> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.richardjnewman.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Learning To Love The Questions: Do All Writers Write with a Feminine Soul? - URL: https://www.richardjnewman.com/learning-to-love-the-questions-do-all-writers-write-with-a-feminine-soul/ - Published: 2026-09-11T10:00:12.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-11T10:00:14.000Z - Description: My body, in other words, physically rejects the idea that I write as anyone other than the man I am or that my experience as a man is therefore any less inclusive of everything you mean when you use the phrase “feminine soul.” - Author: Richard Jeffrey Newman - Tags: Blog, Learning To Love The Questions I have, out of an abundance of caution, not named the Iranian poet whose interview with me I’ve been posting here one question at a time. Perhaps I am being too careful, but given the fact that we are at war with Iran, even if the federal government is going out of its way not to call what’s going on a war; given the corresponding fact that Iran very clearly understands itself to be at war with us; and, finally, given how literature—writing it, reading it, discussing it—is an inherently subversive pursuit, an abundance of caution seems just the right amount. I’ve tried several times to get in touch with this poet since the war began but have had no success. If I do hear back from them and it turns out I can safely identify them, I will do so. In the meantime, I am going to continue posting my answers to their questions. I was not expecting the poet’s fourth question: “There is a theory that says that all writers even the male, write with a feminine soul. After all, the Muses were goddesses and not gods. What do you think about this theory?” This was my answer: While I think I understand what you want your question to mean, it has never been useful to me to think about where my work comes from in such explicitly gendered terms. I have never experienced myself as having a muse or my poems as being somehow “gifts” from the Muses. Indeed, the one and only time anyone ever talked to me about my having a muse was my graduate advisor, a critical theorist, who dismissed my desire to take a year off from the MA in Creative Writing that I was pursuing so I could work on my writing by saying, “If you want to go commune with your *muse* \[the sarcasm literally dripped off his words\], that’s your business. I thought you came to graduate school to learn something.” His words had the precise opposite of their intended effect. I dropped out of the program that semester and never set foot in either a graduate English or Creative Writing program ever again. (I’ve written the longer version of this story [here](https://majusculelit.com/i-was-a-creative-writing-program-dropout/?ref=richardjnewman.com).) In thinking about your question, though—and I have to say that this is something I’ve never explicitly articulated before—I realize that I do agree with one aspect of the critique underwriting my advisor’s attempt to use the notion of the muse to shame me. The concept of the muse mystifies the creative process, turning it into something that is ostensibly separate and apart from the socioeconomic, political, and cultural circumstances in which creativity takes place. I don’t mean to say, of course, that there is no such thing as inspiration; and I certainly would never tell a poet who experiences inspiration as somehow coming from outside themselves, who experiences poems as “gifts” from their muse, that this experience is somehow “wrong.” However, defining that experience in a way that elides the role played by society and culture in shaping both our conception of what inspiration is and how we give meaning to a poet’s response to inspiration ultimately weakens the role that the poet and poetry can play in society. I realize that I have not yet responded to the substance of your question, so let me do so more directly. One reason I find the idea of the “feminine soul” so unhelpful is that the term itself immediately conjures the presence within me of a corresponding “masculine soul,” and I do not know how to divide myself within myself in that way. It may be true that some of the qualities a writer must possess are those that are traditionally associated with women—a certain level of emotional and psychological attentiveness, of empathy, an openness and receptivity to the world around them, a willingness to accept difference without necessarily judging it—but those qualities are coded as female only because of the different ways men and women are socialized, not because they are inherently gendered. I do not mean by this that I think the terms of your question are somehow a threat to my manhood or my masculinity. Rather, I mean, simply, that the terms of your question do not fit how I experience myself as a writer. Indeed, when I try as a thought experiment to accept as the terms for answering you the gendered framework your question imposes, I experience a physical dissonance. My body, in other words, physically rejects the idea that I write as anyone other than the man I am or that my experience as a man is therefore any less inclusive of everything you mean when you use the phrase “feminine soul.” Responding to your question, though, has made me think of a quote by June Jordan. It’s from her introduction to [*June Jordan’s Poetry for the People*](https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2877-june-jordan-s-poetry-for-the-people-expanded-edition?ref=richardjnewman.com)*:* > You cannot write lies and write good poetry…\[Good poetry\] is a political action undertaken for the sake of information, the faith, the exorcism, and the lyrical invention, that telling the truth makes possible. Poetry means taking control of the language of your life. Good poems can interdict a suicide, rescue a love affair, and build a revolution in which speaking and listening to somebody becomes the first and last purpose to every social interaction. Thinking about writing poetry in this way does not deny the role of inspiration, but it de-emphasizes it, focusing instead on the conscious, willful act of “taking control of the language of \[one’s\] life” as the necessary prerequisite for writing “good poems;” and good poetry, as Jordan defines it here, ineluctably shaped by my gendered experience of the world, is the kind of poetry I aspire to write. --- If you’d like to see a list of publications I’d recommend, click [here](https://www.richardjnewman.com/#/portal/recommendations).