Get thee to a scanner! Here's a phone pic of my webcomic for Medusa's Head. I think Politics of Poetics might become an ongoing topic.
The poetess is Lydia Sigourney, who was brought to my attention by a very interesting article by Annie Finch. The romantic poet is William Cullen Bryant, contrasted with Sigourney in that same article by Finch.
The dialogue is quoted from Sigourney's poem, "The Orphan," Bryant's poem "The Yellow Violet," Sigourney's "The Butterfly" and Bryant's "June."
For some feminist background on men who know things, check out Fannie's Room's take on the mansplaining phenomenon.
"Self-Portrait as Medusa in Shock, " Jayme Ringleb, Puerto Del Sol Online, is such a lovely and challenging ekphrasis. I won't quote any of it, because there is this seductive kind of movement in the poem, like very classy striptease, a dance of veils, or the pulsing of a jellyfish, that when relaxed, its nearly transparent arms floating away from the body, allows you to see more clearly through what when held tightly concealed those mysterious internal structures. The layers of ekphrasis in this poem are constructed like a nesting doll, each stanza with a lovely similarity, a theme, but each leading more intimately to the interior. The poem begins in the natural world of the jellyfish, which is written over by classical myth that shares the creature's name, which in turn is compared to Biblical stories of resurrection, before the poem finally turns toward memoir. There the poem compares this idea of the classical Medusa, being confronted by her own fatal image t...
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