Preface - Electronic Poetry Center

i yam what i yam
a world-changing fiction
a trickster
a chimera
a heterogloss in my own time
And, Cris, I’d rather start from the position that we’re all human beings and
therefore not to be trusted and to be trusted at the same time.
When Susan (hi, Susan) sent me her note backchannel, I urged her to post it to
the list because it seemed to me that she was saying exactly what needed to be
said out in the open. The question of "tone" is really important, and those of us
troubled by the "tone" of discussion on POETICS ought to out-and-out talk
about it. (Thereby, perhaps, changing the tone.) It’s no accident that one
woman (Susan) has brought up the issue of multiculturalism, and another
woman (me) has brought up the issue of the (unintentional, but also unnoticed)
exclusion of African-American, feminist, and other identity-oriented poets from
the discussion, and that there was no response to either woman’s post on the
public channel. Most white, male enclaves are pretty happy to stay white, male
enclaves. And why wouldn’t they be? But POETICS is not a white, male
enclave, it just operates like one. So I figure that if the women here quit letting
it operate like one by entering into and changing the discussion, then we can
carve out some space for ourownselves, and begin to build a community where
some real exchange can start to take place. Even in the worst case scenario–the
men ignore the women, and the women talk among themselves–we can still
illustrate that the problem exists by enacting it (and archiving it) as a text. Of
course, that’s a lot of work to expect already overworked women to undertake,
but perhaps, in this venue, such work can pay off.
What follows is a lengthy rumination about gender in espace, including some
excerpts from items I’ve previously posted on another list:
In January of 1993 I was part (perhaps even instigator) of a massive flamewar
on the TNC (technoculture) list. The flamewar revolved around issues of
gender and women’s voice in espace. I learned a great deal from this
discussion, and I’ve gone back to the text files again and again, coming away
with something new each time. Juliana (pleased to meet you, Juliana) writes
that she "does not want the conversation on this list or any other to have to be