'THE SHARK' BY MARY OLIVER AND GENDER THEORY
All too often, literary critics set "poets" apart from "women poets." Take the example of Emily Dickinson and Amy Lowell, who all too often are seen as spinsterish, lovelorn, or love-lost miniaturists, settling on emotions or nature to tell their limited stories. Sylvia Plath is seen as tragic, and Maya Angelou as feminist/activist. Mary Oliver does not fit any of these clichTs. "What Oliver does in her most intense visionary poetry is not so much to defy patriarchal boundaries as to ignore their defining powers (McNew 2). Her powerful poetry has been recognized by the Pulitzer poetry prize committee and she has also won a National Book award. Nevertheless, awards may be more easily come by than recognition as a woman.
In some ways, Oliver is old-fashioned, as she herself more or less admits: "'Poetry,' Mary Oliver writes in A Poetry Handbook, 'is a life-cherishing force. And it requires a vision, a faith, to use an old fashioned term'" (Lohman 16). What makes this quote so fascinating is that in The Shark there is the dichotomy of life for the fishermen and life for the "the grinding, the braking of water, its thrashing, the teeth in grin and grotto of its impossible mouth" (Oliver 6).
The capture of the shark is man's work. One usually imagines the shark itself as masculine. And, in this poem, even the allusion to God implies the usual masculine delineation, using the capitalized "Him" several times in the poem. Yet, the imagery and wording of the poem makes it hard to determine the gender of the poet. One can ask several critics to read and describe the imagery of The Shark, and chances are slim that they would immediately find that it was written by a woman.
Today's female poets are no longer clones of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, closeted in some stuffy home, daring to peek outdoors, and, when seen through a window, they tend to dep...