ElderLiPo

I'm still thinking about all the upheaval from a while back which centered on women and poetry. Are we truly snubbed? Do we truly snub back in retaliation? Is sexism rampant in the poetry/blog world? I tend to think it's all colored by perception, but I'm a notorious pacifist. Even so, it's raised some questions in my mind.

Some of it interests me, some of it offends me, some of it simply amuses me. Some of it, such as the bit below, does all three.

One of the more vocal feminist bloggers is also publishing an anthology in the near future. I thought to myself, "now there's a woman who's willing to put her money and time where her mouth is in a truly impressive manner to get more good poetry published and read" - I was truly impressed and, yeah verily, even a little bit excited - until I got to the part which excluded me and everyone else over a certain age. So much for poetic equality and evening out the playing field.

I think that's my point, though, any editor and every editor has a RIGHT to choose who or what to publish. Because it is their production, they are ALLOWED that privilege.....and it's either discriminatory all the way around or it isn't. Is it somehow ok to exclude someone on the basis of their age but not their sex? It's conceivable that someone could be a "new" "emerging" artist without also being a "young" one, yanno!!!! It's conceivable that I consider people in their 20's and 30's to be my "peers" and it's even conceivable that some of them also consider me to be one of theirs!! It's also conceivable that a woman could write a successful poem using a concrete "male" concept and that a man could write a delicate "female" poem about a flowering pink apple blossom tree.

In other words, if we are going to have "GirliPo," then, in the demanded "Order of Fairness", we must also have "ManliPo" and even "ElderliPo" recognized as legitimate genre. And I suppose we will need still more magazines and E-zines which no one ever buys or reads devoted to them each individually.

Why can't we just have plain old poetry? Have we grown so large and is the mansion so small that there are no longer enough rooms to house us all?