Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections

by Arielle Greenberg (Editor), Rachel Zucker (Editor)

Overview

Imagine being a young poet, nurturing your craft without the benefit of established mentors. Imagine having never been in a class taught by a woman poet or not having a bookshelf filled with books written by living women poets. Luckily, young women poets today don’t have to. Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker’s Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections collects both personal essays and representative poems by women born after 1960 whose careers were influenced—directly or indirectly—by the women who preceded them.

The poets in this collection describe a new kind of influence, one less hierarchical, less patriarchal, and less anxious than forms of mentorship in the past. Vivid and intelligent, these twenty-four essays explore the complicated nature of the mentoring relationship, with all its joys and difficulties, and show how this new sense of writing out of female experience and within a community of writers has fundamentally changed women’s poetry.

Includes:
Jenny Factor on Marilyn Hacker
Beth Ann Fennelly on Denise Duhamel
Miranda Field on Fanny Howe
Katie Ford on Jorie Graham
Joy Katz on Sharon Olds
Valerie Martínez on Joy Harjo
Erika Meitner on Rita Dove
Aimee Nezhukumatathil on Naomi Shihab Nye
Eleni Sikelianos on Alice Notley
Tracy K. Smith on Lucie Brock-Broido
Crystal Williams on Lucille Clifton
Rebecca Wolff on Molly Peacock

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781587296390
Publisher:	University of Iowa Press
Publication date:	05/15/2008
Pages:	330
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Arielle Greenberg is an assistant professor in the poetry programs at Columbia College Chicago, where she teaches in the Department of English and is assistant director of poetry programs. She is the author of two poetry collections, My Kafka Century and Given, and the editor of Youth Subcultures: Exploring Underground America. She lives with her family in Evanston, Illinois. Rachel Zuckeris the author of Eating in the Underworld, The Last Clear Narrative, and The Bad Wife Handbook. She was recently the poet-in-residence at Fordham University. She lives with her family in New York City.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction

Jenny Factor on Marilyn Hacker
poems by Jenny Factor
poems by Marilyn Hacker

Beth Ann Fennelly on Denise Duhamel
poems by Beth Ann Fennelly
poem by Denise Duhamel

Miranda Field on Fanny Howe
poems by Miranda Field
poem by Fanny Howe

Katie Ford on Jorie Graham
poems by Katie Ford
poem by Jorie Graham

Daphne Gottlieb on the Circle of Mentorship
poems by Daphne Gottlieb

Matthea Harvey on Anna Rabinowitz
poems by Matthea Harvey
poem by Anna Rabinowitz

Kirsten Kaschock on Being Nonmentored
poems by Kirsten Kaschock

Joy Katz on Sharon Olds
poems by Joy Katz
poem by Sharon Olds

Katy Lederer on Lyn Hejinian
poems by Katy Lederer
poems by Lyn Hejinian

Valerie Martinez on Joy Harjo
poems by Valerie Martinez
poems by Joy Harjo

Erika Meitner on Rita Dove
poems by Erika Meitner
poem by Rita Dove

Jennifer Moxley on Susan Howe
poems by Jennifer Moxley
poem by Susan Howe

Aimee Nezhukumatathil on Naomi Shihab Nye
poems by Aimee Nezhukumatathil
poem by Naomi Shihab Nye

Mendi Lewis Obadike on Toi Derricotte
poems by Mendi Lewis Obadike
poem by Toi Derricotte

Danielle Pafunda on Susan Wheeler
poems by Daniells Pafunda
poem by Susan Wheeler

Kristin Prevallet on Anne Waldman
poem by Kristin Prevallet
poem by Anne Waldman

Cin Salach on Maureen Seaton
poems by Cin Salach and Maureen Seaton

Robyn Schiff on Gjertrud Schnackenberg
poem by Robyn Schiff
poem by Gjertrud Schnackenberg

Kathy Lou Schultz on Myung Mi Kim
poem by Kathy Lou Schultz
poems by Myung Mi Kim

Eleni Sikelianos on Alice Notley
poem by Eleni Sikelianos
poem by Alice Notley

Tracy K. Smith on Lucie Brock-Broido
poem by Tracy K. Smith
poem by Lucie Brock-Broido

Elizabeth Treadwell on Paula Gunn Allen
poem by Elizabeth  Treadwell
poem by Paula Gunn Allen

Crystal Williams on Lucille Clifton
poems by Crystal Williams
poem by Lucille Clifton

Rebecca Wolff on Molly Peacock
poems by Rebecca Wolff
poem by Molly Peacock

Contributors
Permissions
Index

Editorial Reviews

I know of no other book like this one. It sheds light not on one woman poet or one facet of ‘women’s poetry,’ but on the many ways the poetic tradition is handed down from one writer to another. The multiplicity of voices in this book along with the wide variety of aesthetics and backgrounds of the contributors make it unique in the field. It is a significant and needed contribution."—Kevin Prufer, editor, Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing

“Much has been written by and about women poets and women’s poetry, but this is the first that addresses the topic of mentorship in a way that expands what we mean by ‘tradition.’ No other book looks at the question of how tradition moves from one generation to the next, from the younger generation’s point of view. My own poetry students have talked about the need for exactly such a book. Women Poets on Mentorship will be important to today’s (and tomorrow’s) poetry community, as well as to women’s studies.”—Alicia Ostriker, author, Writing Like a Woman and Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America

From the Publisher