Guiding Questions

These are collaborative. It’s awesome. Just the kinds of issues that we’ve been thinking about, and the questions that we’ve thought about:

How has feminist oriented poetry changed in reaction to changing theoretical and ‘political’ trends; in particular, as second wave lesbian poetry and theory gave way to third wave/queer poetry and theory?

How does identity continue to be an important and centering feature of feminist/queer poetry and theory in spite of, the problematic tendency of identity categories to privilege and essentialize arbitrary structures?

and…

• Historically, how has poetry been used within the feminist movement?
• How has the “I” of lesbian feminist /queer poetry evolved alongside and in response to post-modern theories of identity?
• What factors played into the prominence of lesbian-feminist poets during the second wave, and their comparative absence in the era of queer theory? (How was this change influenced by evolving notions of identity?)

More coming momentarily.

Cheers, sam and heather

tycho garen 30 October 2005