I saw her read once, when I was an undergrad. She wanted to kick the men out of the room. They told her she couldn't. She asked whether we'd leave. Some did. I didn't. She read her poem about an interviewer incredulously asking whether she could imagine a world without men? It ended with her saying she could.
I like her much more as a poet now than I did then, and wish that I hadn't found her so off-putting in person.
And yet that's sort of odd, since generally my disappointment with poets is that they're not their poetic personae, are much more diluted, or selfish, or distracted. And even if they aren't, well, they're not speaking to me, but their poems did. She wasn't any of those things though: she was pretty much what she should have been as the writer of that poetry. But she didn't get that I wasn't that different from what I should have been as the reader of that poetry. At least I didn't think I was, and I felt and continue to feel that the best judge for whether I'm a good reader for a poem is me. (I also think that's what teaching is about: teaching people what they need to be able to judge whether they're good readers of poems.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-03-29 08:51 pm (UTC)I like her much more as a poet now than I did then, and wish that I hadn't found her so off-putting in person.
And yet that's sort of odd, since generally my disappointment with poets is that they're not their poetic personae, are much more diluted, or selfish, or distracted. And even if they aren't, well, they're not speaking to me, but their poems did. She wasn't any of those things though: she was pretty much what she should have been as the writer of that poetry. But she didn't get that I wasn't that different from what I should have been as the reader of that poetry. At least I didn't think I was, and I felt and continue to feel that the best judge for whether I'm a good reader for a poem is me. (I also think that's what teaching is about: teaching people what they need to be able to judge whether they're good readers of poems.)