A Rare View of Chinese Canadian History

JÙREfiC« REVIEW Bar-Nadav continuedfrom previous page Having already been influenced by men, the speaker is at home with experiencing the world through their eyes. As a comment on lyric poetry, Robertson suggests that women poets have long been influenced or changed by male "power and domination." Ironically, this familiar territory helps to inform her project. Seemingly reenergized by this recognition, the speaker tries on a bawdy playfulness and speaks "from the juicy mouth of a man or boy devotedly saying I am, I am, and it is a song." With sexual verve, the speaker takes her place inside of men's mouths, elated by the power of poetic utterance. Men are seen as exploitable objects through which the speaker experiences amazement, "ejecting form like a gland, trashy." Although the speaker initially is entertained, she concludes that linguistic (and sexual) domination does not lead to accurate depictions of men, or, conversely, women. This insight indicates that the male subjugation of women in lyric poems only served to inscribe the men who wrote them. Likewise, the speaker may only succeed in inscribing herself. Robertson prompts us to consider what language , ifany, belongs to men, women, the speaker, or the poet. If, as the speaker claims, "The men / Flow down / The pen / And they write," is the same true for women poets? Can they bodily flow into language if that language already has been claimed by men? As her subject grows more layered and complex, the speaker finds that to "speak ofthe men is no trifle." She nevertheless faces her sizeable undertaking that newly defined includes the investigation of subject (men), self (the lyric "I"), and their representation in language. The speaker perceives language itself as insurmountably gendered: There is a physiognomy of men, an Inscription upon all his works The inscription of their several forms, constitutions, parts And operations. As a result, the speaker realizes that the very language that men have used to objectify women can no longer be used to accurately represent men either. Not seeking to assign blame, the speaker "cannot condemn the men," but neither does she "envy" nor wish to "instruct" them. Rather, she invites men to "step out" of the skewed linguistic landscape they created. Striving to achieve "literal transparency," the speaker emerges with a renewed idealism and the understanding that the "concept of the men is elastic ." Rather than categorize men or make gendered assumptions, the speaker perceives both "the men and inside them the people." An analogy is thereby drawn between language and gender: neither can accurately contain or define the person within. This premise is underscored by the speaker's assertion that "men are as mysterious as art." Inspired by Erin O'Brien and Lucy Hogg's paintings to write The Men, Robertson shows her alliance with other women artists exploring the epistemologies of their various aesthetic mediums. In museums, the "men will overflow. Red, yellow, green-silver, maroon, blue, black are the men and stuck in the streak, the twist, the line, like paint." Not only will men, like women, go to museums and observe mysterious depictions of themselves, but they also will know that people cannot wholly be contained in paint—or in language. With this premise in hand, the speaker apperceives a "seizure of language," and "the absolute strangeness of their kind" (i.e., the men). Considering Robertson's hypothesis that neither men nor women are empowered by the status quo treatment of language, "seizure" most likely indicates a striking , even violent, shift in poetics versus the forcible seizure of language from men. Wanting "simply to represent" the men, the speaker finds that the "horizon vanishes," and the lyric tradition that once seemed so fixed falls away. At last what the poet can offer is the "men from a perspective," rather than a universal inscription of all men. Men are seen as exploitable objects through which the speaker experiences amazement. As Robertson's The Men demonstrates, authentic revision of the lyric involves transcending the traditional lyric model—in which the male author objectifies the female subject—or its inversion (the female author objectifying the male subject). Robertson revitalizes the lyric by using a self-reflexive lens and problematizes...