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I think poetry is often frustrating, I think that when we read poetry we often try to “get it”. We try to understand what the author is getting at and in doing so, we emphasize their language, punctuation, breaths. When I first read “Lifting Belly” I really didn’t like how I couldn’t understand anything. I wanted there to be a continuous narrative throughout the poem because, it reads like a narrative should read. “Lifting Belly” almost sounds like a word association poem. Every line flows from its preceding line as if the previous line is an incomplete sentence and is being finished by what follows. What is great about “Lifting Belly” is how it sounds when yo read it out loud. It sounds like a children’s story.  

Ok, so enough about GStein, as much as I love her. So, all of this talk about the misrepresentation of the “heterosexual love” For those heterosexuals who are feeling neglected. Let me just start out by saying, “lesbianism” (and that is a very medical and essentialist terminology) is not away of “escaping the subjugating bonds that have bound heterosexual love in the past”. By inferring that heterosexuality is something you can escape makes homosexuality an alternative choice. Also, I have a hard time talking about heterosexuality and homosexuality as alternatives, because, really we all know that the two are just ways of “othering”. These pages we’ve been reading that have been talking about the  “lesbian love” are only one part of feminism. If what we want to read are narratives around the perfect heterosexual equal opportunity relationship, all we have to do is go to Barns and Noble, there you will find book cases upon book cases. There will be no limits, because there isn’t a small little section marked off “heterosexual” literature as there is the “gay/lesbian” section--forget trans, or genderqueer, or language about communities that are inclusive to different cultural identifications. 

I get so frustrated with ideas like this because Bryn Mawr, may be the only time in a “straight” person’s life where queer culture is considered and treated as of equal importance. And a note to the Bryn Mawr queers, this is NOT what life is like in all places. Don’t take how safe this space is for granted. Sometimes I think double standards are okay if they are used to empower groups of people that have been marked invisible, neglected, or that have been subjugated. 

Also, assuming that this “lesbianism” is escaping heteronormative bounds is a fallacy. Anyone can engage in a relationship that is subjugating to one of it’s parts. 

Ok, enough of my rant.