Like Alexander Fleming failing to keep his room tidy, William Webb Ellis getting away with handball or Christopher Columbus getting lost on the way to Japan, sometimes we fuck up, but the result turns out to be a kind of victory. Apparently I did this in yesterday’s post. I referred to Salena Godden as a “poetesa” thinking it was the feminine form of poet. It isn’t.
But it doesn’t matter. Why? Well, as you probably already know, poeta just means poet, and is masculine by default despite the -a ending. The equivalent of poetess is poetisa. In English almost nobody says poetess and it sounds a bit antiquated because we’re moving to a world where a job is a job and doesn’t need to change with the gender of the person performing it. Portuguese is a more gendered language generally, and if pens, TVs and hats can have gender, maybe it seems less obvious why gender has to be eliminated in words that refer to people. As a result, poetisa persists and is still used. But even though it is less of an endangered species that poetess is, don’t be surprised if you meet a poetisa who describes herself as uma poeta because why not?
But why is poetesa not a mistake then? I was baffled when I was told it actually sounded better than the right word, so I dug around, and I think it’s because of this. Esa is a suffix from latin which, when used as part of a feminine noun designates status and dignity. Well that’s good then. I don’t really know Salena Godden’s work but I bought a copy of her book Mrs Death Misses Death to read later and she signed it and I’m happy to have accidentally given her a respectful title!
Luso 