working with these themes, and is off writing on a million other subjects - the truth is, even if poets write a couple poems like this, it doesn't mean that a)all feminist poetry is like that, and b) all their poems are.


Now, back on that, how many crappy sonnets do you think there are whining about some woman or another? I think enough to preoccupy one for the rest of his life in reading them x 1000. How about poems written by men whining about how depressed they are, or how their "beloved" won't sleep with them. I know people who, for instance, consider Hamlet a whiner, and we know for sure that the poetry loving Orsino is most definitely a whiner, but should we cancel those plays, edit out those characters?

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## kelby_lake

Remember- Christina Rossetti

REMEMBER me when I am gone away, 
Gone far away into the silent land; 
When you can no more hold me by the hand, 
Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay. 
Remember me when no more day by day 
You tell me of our future that you plann'd: 
Only remember me; you understand 
It will be late to counsel then or pray. 
Yet if you should forget me for a while 
And afterwards remember, do not grieve:
For if the darkness and corruption leave 
A vestige of the thoughts that once I had, 
Better by far you should forget and smile 
Than that you should remember and be sad. 


Look- a powerful poem written by a female that doesn't whine about being a female, or whine about men! Male whiny 'woe is me' poetry doesn't annoy me as much because it's not all political and the man doesn't come off as being superior.

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## JBI

You should have posted Goblin Market - that one has been a favorite of mine for a long time  :Smile: !

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## meh!

> That's just pure ignorance - there is just as much whiny poetry by men as there is by women - in truth, there is probably more, since men have been writing poetry in large numbers for longer.


What? I never suggested that there wasn't. I don't see how you're disagreeing with me.

What i'm saying to Kelby is that his problem with 'feminist' poets seems imagined. He perceives 'whining' where, presumably, if the poet was male he would only see 'poetry'.

I don't understand why Duffy's poems about love are different from Donne's poems about love, in that sense. You make all the arguments you want about the quality of their poems, but you can't call Duffy 'whiny' without calling all poets who write about anything vaguely personal whiny.

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## meh!

> Remember- Christina Rossetti
> 
> REMEMBER me when I am gone away, 
> Gone far away into the silent land; 
> When you can no more hold me by the hand, 
> Nor I half turn to go, yet turning stay. 
> Remember me when no more day by day 
> You tell me of our future that you plann'd: 
> Only remember me; you understand 
> ...


Maybe we differ because you don't think women have legitimate issues to write about related to being women? Grievances or praise. ie you think they should 'just write' not 'write as women'? 

This argument we're having is bizarre, you're referring vaguely to 'women/female poetry - maybe some of it sometimes' and making statements about it. It's very hard to argue back because you're not saying anything specific.

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## JBI

> What? I never suggested that there wasn't. I don't see how you're disagreeing with me.
> 
> What i'm saying to Kelby is that his problem with 'feminist' poets seems imagined. He perceives 'whining' where, presumably, if the poet was male he would only see 'poetry'.
> 
> I don't understand why Duffy's poems about love are different from Donne's poems about love, in that sense. You make all the arguments you want about the quality of their poems, but you can't call Duffy 'whiny' without calling all poets who write about anything vaguely personal whiny.


So in other words, since Duffy writes about the same topics as John Donne, she is ultimately comparable to John Donne?

Please, yeah right. She's a popular poetry icon who will be forgotten in a decade or so, and even if she had something, giving her a Poet Laureateship most certainly will kill that, as it did to every other poet who was good and held the post.


You cannot compare poets like that - if she is any good, ultimately, she won't be outright comparable to Donne - if she is a feminist, ultimately, her politics won't be in line with Donne, who, for all his worth, is quite obviously a misogynist even by the poetic standards of his day.

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## meh!

What?  :Confused:  I said 'in that sense'. 'that sense' being where kelby is perceiving poems by men and women about the same subject differently. 

You don't have to compare them in terms of quality, that's not the issue. If Duffy is 'whiny' for writing about personal issues, about love, then so is Donne. Don't like Duffy? Pick any female poet that writes about personal issues and there you go, same argument.

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## kelby_lake

> What? I never suggested that there wasn't. I don't see how you're disagreeing with me.
> 
> What i'm saying to Kelby is that *his* problem with 'feminist' poets seems imagined. *He* perceives 'whining' where, presumably, if the poet was male he would only see 'poetry'.
> 
> I don't understand why Duffy's poems about love are different from Donne's poems about love, in that sense. You make all the arguments you want about the quality of their poems, but you can't call Duffy 'whiny' without calling all poets who write about anything vaguely personal whiny.


How rude- I'm female!! :Eek:  That is why it annoys me so. I am longing for some female writers to rival the male greats but alas no.

Anyway, Donne writes about far more than love and writes poetry in a nice way...Some of the stuff in 'Rapture' by Duffy is worthy (I think Text and Rain both work) but it's just same metaphor after the other. Yes, we know you're using rain as 'rain after the drought' sort of thing (and god knows the other interpretation...), but please don't put it in all your bloody poetry as if it's so groundbreaking.

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## JBI

Meh, Emily Dickinson > PK Page > John Donne.

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## meh!

> How rude- I'm female!! That is why it annoys me so. I am longing for some female writers to rival the male greats but alas no.
> 
> Anyway, Donne writes about far more than love and writes poetry in a nice way...Some of the stuff in 'Rapture' by Duffy is worthy (I think Text and Rain both work) but it's just same metaphor after the other. Yes, we know you're using rain as 'rain after the drought' sort of thing (and god knows the other interpretation...), but please don't put it in all your bloody poetry as if it's so groundbreaking.



Hah, sorry. See that? That's patriarchy right there  :Wink: 

I just want to make clear, i'm not talking about the quality of the poetry. I don't think Duffy is as good as Donne (Donne is one of my favourite poets...). I'm saying I think there's something wrong with what you were saying generally about female poets, i'm not particularly trying to defend Duffy particularly (though I do think she is skilled poet).

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## kelby_lake

I just want more decent female poets! Of course there are some, but we need more! And they need to stop being hormonal.

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## meh!

You mean they, 'need to be more like men', sexist.

Sorry, I can't help arguing with you for some reason...  :Tongue: :

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## kelby_lake

> You mean they, 'need to be more like men', sexist.
> 
> Sorry, I can't help arguing with you for some reason... :


That's okay :P

I like men  :Smile:

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## Delta40

I'm in the audience here and not really participating but I am interested nevertheless.

I think historically, in all things, men are considered to be the norm.

perhaps this explains the odd reaction toward female poetry-why it cannot be judged on its own merit.

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## kelby_lake

It is strange. Whenever I read a book, until the narrator's gender is revealed, I always assume it's a man.

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## meh!

Indeed, which is gonna be part of the reason why some people will want to purposefully make an issue of their gender.

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## JuniperWoolf

This is the second time in a couple of days that I get to mention Edna St.Vincent Millay.

I, being born a woman and distressed 
By all the needs and notions of my kind,
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest
To bear your body's weight upon my breast:
So subtly is the fume of life designed,
To clarify the pulse and cloud the mind,
And leave me once again undone, possessed.
Think not for this, however, the poor treason
Of my stout blood against my staggering brain,
I shall remember you with love, or season
My scorn wtih pity, -- let me make it plain:
I find this frenzy insufficient reason
For conversation when we meet again.

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## haraf_ish

Sylvia Plath's confessional poem "Daddy." It talks about "daddy" as both a god (for his power, not for his good attributes) and a devil.

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## kelby_lake

Ironically I prefer feminist analysis of men's work, seeing as feminism is basically 'how are women perceived by society (i.e. men)?'. You get a far better insight into how women are seen. The problem with feminist works by females is that they try and generalise things, assuming all women either feel what they feel or are vehemently against it.

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## meh!

You seem to be generalising 'feminist' works now, when i don't really know any poets that write like you're saying.

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## JBI

> Ironically I prefer feminist analysis of men's work, seeing as feminism is basically 'how are women perceived by society (i.e. men)?'. You get a far better insight into how women are seen. The problem with feminist works by females is that they try and generalise things, assuming all women either feel what they feel or are vehemently against it.


Depends - I think, personally, Elaine Showalter is boring beyond belief, but Camile Paglia is somewhat interesting - it all comes down to which theorist, and which books they are criticizing - no matter how propped up a text by a critic, if I can't help but feel the gender is the only thing they are really reading, I generally don't like the criticism.

In that sense, generally I gravitate more to radical feminist types, though not particularly to American ones, as I find American feminism very uninteresting in the mainstream. 

I mean lets be honest - who actualy likes all those dug up 17th and 18th century female poets? I don't think people actually bother to read them in the text books either, just skip over them, unless they are taking a women writers course. Women, in terms of the English tradition, had been silenced until mid-19th century by my reckoning, with a couple good lyrics floating around before that.

In Italian poetry, though men dominate still, there is a female presence, and that perhaps is an interesting area to search, since the poetry is, and can be read as something other than a deceleration of being feminine in a male literary scene, quite publicly in the 16th century, before English verse had even kicked off. 

In a sense feminist interpretation is interesting, but in another way, especially, as I said, with American literary critics, it can be tedious as hell, since there are always critics pining the same theories against every work, and coming up with the same boring results. I guess there are third rate critics of every type though, why not suspect feminist critics to be the same.

Though, I think in modern times feminist criticism as it was known in the 80s and 90s has since become dated discourse itself, with gender-stressing criticism taking more of a forefront - I guess it is only fair, if one is asking how women are constructed in a text, it is just as easy to ask how the critics assumption of gender is constructed, and how their emphasis on sexual difference drives them toward their conclusions on other works.

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## JBI

> You seem to be generalising 'feminist' works now, when i don't really know any poets that write like you're saying.


There are thousands upon thousands - search on any major database for any major poet + the word feminist and you probably will dig some up. Although, I will say that generally these sorts of readings function better in articles than in book length studies.

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## meh!

the point is that she won't bring one up!

You can't construct an argument around vague generalisations, and you can't reply to them either.

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