PSYCHOLOGY|CULTURE
Does It Make A Difference If You Know It’s A Man Or Woman’s Work?
I was just keenly reminded that it does make a difference to me, despite wishing I could say otherwise
I’ve had this happen before — where I have read someone’s work without knowing the person’s gender and it changes the whole tone of the work for me.
In fact, I remember it happening with a writer here on Medium when I first started writing and publishing regularly late last summer.
JS Adam’s name brought to mind the John Quincy Adams (the sixth U.S. president), her profile photo is of a door or building and I (wrongfully) assumed that she was a he.
She was an editor for Illumination (still could be but she’s not on Medium much anymore) and was extremely helpful when I began publishing my stories through them.
However, I hadn’t read any stories by her.
One day, while responding to one of her private notes in a story of mine she was editing, I referred to her as a man and she politely corrected me.
Then I started reading some of her extremely well-written, funny and touching stories.
I haven’t made that mistake on here since, but there are a couple of people who have made me wonder.
Widely recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets, Rainer Maria Rilke was unique in his efforts to expand the realm of poetry through new uses of syntax and imagery and in an aesthetic philosophy that rejected Christian precepts and strove to reconcile beauty and suffering, life and death.
About a month ago I found out that Rainer Maria Rilke was a man.
I have heard his name over the years and had read poems by him, but none that grabbed me. Therefore, I never looked further.
Of his 3 names, Maria is the one that my mind took hold of and decided that he was a she.
I did not know that a man would ever have “Maria” as one of his names.
Again, I was wrong and it changed the way I have read his work since.
Today I read a poem that intrigued me after hearing a couple of key lines mentioned in one of Alan Asnen’s recent stories. The same day that I read his story, I heard more lines that were obviously part of the same poem being recited by a teacher in the Netflix show, The Queen’s Gambit.
Not Waving, but Drowning
by Stevie Smith
Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.
Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.
Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.
Stevie Smith, “Not Waving but Drowning” from Collected Poems of Stevie Smith. Copyright © 1972 by Stevie Smith. Reprinted with the permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation.
Source: New Selected Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1988)
I just knew, without a doubt, that Stevie was a man — writing about men.
I was wrong, again.
Born Florence Margaret Smith in Hull, Yorkshire in 1902, Stevie Smith moved with her family to the North London suburbs when three, then lived in the same house the rest of her life. She graduated from the North London Collegiate School and went on to work as a secretary. She published several collections of short prose and letters as well as nearly a dozen volumes of verse. Although the nursery-rhyme-like cadences of her poems and the whimsical drawings with which she illustrated them suggest a child’s innocence, Stevie Smith was a sophisticated poet, whose work was much concerned with suffering and mortality. Her macabre sense of humor can shock, as in her most famous poem, “Not Waving But Drowning.”
And now the poem has taken on whole new dimensions.
I did not think that would be the case, but it is very much true.
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