I wish I believed word equals world; but I don't--or at-least I don't believe words as poetry equal world.
I'm toying with the idea of no longer identifying as feminist, which is odd as I get annoyed reading poets who dismiss feminism: Eileen Myles, Alice Notley--those two names are on/off my tongue immediately; I'm sure there are many more. For some time now I've hoped humanism could be a synonym, but now I'm less sure, and I think humanism is where I'm more interested/faithful/hopeful.
Probably a better way to put "this" is: I don't know if the literary sphere can be feminist in any way which is seen as synonymous with the world off the page, and I'm not sure literary feminism makes enough sense as a concept, and this is almost appaling of me because so much of my feminism is rooted in the literary! I'm not, personally, thinking of literary and writing in general as synonyms; this quip/questioning applies less to expository writing; or maybe not.
Words which seem urgent to me--urgently in need of redefining and or more expansive definition: power, choice, consent.
"...her wounds came from the same source as her power":
This strikes me as a good poet-line correlative for feminism, and especially feminist heterosexuality-- as heterosexuality may be seen as an identity which massively disenfranchises women, and simultaneously heterosexual women have or are part of an immense power by being heterosexual.
Why don't I just go on a style kick on this blog--rave about the Petrarchan sonnet rhyme-scheme, Gianni Versace and his fabulous heavily beaded dresses circa 1990.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
I love uberunhysteric radicalism! VW's 3G's! Amartya Sen! Guy Davenport's fiction!
I like the prose/prosepoem parts of, for example, Spring and All, but find the emphatic, hyperbolic tone actually far less radical than calmness, than VW or GD. Maybe it's "like" the difference between staging shitting in public, making it a happening, a performance, as opposed to just defecating and all the while engaging in exquistely polite discourse with a dapperly dressed man wearing a monocle, acting as if there's nothing odd/amiss--as if one is not creating a spectacle.
Hyperbole is an odd beast--is Emily Dickinson hyperbolic in her re-concieving of scale, or is the rescaling radical; are hyperbole and radical almost synonyms?
[Big leap?]
I wish there was a fat un-attractive (in any generic sense) female pop-star, not generically (or close enough: hello Lady G!) good-looking person who costumes themself in ways which may not be deemed duh nice-looking. Furthermore, I wish there were at-least three performers who fit this. Fat already is mainstream, so why not make it mainstage?
I like the prose/prosepoem parts of, for example, Spring and All, but find the emphatic, hyperbolic tone actually far less radical than calmness, than VW or GD. Maybe it's "like" the difference between staging shitting in public, making it a happening, a performance, as opposed to just defecating and all the while engaging in exquistely polite discourse with a dapperly dressed man wearing a monocle, acting as if there's nothing odd/amiss--as if one is not creating a spectacle.
Hyperbole is an odd beast--is Emily Dickinson hyperbolic in her re-concieving of scale, or is the rescaling radical; are hyperbole and radical almost synonyms?
[Big leap?]
I wish there was a fat un-attractive (in any generic sense) female pop-star, not generically (or close enough: hello Lady G!) good-looking person who costumes themself in ways which may not be deemed duh nice-looking. Furthermore, I wish there were at-least three performers who fit this. Fat already is mainstream, so why not make it mainstage?
Not sure what binary is reversed when I--in my last post--diss a take on a part of VS's SCUM. I suppose the hypothetical (become, or became?, reality) notion that gay men are like women, and not, therefore, patriarchal. I do salute VS for recognizing that there's no automatic reason to equate gay guys to femininity/femaleness--that they can definitely be oppresive in
male-gendered ways.
Ok, here's another emerging question I have: is there power, and maleness tends to monopolize/abuse it, or is the power the maleness; put another way, does power have an inherent gender, or is it a field which any gender can embody, but which males often have far more access to. This then leads to me feeling I'm likely not imagining power in diverse enough ways--defining it too narrowly, like it is an entity which can be extricated from a real-time interaction. This then leads me to wondering about consent, but just what I'm wondering is at this very moment unclear. I hope all's well for all!
male-gendered ways.
Ok, here's another emerging question I have: is there power, and maleness tends to monopolize/abuse it, or is the power the maleness; put another way, does power have an inherent gender, or is it a field which any gender can embody, but which males often have far more access to. This then leads to me feeling I'm likely not imagining power in diverse enough ways--defining it too narrowly, like it is an entity which can be extricated from a real-time interaction. This then leads me to wondering about consent, but just what I'm wondering is at this very moment unclear. I hope all's well for all!
Sunday, June 27, 2010
A blog comment of mine finally made it into visibility at Kate Zambreno's blog! I feel a bit like I've recieved an acceptance from an editor! She has links/responses to some interesting queer-theory pieces--"The Anti-Social Turn In Queer Studies" by Jack Halberstam, and a response by Jackie Wang.
............Here's a little Halberstam snippet--itself a summary/assessment (which seems quite dubious) of Valerie Solanas:
Instead she colonizes the domain of violence and offers, helpfully, to cut men up (SCUM) in order to demolish the hegemonic order. While straight men are walking dildos, gay men or faggots embody all the worst traits of patriarchy because they are men who love other men and have no use for women. In the manifesto this is called "faggotry"...
The above strikes me as extremely homo-hating (and couldn't this be deemed very patriarchal/masculinist/normative?) and utterly status-quo enforcing: men are men and women are women and these positions are discrete and antagonistic--grossly conservative, no? So how is Solanas "demolishi[ing]" "hegemonic order"? Shooting an anorexic fag seems pretty lame to me, and Solanas seems to reverse a binary and change nothing. I should read SCUM. I can--not lol--sooooooooooooooo see VS becoming big amongst heterosex white gals; thankfully much feminism is much too smart for this so I'm likely lying.
BTW: the JH essay is INTERESTING.
Much love!
............Here's a little Halberstam snippet--itself a summary/assessment (which seems quite dubious) of Valerie Solanas:
Instead she colonizes the domain of violence and offers, helpfully, to cut men up (SCUM) in order to demolish the hegemonic order. While straight men are walking dildos, gay men or faggots embody all the worst traits of patriarchy because they are men who love other men and have no use for women. In the manifesto this is called "faggotry"...
The above strikes me as extremely homo-hating (and couldn't this be deemed very patriarchal/masculinist/normative?) and utterly status-quo enforcing: men are men and women are women and these positions are discrete and antagonistic--grossly conservative, no? So how is Solanas "demolishi[ing]" "hegemonic order"? Shooting an anorexic fag seems pretty lame to me, and Solanas seems to reverse a binary and change nothing. I should read SCUM. I can--not lol--sooooooooooooooo see VS becoming big amongst heterosex white gals; thankfully much feminism is much too smart for this so I'm likely lying.
BTW: the JH essay is INTERESTING.
Much love!
Saturday, June 26, 2010
To be culled:
Cerebral slits. I saw. This is it. It is this. Imminence. As long as. Once when there weren’t flies focal points foliated. Once wasn’t enough. Wherever you are you aren’t there. Skies are skivvy. Blood-stained skiffs appear rusty. How much for those ones. Tropical fat falls flat on the apex of a hill like a nipple during arousal. Heats and fealty fragments a tale the color of the tumor which may in the future kill me. No cancer puns please as they’re in bad taste. Taste my indefinite article then take it away and call your own. At the center of a circumference—a zero—the temperature veered from very hot to freezing such that were one to see the changes on a screen the lines would resemble a polygraph. Nothing goes round and round in a slightly skewed circle. Puns are puny compared to playfully making no joke.
Cerebral slits. I saw. This is it. It is this. Imminence. As long as. Once when there weren’t flies focal points foliated. Once wasn’t enough. Wherever you are you aren’t there. Skies are skivvy. Blood-stained skiffs appear rusty. How much for those ones. Tropical fat falls flat on the apex of a hill like a nipple during arousal. Heats and fealty fragments a tale the color of the tumor which may in the future kill me. No cancer puns please as they’re in bad taste. Taste my indefinite article then take it away and call your own. At the center of a circumference—a zero—the temperature veered from very hot to freezing such that were one to see the changes on a screen the lines would resemble a polygraph. Nothing goes round and round in a slightly skewed circle. Puns are puny compared to playfully making no joke.
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