Embracing (or not) that feminist audience...

Caffeine is a drug. I forgot that. I've been maintaining myself at the level of drinking only one or two cups of drip coffee when I rise for so long that I forgot what drinking two lattes (around noon) can do to me. Several hours later, my pulse is still racing, my nerves vibrating, my head pounding; and I certainly don't want to know what my blood pressure is. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the effects will wear off by midnight. Without question, if I had a valium, I'd take one.

Browsing the current issue of Rain Taxi, I came across Steve Healye's interview with Diane Wakoski. I was bemused by this bit:

DW: The one group I had a chance to be part of, I resisted, and that was the feminists. I resisted because I had a falsely pure idea about my poetry, and a desire for it to appeal to readers of serious artistic writing. I did have a huge following as a result of the feminist movement in the late '60s and early '70s, but I felt like it was making me political, which I wasn't, and that I was writing poems as if I had a point of view for the whole community rather than just for myself, that I was saying things they wanted to hear. In retrospect, I think they were perceiving me that way, but now I don't see anything wrong with it. In the long run, what I may have given up is being as famous a poet as Adrienne Rich, who is only a few years older than me. I think I could just as easily have had a huge reputation as she did if I had just embraced that feminist audience. Although, we can neer really know what would've happened if we'd done X or Y. (37-38)

I had several-- serial-- reactions as I read this. But who knows. Maybe all of them were just the coffee talking.