major themes of the female Romantics

This question, about physical characteristics and artistic identity, has been applied to other writers who bring a non-white male perspective to the land of poetry. In the case of African American poets, the issue of race a defining factor in a poet’s work has been the hot issue for half a century. Many have struggled to answer the question, “What is Black poetry?” In our case we are asking, “What is female poetry?” (Is there such a thing; is poetry written by women inherently different than poetry written by men?)

I bring up African Americans and their artistic identity because of an interesting essay written in 1973 in which the author, Stephen Henderson, tries to provide criteria by which to decide whether poetry written by African Americans can be considered “Black poetry,” and it seems like we could apply his theory to our discussions about gender and poetry.

The following are some of Henderson’s categories, from the essay “Understanding the New Black Poetry: Black Speech and Black Music and Poetic References,” with the terms for a discussion about women inserted to replace the terms for a discussion about African Americans. A poem is a Feminine poem if it adheres to any of the following: 1. Poetry which is structurally feminine, irrespective of authorship…2. Poetry by any identifiable female person whose ideological stance vis-à-vis the history and the aspirations of her people is adjudged by them to be ‘correct.’ 3. Poetry by an identifiably Female person who can be classified as a “poet” by Women. Judgment may or may not coincide with judgments of Men.

Of course, in order to really consider Henderson’s ideas, we would have to study each category in relation to the poems by women that we have read. We would have to figure out what is structurally unique about poetry by women, etc. Still, it is an intriguing idea that someone has tried to breakdown artistic identity into such concrete classifications-that may or may not transfer over well to a discussion of women poets.