tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9597224.post602828826653750554..comments2023-12-16T08:22:13.053+00:00Comments on The Rik Files: For poets of the woman gender: Poetic JusticeRikhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10564300512472868098noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9597224.post-10904398481416534552009-07-09T00:29:19.813+01:002009-07-09T00:29:19.813+01:00Rik, I'm conflicted on whether it's "...Rik, I'm conflicted on whether it's "bad" to be influenced by authorship. I have a naive, non-Derridean take on all this. I was brought up on old-fashioned New Criticism - the ideal of the anonymous, backgroundless poem judged on its "own" merits - and the habit dies hard. It's a relic from the days when a reasonable amount of shared cultural baggage was assumed by the chaps who read poems. Public school, presumably, and most of them chaps. (Remember Leigh Fermor swapping Horace with his German captive under the stars?) But poems are not products of a raw intelligence acting in isolation from society. Humans are social beings, eager for gossip, much though we like to screen out our <i>Hello!</i> mentality in the guise of being intellectual. Added to which is the important role of poet as witness. How would we feel if we discovered Sharon Olds were really a bloke living in Arkansas, and Wilfred Owen spent the War pruning his roses? Should this matter?<br /><br />BTW, the forum you mention has gone quiet after a lot of aggressively enthusiastic activity by someone called Tom (possibly a man).Annehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18308068899467100319noreply@blogger.com