On a poetics of exclusion

Lemon Hound ‏ @lemonhound

I have erased all women except those I desire. I didn't think about it. Art is easy. The world unrolls, blue sky, endless, perfect clouds.

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Not to critique the work of the artist Cory Arcangel, but as a residual commentary around the response of a young woman to an interview with the American poet Ben Lerner, and a Twitter response to her pov. I think the original piece is more a sigh about the lack of references to any female thinkers or artists. My response is certainly a sigh of frustration about the persistent ability of poets to have entire conversations and constellations of poetry that seem to be hermetically sealed in a complete white, male world.

It's really not a critique of either poet, or artist, but of this larger and more pervasive lack of self-awareness about this (having an all-male discourse) being a choice. A tactical, if unconscious, manoeuvre that one needs to address...

I think Poetry is the last bastion of this kind of unconscious exclusionary practice. I call bullshit.