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Poetess
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A poetess, in the simplest sense, is a woman poet.
The word "poetess" is often used in a mildly pejorative and dismissive sense. In his Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, Alexander Pope wrote the lines:
- Is there a Parson, much bemus'd in beer,
- A maudlin Poetess, a rhyming Peer.
Use of the word "poetess" is criticised by feminist writers on usage, because it is a word marked for gender in a context where gender is theoretically irrelevant: see non-sexist language. Like many such words, its use might well be unexceptionable when it is used simply to convey two items of information about an author in a single word. However, the word "poetess" generally means more than a conjunction of the concepts of "poet" and "woman".[citation needed]
Marguerite Ogden attempted to summarse the issue, writing about "the word poetess, with all its suggestion of tepid and insipid achievement."[citation needed] By this repute, a poetess is a minor woman poet, a writer of sentimental or conventional verse.
Formerly, in the public mind this stereotype was usually joined with chaste bookishness of the sort suggested by the old word "bluestocking." More recently, the "poetess" stereotype is drawn somewhat differently.[citation needed] Referring to a woman who writes poetry as a poetess might entail calling forth this stereotype.