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:	1,134,559
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