Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

From: Susan Schultz
Subject: boytalk
Kali persuaded me to put this direct message to her onto the list:
Kali–thanks for your remarks of late on "boy talk." As someone who has tried
several times to engage the list in conversation, I wanted to suggest that the
question of "tone" is perhaps a gendered one. I don’t want to over-simplify
matters, but Deborah Tannen’s model of male and female conversations seems
to work as well on this list as it does in my freshman comp class. I got on
another poetry list, populated mainly by new formalist fans, where women
write in a lot–or at least two women do. But far less signifyin’ is going on.
Several people, including one or two men, did contact me directly about things
I’d said; it would be interesting to talk about messages between listees that
aren’t sent to everyone. And now I’m doing it. I was disappointed, however,
when I tried to bring "multiculturalism" into the conversation, and discovered
that these radical language poets, some of them, are quite reactionary in their
literary politics.
So I guess I’d suggest redirecting Golding’s remark about tone; he brought it
up in the right context, but we were then swept right back into boy talk. More
than needing to talk to women, they need to ask more questions; Silliman’s
posting came rather late in the day.