By Herself Women Reclaim Poetry

by McQuade, Molly

• ISBN13: 9781555972974
• ISBN10: 1555972977
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-02-01
• Publisher: Graywolf Press

Summary

Have women finally moved beyond the status of cultural outsiders to become full participants in American poetry and its criticism? InBy Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry, 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. Molly McQuadeis the author ofStealing Glimpses: Of Poetry, Poets, and Things in BetweenandBarbarism, a collection of poems. Currently, she is a contributing editor for Graywolf Press, a correspondent forBooklist, and a board member of the National Book Critics Circle. She lives in New York. Have women finally moved beyond the status of cultural outsiders to become full participants in American poetry and its criticism? InBy Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry, 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. "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

Author Biography

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	3	(6)
Molly McQuade
``It's a Woman's Prerogative to Change Her Mind''	9	(24)
Elizabeth Macklin
I. Writing Their Lives
Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson	33	(28)
Adrienne Rich
The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America or Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley	61	(13)
June Jordan
Being a Dragon: On Marianne Moore	74	(8)
Cynthia Zarin
My Plath Problem	82	(21)
April Bernard
``Either I'm Nobody, or I'm a Nation''	103	(29)
Rita Dove
Edwin Muir and the Primal World	132	(25)
Mary Kinzie
II. A Poet's Tools: ``The Incredible Difficulty of Saying Something True''
A Meditation on Metaphor	157	(6)
Alicia Ostriker
Some Notes on Silence	163	(9)
Jorie Graham
A Cadenced Privacy	172	(15)
Brenda Hillman
Use This Word in a Sentence: Experimental	187	(5)
Ann Lauterbach
Myself a Kangaroo Among the Beauties	192	(4)
Lucie Brock-Broido
A Genuine Article	196	(17)
Heather McHugh
III. Critical Panoramas
Confessions of a Postmodern Poetess	213	(13)
Annie Finch
Playing the Changes	226	(26)
Eleanor Wilner
La Faustienne	252	(25)
Lyn Hejinian
Xio's Soakbook: Criticism Takes a Bath	277	(17)
S. X. Rosenstock
Against Decoration	294	(23)
Mary Karr
Poetry, Mattering?	317	(14)
Susan Wheeler
IV. Reading Her Mind: Creeds and Memoirs
Letter to a Young Woman Poet	331	(14)
Eavan Boland
A Student's Memoir of Muriel Rukeyser	345	(19)
Sharon Olds
Poetry Is Not a Luxury	364	(4)
Audre Lorde
Meditations on ``Mecca'': Gwendolyn Brooks and the Responsibilities of the Black Poet	368	(12)
Elizabeth Alexander
69 Hidebound Opinions, Propositions, and Several Asides from a Manila Folder Concerning the Stuff of Poetry	380	(18)
C. D. Wright
Short Survey of Scruples	398	(5)
Molly McQuade
On Being Unable to Read	403
Valerie Cornell