Blog the Third

This week saw us move into some poetry that, I felt, went even father in trying to break down old systems of meaning and explore new ones. Both Sharon Olds and Adrienne Rich seem to want to use their poetry to challenge the masculine dominated system and find a place where women have a stronger voice. While both are excellent poets, I personally found Olds to be more successful in her endeavor as she was able to reevaluate and deconstruct the idea male/female without reinforcing the dichotomy by appearing as biased.
By pointing out the contradictory nature of masculine sexuality and power in such poems as “The Pope’s Penis,” olds shows us the way in which the Patriarchal order puts itself at odds with the nature of the body, or that which is natural. In her poem “Once,” Olds again explores male sexuality through the image of her father’s nakedness. The poem is striking in it’s lack of the very organ which one might expect to most stick out, as it were, in a description of male nudity. Instead we are treated, or subjected, to a view that invokes the yawnic, rather than phallic, aspects of the male form. Rather than vilifying the masculine Olds invites the reader explore the ways in which gender distinctions break down, or the way that they subjugate both genders.
Rich, from my perspective, seemed interested in some of the same moves as Olds but without the ability to start anew. In her essay that we read for class she spoke of the need to move past the anger towards men and create a new space for women’s voices. One gets the feeling that this was perhaps the great struggle of Rich’s life. She also speaks of males as being part of “the system of sexual oppression” simply because of their maleness. While such sweeping statements might fly under the banner of first wave feminism, many queer theorists might point out the ways in which all subjects fail their gender categories.