Making friends? Contemporary women poets' difficulties with friendship

This article considers contemporary women poets' treatment of friendship. I t notes the curious discrepancy between poets' acknowledgment of the import ance of other women, and the absence of any reflection of this importance i n their poetry. I argue that western culture's preoccupation with sexual an d blood ties is reflected in both poetry and feminist theoretical writings. Any articulation of the complexity, significance and nuances of friendship is lacking in language, mythological materials and literary paradigms and, since it is out of these that poetry is created, the silence is perhaps no t surprising. The few existing poems that do explore female friendship disp lay anxiety over the close identification between poet and friend, a mirror ing that is depicted as both desirable and claustrophobic. The article exam ines examples of these by Lit Lochhead and Jackie Kay, and compares the ten sions therein to the tendency Nancy Chodorow and other "object relations" p sychologists have noted in relationships between women, for "merged attachm ents." Lesbian poets have done most to explore this difficult terrain, and the article discusses two poems (by Thylias Moss and Marilyn Hacker) that s eem determined to reconceptualise non-sexual relations between women outsid e existing frameworks. It is thus that new configurations (poetic and actua l) can be created. These new models of relationships between women, bear st riking resemblance to the ideas of Luce Irigaray, which are also discussed. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd.