woefully phallogocentric .’ Thus , Arshi actively searches for a faithful narrative of woman , asking ‘ What would a faithful rendering have demanded ?’ ( pp13-14 ), reflecting on the immense complexity and challenges of constructing an authentic narrative of ‘ woman ’ whilst deconstructing the projected ideals of phallocentric myth .
Furthermore , both Rich and Arshi also explore the effects of destruction in discourse with barren landscapes of loss and reductivity , exploring the ways in which destruction operates often at its most damaging level when this erasure and mutilation is internalised . Leyton discusses how patriarchal institutions ‘ attempt to control and narrate [ women ] for their benefit . If you internalize the narrative , you are , in a sense , creating a male ego inside […] A misogynist . It ’ s a perilous psychological dynamic : the misogynist and the ‘ female ’ self-alone together .’ Leyton investigates the ‘ internalized [...] misogynist ’ in the destruction of the female voice , as ‘ perilous ’, the ‘ female self ’ displaced by this destructive patriarchal narrative . The damaging effects of this can be seen within Arshi ’ s Let the Parts of the Flowers Speak , as she brutally describes her ‘ little bastard verses ’ ( 30 ), issued without male
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intervention , are diminished as ‘ tiny […], light […] virtually weightless ’ ( p33 ). This literary self-mutilation , this destruction and reduction of the self is presented as the most farreaching and intimate damage inflicted by patriarchal narratives .
Moreover , Rich ’ s Trying to Talk with A Man navigates the experience of destruction through a disintegrating relationship as communication breaks down , reflected externally as moving ‘ through dull green succulents / walking at noon in the ghost town .’ The ‘ dull green ’ foliage blends into the dry monotony of the ‘ desert ’ ( p1 ) landscape itself , echoing a similar sense of inertia seen in Arshi ’ s poem , Ghazal : Darkness . She maintains elements of the Ghazal ’ s ancient poetic form , using the refrain of ‘ darkness ’, reoccurring in each stanza , permeating the poem with a sense of bleak inescapability . As described by David Ward , ‘ the refrain , ( radif ) acts as a metrical template reinforc [ ing ] the notion that the poet begins with a seed from which the poem grows and [...] continually returns .’ This repetition is echoed by Rich ’ s speaker who is ‘ surrounded by a silence / that sounds like the silence of the place / except that it came with us / and is familiar ’ ( pp19-22 ). The whispering