Judith Pakenham in 1962 in London with her then-fiancé Alexander Kazantzis. In a career that spanned nearly four decades, she published 12 collections of poetry, numerous essays and a novel. Credit Keystone/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images.
Ms. Kazantzis wrote in free verse, her language intelligent but not didactic, powerful but not polemic. It could be witty, with traces of sarcasm. She portrayed women as complex, to correct literature’s pigeonholing them in one-dimensional characterizations as goddess or villain.
(Iliana Magra, “Judith Kazantzis, British Feminist Poet and Activist, Dies at 78,” NYTimes, 11-4-18)
(c) 2018 JMN.
“to correct literature’s pigeonholing them in one-dimensional characterizations as goddess or villain”
Because literature has always been THAT superficial. Riiiiiiight. Which was Anna Karenina? What year was Antigone written? 441 BC. OK. Sure, sure, good on Judith Pakenham for portraying women complexly, but the idea that literature didn’t portray women complexly is, well, trying so hard to fit art and reality into a simplistic narrative and agenda that it’s stupidity on steroids.
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