Preview this article: "A Whole New Poetry Beginning Here": Teaching Lesbian Poetry, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/40/8/collegeenglish16030-1.gif

TEACHING WOMEN'S POETRY IS, I think, nearly always a struggle: it is an effort to overcome most students' resistance to reading poetry at all, to encourage them to be open to the personal immediacy, the urgency, the language, and rhythm that characterizes so contemporary women's poetry. Teaching lesbian poetry is even more difficult: both teachers and students bring to it a multi-layered set of assumptions that must be dealt with before the poetry itself can be explored. An unknown to most teachers, lesbian poetry, like lesbianism, is understandably threatening. When we think about teaching lesbian poetry for the first time, uwhat most of us feel is scared. We hesitate to write about it in detail (if at all) for the same reasons that we hesitate to emphasize it-or even discuss it-in class and out: the fear of losing our job, of being denied tenure; the fear that, regardless of our sexual and affectional preference, we will be dismissed by our students as just a lesbian; the concern that students who feel hostile or skeptical, or even friendly toward feminism and the women's movement, will be irretrievably lost if too much attention were directed toward the issue of lesbianism; the doubts about our colleagues' reactions to what we teach and how we teach it; the threat that the validity of a hard-earned women's course, women's studies program, or women's center w ill be undercut, and funding jeopardized, if it becomes perceived as a dyke effort.1 Nothing can be said that w ill allay these fears, most especially for those of us uwho are lesbians. For those of us who want to remain in academia, the choices are painful. We can choose to be public about our lesbianism and run the attendant gamut of