Gender Sexuality Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Gender Sexuality - Essay ExampleThis is interesting because it reverses the more common poetic custom of male poets writing about female beauty from a male perspective.The history of Western passionateness poetry goes back to the Middle Ages, and the tales of courtly knights who admired fair ladies. The lady was idealized in poetry, exclusively in society work force had a real much stronger position. Love poetry was therefore artificial, with very little reference to actual sex. In modern times there are more women poets, principally because access to education, and to publishing facilities, are much more available to women. The two poems mentioned here are examples of a challenge to masculine literary tradition. They suggest there might be a different world order where women can take the initiative and use their power of writing to objectify and idealize men, correspond to a new set of gender rules which are much more equal. Acker gays poem shows how a meeting between a man a nd a woman can take place downstairs water, using breathing apparatus. The first section shows how the underwater world is different from the everyday world on land. The accompaniment that the man had to ask twice before the woman could interpret his gesture of love, suggests that the new milieu requires a new type of body language, and a more subtle way of initiating sex. In fact as the poem progresses, the underwater location provides a whole new set of images and connotations. It is very noted that the the male partner is described with in terms of an octopus, sand, sea, kelp, shells etc. His hands are described as being like tawny starfish. These are not powerful images. The woman seems to be a part of the whole ocean, while the man is little more than a collection of timid creatures who neediness to be near her. It is clear that the woman feels at home in the underwater world, and the only affect moment in the scene occurs in the lines drawing her close as a pirate watercr aft to let her board who was this she loved? (AFPP, lines 47-50). This reference to the pirate ship suggests that the man is an element of danger, but the eyeshot is dismissed and the scene carries on. An important element in the scenery is the way that the underwater world is compared to a very feminine space an opium den (AFPP, line 6) or blue boudoir (AFPP, line 90), complete with interior design that is pillow soft (AFPP, line 91) with quilted mosaics (AFPP, line 100) and twitching spangles (AFPP, line 102). The ocean caresses the woman and the trace is that when a woman makes love, she returns to a previous evolutionary state, in which she is at one with the beautiful surroundings. The man is the pirate, who invades this matriarchal world, and she remembers him fondly, but she eats up the memory like a peach, showing that ultimately it was the joint with the ocean that inspired her, and the man was just a small part of that whole experience. The poem by Joan Murray also wri tes about memories, but this time they are the collective memories of women who have been watching young men playing softball. For centuries men have been discussing womens bodies, and evaluating them, for their own amusement. In this poem the tables are