Long Poem - Female Authors in The Genre of Long Poem

Female Authors in The Genre of Long Poem

Critic Lynn Keller voices the concerns of female poets writing within the genre of the long poem. In her essay "Pushing the Limits," she discusses the long poem in regards to its female contributors, a group often forgotten or marginalized in favor of the more privileged white male author. Not only does Keller discuss women and their place in the authorship of the long poem, but she also talks about the tendency of the genre to forget authors who are not white and male, therefore leaving out minority writers, foreign writers, and writers of different sexual orientation.

Keller explains the long poem as being a "generic hybrid." By this, Keller means that the form, in large part because of its indefinable nature, gives authors creative leeway to mold and form the genre of long poem to fit their creative needs. The long poem's flexibility should not only be open to include women and minority writers, but should be a haven in which these writers can use their writing to voice their identity, a primary topic for the long poem genre.

As stated above in "Concerns and Controversies," many female writers have felt that they have no place within the long poem genre because of its epic roots. The epic is a historically masculine genre and has not welcomed female writers or other authors who are not male and white. The long poem is often understood as the epic reborn, making it seem like a genre inaccessible to women. Women who did participate within the long poem and epic forms were often highly criticized or overlooked until recently, as there has been increasing interest in such authors as H.D.

Keller also discusses a primary critic of the long poem, Kamboureli, in her essay. Kamboureli's stance is that long poem's readers and contributors should not preference one form of long poem over another. To extend this idea, it is also equally important to say that one type of author within this genre should not be privileged over another. The textual "betweeness," an idea coined by Kamboureli and discussed in Keller's essay, provides a place where writers can create their art in a genre that is by its nature less restrictive than other poetic forms. This lack of restriction should be the very reason that the genre should be open to all. Its hybridisms and variety will only be enhanced by the presence of women and other writers.

Keller states that this new perspective on long poem and reexamination of forgotten long poems has revived the form as a realm of possibilities for upcoming female writers. Female writers are seeing the long poem as a genre that should not only be open and inclusive to them, but also as a genre that theoretically could benefit the female writer as much if not more than the male writers the form previously favored. Women writers are now able to combat the "dominant traditions" at play within the long poem genre to mold the genre into their own, creating what critic Susan Friedman terms a "re-vision"of the form.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the first female authors to attempt an epic poem. In her article "Written in blood: the art of mothering epic in the poetry of Elizabeth Barrett Browning," Olivia Gatti Taylor explores Browning's attempt to write an authentically feminine epic poem titled Aurora Leigh. Taylor posits that Browning began this process with the structure of her poem, "While earlier epics like the Aeneid and Paradise Lost have twelve books, Aurora Leigh was conceived as a nine-book epic; thus, the very structure of the work reveals its gestational nature. According to Sandra Donaldson, Barrett Browning's own experience at age forty-three of "giving birth and nurturing a child" greatly influenced her poetry "for the better," deepening her "sensitivity."