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| Title | Pointblank Times, Vol. 2, No. 5, June 1976 |
| Use and Reproduction | No Copyright - United States |
| Date | June 1976 |
| Subject.Topical (LCSH) |
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| Language | English |
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| Original Item Location | HQ75 .P64 |
| Original Item URL | http://library.uh.edu/record=b3767189~S11 |
| Digital Collection | Houston and Texas Feminist and Lesbian Newsletters |
| Digital Collection URL | http://digital.lib.uh.edu/collection/feminist |
| Repository | Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries |
| Repository URL | http://info.lib.uh.edu/about/campus-libraries-collections/special-collections |
| File Name | index.cpd |
| Title | Page 11 |
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| File Name | femin_201109_418m.jpg |
| Transcript | The Fierce Sound: Women's Poetry "I say live, live because of the sun, the dream, the excitable gift." Anne Sexton (poet) 1969 What is that sun, that dream, that excitable gift? It is writing; it is the unexplainable force of words; it is the flow of the language of the soul: poetry. For women writers, writing transcends art. It is universally personal. Women writing become the spokesperson for their sex. For centuries, only on paper (and often under a male pseudonym or anonymously) could a woman express her views and explore her visions. Consciousness-raising has always existed in the form of women communicating through words on paper their feelings about themselves, their work, their relationships, their lives; writing is the utilization of psychic energy and the foundation of a female culture. The lack of acknowledged women in literature is not an indication of the shortage of women writing, but of the huge lack of encouragement that a woman receives. In her exquisite essay, A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf notes the obstacles: "...there would always be the assertion...you cannot do this, you are incapable of doing that... to protest against, to overcome." What it comes down to is a question of value and self worth. We must come to a perception of the validity of what we have to say. An Austin poet, Nina, elaborates: "Aside from our objective lack of control over the means of production and distribution of the printed word, the biggest thing we are up against is the ingrained conviction that no one wants to hear what women have to say-—this translates to 'Women have nothing to say' which translates to 'I have nothing to say' which results in the waste of a lot of things that should be said, both for the lost creator and the deprived audience." It appears that women's writings have been suppressed for their straightforward honesty and examination of what women's lives are really like and what we actually feel. Men have depicted our lives and feelings as they would like to see them. In literature, women emerge as myths. Truth vanishes. The realities of what we are must be revived in our own words. Robin Morgan, activist poet, says, "Culture is breath, it is oxygen to us as an oppressed people who have never spoken before in our own words." The first woman to earn her living writing, Aphra Behn, also earned the labels "one of the rakes of the time" and "not at all a lady". She wrote seventeen plays and much poetry. She was no doubt a phenomenon of her time working with a minimum of support and few avenues to submit her work. Today, however, women have risen up out of obscurity to offer support to each other. That support has given birth to one hundred and seventy-one women-written and women-produced papers in this country. Writing is a process. How does it start? When does a poem first begin? What is its and its author's growth like? The process of writing is all the torment and joy of giving birth to oneself again and again. Nina speaks: 13 |