In the 1970s, the novelist May Sarton found she had difficulty accepting how writers and their work were discussed at feminist or specifically lesbian events. Giving a reading with Audre Lorde in Chicago, she felt conservatively dressed and old-fashioned. According to her biographer, Sarton was introduced as a writer who who was a total failure until the women’s liberation movement came along (an assessment that she found a little hard). She disliked Lorde’s poetry, and disliked even more the way Lorde attacked the audience for not being out on the streets of Soweto. Nor did Sarton approve of a discussion the next day, during which the prevailing view appeared to be that one wrote with the body. (One woman said, I write with my womb.) Eventually, she plucked up the courage to have her say: Art was written with the mind and soul, not the body. Art should be judged as art, not as propaganda.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 13:51:24 +0000