... How to trivialise women's poetry. (Hat tip, Maxine Clarke.)
Well, one way is to talk about "women's poetry." The poem that made me want to write poetry was "Pear Tree" by HD, which I read in the Holmesburg Library when I was maybe 15. I still can't read it without being transported back to that summer afternoon so many decades ago. Poets who happen to women have exerted an immense influence on me: Denise Levertov, Christina Rossetti, Elinor Wylie, Elizabeth Jennings, Stevie Smith, the aforementioned HD, and many more.
Reading Jean Valentine's "Ordinary Things" was what I felt gave me permission to be a poet. up till then, it was all artifice and form; Valentine's poems were the first I'd read that felt like they could have been in my own voice, where I wanted to go. They left a deep mark on me, and inspired me.
ReplyDeleteYears later, I wrote the poet a letter telling her all this, and got back a very, very pleasant reply. Of course, that just meant she's a good person as well as a good poet.
Eleanor Wilner, Anne Stevenson, E. Dickinson (of course), and Elizabeth Barrett Browning for me, to name a few more.
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