[lit-ideas] The Swan and my gendered writing...
- From: Ursula Stange <Ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 15 Apr 2009 19:58:57 -0400
The poem was...
The Swan
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
© Mary Oliver. From The Paris Review # 124, Fall, 1992
The friend wrote...
"One more reflection…this one on The Swan. I don’t like the last line,
and I think that is what makes me turn off every time I read it. The
kind of deep, beautiful on-going transformation that is inspired by the
Swan has an inherent continuity to it. And the last line, in looking for
accountability through confrontation, has the effect of closing down the
continuity. It is offensive in how it undermines – even steals – the
transforming beauty that was building through the poem to that point. It
makes me want to kick back…and not transform. And then I feel angry that
it stole that prospect of beauty from me."
Then I answered...
Surely the swan imagery is intended to invite the ugly duckling to the
picnic. The message of the ugly duckling is that there is a possibility
of redemption for all of us. The full grown swan, so magnificently black
and white, lifts out of the water. leaving all that confusing gray
behind. That's what I don't like. And then, I think that surely Mary
knew that and chose the swan precisely to make us stop in confusion. As
children, we liked (surely even needed) the message that we all had
beauty within us, that someday it would shine forth. But the swan's
beauty is merely superficial. He just sits there and everyone ooh's and
ahh's. So, perhaps this poem is a warning about easy answers. A lesson
about the difference between seeing beauty and feeling it and living it.
Swans are easy to find beautiful. More difficult beauty requires change.
Only more difficult beauty can inspire change. Or at least that's what I
think today.
Today I entered my bit of text into...
http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.html#Analyze
And was told....
that my writing was very male....
Now what about this piece of text is 'male'? I know they're not claiming
tthi is rocket science, but really....what would I have to have written
to be 'female'?
And why does the explanation caution only male writers not to panic if
they get labelled the opposite sex? Come to think of it, why is tomboy a
term of endearment while sissy is pejorative?
It's been a long day and the world is too much with me...
Ursula
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