By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry

by Molly McQuade

Overview

Have women finally moved beyond the status of cultural outsiders to become full participants in American poetry and its criticism? In By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry - edited by Molly McQuade - contemporary women poets reconsider their art form on their own terms, and the results are both telling and fascinating. This lively and richly varied collection offers more than two dozen essays that are uniformly original, challenging, playful, and ruthlessly individualistic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781555972974
Publisher:	Graywolf Press
Publication date:	02/01/2000
Pages:	424
Sales rank:	1,103,379
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.98(d)
Lexile:	1280L (what's this?)

About the Author

Molly McQuade is the author of Stealing Glimpses: Of Poetry, Poets, and Things in Between and Barbarism, a collection of poems. Currently, she is a contributing editor for Graywolf Press, a correspondent for Booklist, and a board member of the National Book Critics Circle. She lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Molly McQuade

"It's a Woman's Prerogative to Change Her Mind," Elizabeth Macklin

I. Writing Their Lives

Vesuvius Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich

The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America or Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley, June Jordan

Being a Dragon, Cynthia Zarin

My Plath Problem, April Bernard

"Either I'm Nobody, or I'm a Nation, Rita Dove

Edwin Muir and the Primal World, Mary Kinzie

II. A Poet's Tools: "The Incredible Difficulty of Saying Something True"

A Mediation on a Metaphor, Alicia Ostriker

Some Notes on Silence, Jorie Graham

A Cadenced Privacy, Brenda Hillman

Use This Word in a Sentence: Experimental, Ann Lauterbach

Myself a Kangaroo Among the Beauties, Lucie Brock-Broido

A Genuine Article, Heather McHugh

III. Critical Panoramas

Confessions of a Postmodern Poetess, Annie Finch

Playing the Changes, Eleanor Wilner

La Faustienne, Lyn Hejinian

Xio's Soakbook: Criticism Takes a Path, S.X. Rosenstock

Against Decoration, Mary Karr

Poetry, Mattering?, Susan Wheeler

IV. Reading Her Mind: Creeds and Memoirs

Letter to a Young Woman Poet, Eavan Boland

A Student's Memoir of Muriel Rukeyser, Sharon Olds

Poetry Is Not a Luxury, Audre Lorde

Meditations on "Mecca": Gwendolyn Brooks and the Responsibilities of the Black Poet, Elizabeth Alexander

69 Hidebound Opinions, Propositions, and Several Asides from a Manila Folder Concerning the Stuff of Poetry, C.D. Wright

Short Survey of Scruples, Molly McQuade

On Being Unable to Read, Valerie Cornell

Acknowledgements

Editorial Reviews

While McQuade likes the 'lavish, unpredictable' qualities a poet can bring to criticism, she grants no superiority to women poets and critics per se. She does argue that, as longstanding outsiders to critical writing, women can often bring a freshness to its practice. This collection of essays by accomplished poets more than justifies her claim . . . No poet will read this book without learning something new about the nuances of the craft, and no critic will read it without realizing the need for such liveliness.” —Library Journal

From the Publisher