Table of Contents
A Note on the Text ix
Introduction: The Treasures That Prevail xi
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose 1966-1978
When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision (1971) 3
Jane Eyre: The Temptations of a Motherless Woman (1973) 20
Vesuvius at Home: The Power of Emily Dickinson (1975) 39
Uncollected
Poetry and Experience: Statement at a Poetry Reading (1964) 71
From Caryatid: A Column (1973) 73
Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976)
Foreword 79
Anger and Tenderness 85
Motherhood and Daughterhood 107
Blood, Bread, and Poetry: Selected Prose 1979-1985
What Does a Woman Need to Know? (1979) 149
Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence (1980) 157
Split at the Root: An Essay on Jewish Identity (1982) 198
The Eye of the Outsider: Elizabeth Bishop's Complete Poems, 1927-1979 (1983) 218
Blood, Bread, and Poetry: The Location of the Poet (1984) 228
What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (1993, 2003)
Woman and Bird 249
Voices from the Air 253
The Distance Between Language and Violence 257
Not How to Write Poetry, but Wherefore 264
"Rotted Names" 270
A Poet's Education 278
Tourism and Promised Lands 285
Six Meditations in Place of a Lecture 291
Arts of the Possible (2001)
Muriel Rukeyser: Her Vision (1993) 313
Why I Refused the National Medal for the Arts (1997) 319
Arts of the Possible (1997) 326
A Human Eye (2009)
Permeable Membrane (2005) 347
Poetry and the Forgotten Future (2006) 350
Notes 369
Credits 389
Index 395