Contrasts & Comparisons Between “Male” & “Female” Standards/Criteria For “Good” Poetry (very tentative...most comments in “Female” column represent my own impressions though some sound like stereotypes...my comments on Female poems strongly influenced by Alicia Ostriker who points out that some Female poets are said to write “like men” such as Elizabeth Bishop) and there are exceptions to every “rule” in each category. For what it's worth, I think that Early Ostriker & C.D. Wright write “like men”. Throughout Paul Fry's YouTube class on Literary Theory (Yale Courses), he is concerned with different literary standards, many of which seem extensions of Male “agency”. In general, and IMO, Fry “ghettoizes” women & AfAs (1 lecture on each category of these canons)...clara b. jones...21 January 2015...*
| MALE | FEMALE |
| Creates beauty that perturbs, not necessarily comforting | Resolves conflict?, comforting? |
| Agency (“Thou art not August unless I make thee so.” Wallace Stevens (WS) | Relationship “This is the oppressor's language, yet I need it to talk to you.” Adrienne Rich (AR) |
| Dominance-Subordinance (e.g, WS) | Egalitarian (e.g., AR: “Abnegating power for love, as women have done....”) |
| Reification (“yillow” WS) | “the thing itself”(“The cold felt cold until our blood grew colder.” AR) |
| Discourse begets Power & Surveillance (Michel Foucault) | “When the wind tore our breath from us at last, we had no need for words.” AR (thus, Discourse not privileged?) |
| Language as a system of signs (Paul Fry [PF]) | Same? |
| Speech as performance (PF) | Speech personal, authentic |
| Language is Social (PF) | Same? |
| Speech is a sum of agencies | Speech as emotions, feelings? |
| Poetry is invention (Harold Bloom [HB]) | Language is true communication, personal, authentic |
| Does one arrive at Meaning at all?...concern for Structure (Formalism) (PF) | Concern for Meaning |
| Language has function (PF) | Same? |
| Language brings consciousness into being (“trusts” language) (PF) | Language belongs to the oppressor, thus cannot really trust...”A wild patience has taken me this far.” (AR) |
| “Good poets borrow; great poets steal.” T.S. Eliot | Privilege honesty, authenticity, subjectivity |
| Poetry imitates Nature (Plato, Aristotle) | Same? |
| The mind of Europe is more important than one's own mind. (Eliot after PF) | Most would disagree...emphasize characteristics as per response to 1st Eliot quote (above) |
| Oedipal tension is the central tension/conflict (e.g., Freud, Lacan after PF) | Mother-child/daughter relationship central?...may be source of conflict (n.b. Some French feminists are Freudians [Electra Complex?]) |
| Is poetry an entity in a larger whole? Deleuze & other Post-modernists say no...(after PF) | No...holistic... |
| Binary, hierarchical | Holistic, Egalitarian |
| Subject-Predicate relationship, Agency (PF) | “Rhizomic” (Deleuze, after PF), “organic”, privilege Subject, Egalitarian |
| Poetry presents the familiar in unfamiliar ways (WS) | Familiar, local (“My power is present and local, but I know my power.” AR) |
| Poetry follows literary rules and stimulates the imagination (PF) | Does not follow “literary rules” (Modernism?); not necessarily imagination but “the thing itself” |
| Discursive (language)= social= political= objective (Darby English [PF, DE]) | Emphasis upon the subjective, psychological, & “interior” |
| Classicism (return to past; “true for all time”; Bourgeois perspective; “social” perspective [PF]) | Utopian (unattainable?) |
| Metaphor | Concrete, direct (primitive?, naïve?, “animal”?...see Helen Vendler [HV] on Adrienne Rich [AR]) |
| Poetry may be an entity in a larger whole | ? |
| Hierarchical, linear | Holistic |
| Subject-Predicate relationship (agency, control, binary) | Egalitarian |
| Ego, Superego | Id (?...or, not Freudian) |
| Hard to separate Logogenesis from Psychogenesis (PF) | Not hard to separate; Emotions & Psychology (Psyche) privileged over Language |
| Astrophysics (HV) | Myth (HV, distinction made about AR's poetry) |
| Contained & disciplined (HV) | “Hysteria”, “ghostly heat” (HV, distinction made about AR's poetry) |
| Metaphorical (PF; HV) | Allegorical (HV, distinction made about AR's poetry) |
| Originally prepared for Asheville (NC) Women's Poetry Collective. | |
| *Addendum, 6/17/18: see Formalist standards used by many to determine what "good poetry" is (e.g., see interview of Helen Vendler in The Paris Review) |
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