Women poets and the American sublime /

The sticking point in Diehl's argument is her starting point--a man's (i.e., Emerson's) definition of "The Sublime." For if this definition excludes women, one wonders why the critic rails against the definition rather than dismissing it. Perhaps Emerson defined woman in terms of humility and sympathy, but he also maintained "They are poets who believe in their own poetry." And one wonders why Diehl, ostensibly defending women against the constraints of the "male canon," doubts the poetry of women, no matter what definitions men may proffer. For one cannot ignore the de facto denial of the power of women's poetry, of its equal greatness to men's, in Diehl's insistence that the most prominent women poets of the last two centruies stand outside tradition, forming a "Counter-Sublime," inventing a woman's language, forging a female poetics. If Whitman articulated a vision of imaginative and poetic equality for women and men, one wonders why it is a problem that he saw the Mother at the heart of things. If the male poet draws power from the female principle, one fails to see why the female poet is therefore rendered powerless. And if the male poet is driven into an imaginary communion with the "Sublime Other" out of a failure to participate in the carnal, sensual, emotional here and now, one cannot but wonder why the woman poet, here and now and connected, has not a greatly more significant voice for the rest of us physical mortals. Finally, one wonders if the female critic, not being a female poet, is acutely more sensitive to men's definitions of creativity and barrenness than is ultimately productive for the rest of us. -A. Geffner, Taylor Business Institute