The most male hating poem in contemporary English literature?

[SwordOfStZip]

I think it is. Yes you can find ones more outwardly raving but the constraint here I believes serves to intensify, to give the poem a seething and disturbing quality that mere ranting could never more for possess. It is worthy of note how she centres her misandry on sex and universalizes her partner in it, it not a matter of a particular male but "the man's" but at the same time it is not "the woman's mouth" in the porm but "my mouth", something personal and particular as opposed to the standard and unversial mouth that "the male" possesses. Also something that is important here is how distant this is from Christian "sex negativity" in that the sexual is not despised through being held in juxposition to anything else.

Mock Orange by Louise Gluck.

It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.

I hate them.
I hate them as I hate sex,
the man’s mouth
sealing my mouth, the man’s
paralyzing body—

and the cry that always escapes,
the low, humiliating
premise of union—

In my mind tonight
I hear the question and pursuing answer
fused in one sound
that mounts and mounts and then
is split into the old selves,
the tired antagonisms. Do you see?
We were made fools of.
And the scent of mock orange
drifts through the window.

How can I rest?
How can I be content
when there is still
that odor in the world?

 

[jpc]

A lot to unpack there,to say the least!

 

[Hermit]

I can't stand (post)modern poetry, I wouldn't even call it poetry. Like every other artform they remove all the technique and reduce it to the most basic, banal shite. Any time I come across modern poetry it's usually some woman writing this rambling nonsense that requires no skill, just dump your thoughts into a few sentences, split them up with random line breaks and, above all else, make sure that none of it fucking rhymes - something that can be knocked out in 10 minutes, no need to toil for weeks trying to find the perfect metaphor or clever turn of phrase.

Glück's mother was of Russian Jewish descent.[8] Her paternal grandparents, Terézia (née Moskovitz) and Henrik Glück, were Hungarian Jews from Érmihályfalva, Bihar County, in what was then the Kingdom of Hungary, Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Romania)

 

[céline]

I can't stand (post)modern poetry, I wouldn't even call it poetry. Like every other artform they remove all the technique and reduce it to the most basic, banal shite. Any time I come across modern poetry it's usually some woman writing this rambling nonsense that requires no skill, just dump your thoughts into a few sentences, split them up with random line breaks and, above all else, make sure that none of it fucking rhymes - something that can be knocked out in 10 minutes, no need to toil for weeks trying to find the perfect metaphor or clever turn of phrase.

I don't know about poetry because I haven't read any that is POSTmodern but I do like Modernist poetry like the Cantos by Ezra Pound.

As for postmodern literature in general I do like Thomas Pynchon & David Foster Wallace when it comes to novels.

 

[SwordOfStZip]

I can't stand (post)modern poetry, I wouldn't even call it poetry. Like every other artform they remove all the technique and reduce it to the most basic, banal shite. Any time I come across modern poetry it's usually some woman writing this rambling nonsense that requires no skill, just dump your thoughts into a few sentences, split them up with random line breaks and, above all else, make sure that none of it fucking rhymes - something that can be knocked out in 10 minutes, no need to toil for weeks trying to find the perfect metaphor or clever turn of phrase.

What poets do you like?

 

[Myles O'Reilly]

A nasty woman trying to get a lot of lads banned

 

[Fishalt]

I don't know about poetry because I haven't read any that is POSTmodern but I do like Modernist poetry like the Cantos by Ezra Pound.

As for postmodern literature in general I do like Thomas Pynchon & David Foster Wallace when it comes to novels.

I can't stand Pynchon. He truly exemplifies the phrase "Never mistake lack of talent for genius". Chaos isn't clever, it's cheap.

 

[Mad as Fish]

I think it is. Yes you can find ones more outwardly raving but the constraint here I believes serves to intensify, to give the poem a seething and disturbing quality that mere ranting could never more for possess. It is worthy of note how she centres her misandry on sex and universalizes her partner in it, it not a matter of a particular male but "the man's" but at the same time it is not "the woman's mouth" in the porm but "my mouth", something personal and particular as opposed to the standard and unversial mouth that "the male" possesses. Also something that is important here is how distant this is from Christian "sex negativity" in that the sexual is not despised through being held in juxposition to anything else.

Mock Orange by Louise Gluck.

It is not the moon, I tell you.
It is these flowers
lighting the yard.

I hate them.
I hate them as I hate sex,
the man’s mouth
sealing my mouth, the man’s
paralyzing body—

and the cry that always escapes,
the low, humiliating
premise of union—

In my mind tonight
I hear the question and pursuing answer
fused in one sound
that mounts and mounts and then
is split into the old selves,
the tired antagonisms. Do you see?
We were made fools of.
And the scent of mock orange
drifts through the window.

How can I rest?
How can I be content
when there is still
that odor in the world?

The lady has issues, such a shame that others thought them worth promoting through supporting her mad scribbling.

 

[Fishalt]

The lady has issues, such a shame that others thought them worth promoting through supporting her mad scribbling.

I don't think much of the Postmoderns, but I do like Anne Sexton. She's pretty early for Postmodernism, however.

I get what the poet was aiming for here (zip hasn't read it correctly) but it comes across as petty, vindictive and trivial. It's not misandrist. She's saying the promise of union suggested by sexual intercourse never arrives, and she feels cheated/disappointed with the whole thing, which I imagine isn't an especially uncommon thing experienced by women broadly. The extended metaphor (mock orange flowers) is an attempt to explicate this, but it's well shit, and she's simply not a very good poet.


For my lover returning to his wife, by Anne Sexton. I like her work. Probably the only confessional poetry I rate at all. It's simple, but also elegant, and honest.

She is all there.
She was melted carefully down for you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one hundred favourite aggies.
She has always been there, my darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.
Let's face it, I have been momentary.
vA luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.
She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,
has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast,
sat by the potter's wheel at midday,
set forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo,
done this with her legs spread out
in the terrible months in the chapel.
If you glance up, the children are there
like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling.
She has also carried each one down the hall
after supper, their heads privately bent,
two legs protesting, person to person,
her face flushed with a song and their little sleep.
I give you back your heart.
I give you permission —
for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her wound —
for the burying of her small red wound alive —
for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stocking,
for the garter belt, for the call —
the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.
She is so naked and singular
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.

 

[Hermit]

I don't know about poetry because I haven't read any that is POSTmodern but I do like Modernist poetry like the Cantos by Ezra Pound.

As for postmodern literature in general I do like Thomas Pynchon & David Foster Wallace when it comes to novels.

I like some postmodern literature (e.g. Paul Auster) but Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow was too much for me.

What poets do you like?

None in particular, any of the old-timey poets we learned in school were good.

 

[Mad as Fish]

I don't think much of the Postmoderns, but I do like Anne Sexton. She's pretty early for Postmodernism, however.

I get what the poet was aiming for here (zip hasn't read it correctly) but it comes across as petty, vindictive and trivial. It's not misandrist. She's saying the promise of union suggested by sexual intercourse never arrives, and she feels cheated/disappointed with the whole thing, which I imagine isn't an especially uncommon thing experienced by women broadly. The extended metaphor (mock orange flowers) is an attempt to explicate this, but it's well shit, and she's simply not a very good poet.

At the very real risk of lowering the intellectual tone here, didn't the Carpenters post much the same angst in their number 'I need to be in Love'?

I know I need to be in love
I know I've wasted too much time
I know I ask perfection of a quite imperfect world
And fool enough to think that's what I'll find

 

[Mad as Fish]

I don't think much of the Postmoderns, but I do like Anne Sexton. She's pretty early for Postmodernism, however.

I get what the poet was aiming for here (zip hasn't read it correctly) but it comes across as petty, vindictive and trivial. It's not misandrist. She's saying the promise of union suggested by sexual intercourse never arrives, and she feels cheated/disappointed with the whole thing, which I imagine isn't an especially uncommon thing experienced by women broadly. The extended metaphor (mock orange flowers) is an attempt to explicate this, but it's well shit, and she's simply not a very good poet.


For my lover returning to his wife, by Anne Sexton. I like her work. Probably the only confessional poetry I rate at all. It's simple, but also elegant, and honest.

She is all there.
She was melted carefully down for you
and cast up from your childhood,
cast up from your one hundred favourite aggies.
She has always been there, my darling.
She is, in fact, exquisite.
Fireworks in the dull middle of February
and as real as a cast-iron pot.
Let's face it, I have been momentary.
vA luxury. A bright red sloop in the harbor.
My hair rising like smoke from the car window.
Littleneck clams out of season.
She is more than that. She is your have to have,
has grown you your practical your tropical growth.
This is not an experiment. She is all harmony.
She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy,
has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast,
sat by the potter's wheel at midday,
set forth three children under the moon,
three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo,
done this with her legs spread out
in the terrible months in the chapel.
If you glance up, the children are there
like delicate balloons resting on the ceiling.
She has also carried each one down the hall
after supper, their heads privately bent,
two legs protesting, person to person,
her face flushed with a song and their little sleep.
I give you back your heart.
I give you permission —
for the fuse inside her, throbbing
angrily in the dirt, for the bitch in her
and the burying of her wound —
for the burying of her small red wound alive —
for the pale flickering flare under her ribs,
for the drunken sailor who waits in her left pulse,
for the mother's knee, for the stocking,
for the garter belt, for the call —
the curious call
when you will burrow in arms and breasts
and tug at the orange ribbon in her hair
and answer the call, the curious call.
She is so naked and singular
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.

Just to bring things round again I find that poem of Sexton's an interesting take upon a situation that is peculiar in every case.