“That breeding silence she”: Laura Riding’s Gendered Ethics and the Limits of the Word ‘Woman’

Abstract

The great irony of Riding's work is that in attempting to create herself on paper as a subject rather than an image, she objectifies herself. The word is an image for Riding, and her record of the ways in which words use the writer make her an important precursor of the Language poets. Susan Schulz, A Poetics of Impasse English makes things seem so real. Laura Riding, preface to The Life of the Dead She lies abed a luxury-long half-hour: This is her fondest greed, to have the bed all to herself, And, eyes, full awake yet not in focus of thought, To bubble babies lazily from her mouth Like idle smoke-puffs fanatically precise. "Dead Birth," Poems