Do you prefer masculine or feminine poetry?
♂
‘Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night.’
♀
‘Remember me when I am gone away,
Gone far away into the silent land.’
Metres and Poetry Gender
william blake
Finite Eternity
We once came across a Bourgeois spider, lurking in the old turbine hall of the then new Tate Modern. Maman fascinated and appalled me in equal measure. My scientific self enjoyed the majesty of the vision that re-created her, triumphantly huge in steel. My male, meritocratic self had visions of limited purposes, sacrifice and cannibalism. And yet Maman spoke to me of the fight for life and a guarantee of a future borne in her egg sac, much as when Yeats wrote of rebellion and nationhood in Easter 1916, ‘A terrible beauty is born.’
[Read more…] about Finite EternityThe Plan
Most nights, Mum will read to her six year old at bedtime. Perhaps a story, perhaps a poem about things that are hard to explain:
‘No one can tell me,Nobody knows,
Where the wind comes from,
Where the wind goes.’
-AA Milne Wind On The Hill
[Read more…] about The Plan