Viewing entries tagged
Women's Poetry

OMNIBUS PREFACE

Comment

OMNIBUS PREFACE

I have a theory.

I believe women writers have existed at every moment throughout history. We can’t see them in the historical record because of (a lack of) “documentation” – the process of publishing and critical reviews and writing of histories: the process of canonization. I think it’s absolutely about process and nothing to do with existence or excellence.

Comment

EDITOR'S NOTE: PLEASE ADD TO THIS LIST

Comment

EDITOR'S NOTE: PLEASE ADD TO THIS LIST

The idea of “canon” is appalling to Bernadette Mayer—

a club she would not enter alone without her students, comrades and contemporaries; she credits this piece of writing, Experiments, as “written with her St. Mark’s Poetry Project Workshop.” This piece of writing which performs in so many directions: as pragmatic muse, as granting of permission, as Ars Poetica about not “what is poetry,” but literally “what poetry can be”—which says it all about Mayer’s Poetics. Mayer’s poetics include just about everything (and radically well or better at that), but I’ll mention here poetry as communal practice: the poetry of dialogue whose daily place in the wordplay of society means everything to all of us. In Experiments, Mayer opens the door to generativity in the most democratic of manners. And how expansive and resonant the conversation! What a terrific symbol of our era!

Comment