I keep hearing this question, not hearing the answer.

From Sina:

"I know who that is for me, though I don't always have a way of connecting with those women and I'm not sure why that is: accessibility, scheduling, a different kind of network, or do we just file ourselves in and focus upward? Is there a Silliwoman out there? Is there someone keeping all the darts in a row, categorizing and canonizing the work? Or, is the work just assembling: Lyn Hejinian, Carla Harryman, Ann Waldman, Susan Howe, Alice Notley, Rae Armantrout, Gail Scott, Lisa Robertson, Erin Moure, Joan Retallack, Rachel Blau Duplessis...and yes, Juliana Spahr, Jena Osman, Elizabeth Treadwell, Mairead Byrne, Carole Mirakove, Rachel Levitsky, Margaret Christakos, Elizabeth Willis, Gail Scott, Renee Gladman, Mary Burger...and overflowing in its excellentness? I'm stopping only because I have laundry to do...and I can't name all of the hot young poets doing curatorial and editorial work...but where is the center I wonder? And what direction?"

So yeah, paging Silliwoman. I'd love to see a blog with similar aims as Ron's from a woman poet of the older-than-me set.

Why doesn't one? Why isn't there?

Have talked about this with various dears many times before. Of no small import: the distate I personally have for ranking/ordering/prescribing may or may not be a gendered difference? The traditional tone/format of the book review is too impersonal/authoritative to really appeal to me. It's a pose I'm not happy in. Extrapolate that then, upward.*

I wish Rachel Blau du Plessis had a blog. Her critical style is certainly personal (her *self* is involved, unapologetically so, and entertainingly/interestingly so) and that's v. feminist. Or Alice Notley. That'd be totally addictive.

Some of this likely has to do with what I once read Daisy Fried say, wondering why bloggers write all this "prose for free." (Insert relevant statistics about women's salaries vs. men's, add higher health care costs (what, you didn't know women's premiums are higher cuz pregnancy costs a bundle?) etc. here.) And critical work does take time away from creative work. (Insert points re: women still playing catch up to the male-dominated canon here.) And if she's a mom, less time to spare. (Yes, some dads also spend a great deal of time raising children. Good on 'em. Would we say most though? I really don't know.)

Emailing with Kate Greenstreet (who's reading on Friday in Brooklyn with Janet Holmes & Justin Marks, don't miss it!) these things a few weeks ago I wondered aloud if I might switch this blog over to a review format, but talked myself out of it in almost the same keystrokes. It'd never be a Silliman format. That would require me to position myself as someone who knows what I'm talking about.

Instead of someone who is figuring out what she thinks.

I do think aloud here sometimes, but I also enjoy keeping certain things to myself. For myself. (In other words, I don't need you to agree or even to acknowledge/know. That does seem to be a drive for the Critic: hey, look what I think, don't you agree, I know what I'm doing over here.)

The way I write in my notebooks re: what I am reading and thinking about what I am reading feels so very personal. And messy. And very unauthoritative.

So we'll just have to see.

* Which is not to say (of course) women are not writing brilliant criticism, in various places, blogs included. But when they do, is there a difference? What is that difference? Is it a difference in the author or a difference in the audience or both? I just wonder if my own reluctance to review (in the usual sense) is the same reluctance other women feel and what that has to to with being woman, if anything, or to what degree.