Description
Book SynopsisContemporary American women are writing long poems in a variety of styles which repossess history, reconceive female subjectivity, and seek to revitalize poetry itself. This book explores this evolving body of work, offering revealing discussions of its diverse traditions and feminist concerns.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction: Pushing the Limits of Genre and Gender: Women's Long Poems as Forms of Expansion 1: "To Remember / Our Dis-membered Parts": Sharon Doubiago and the Complementary Woman's Epic 2: "Helen, Your Strength / Is in Your Memory": Judy Grahn's Lesbian Warriors and Gynocentric Tales of the Tribe 3: Sequences Testifying for "Nobodies": Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah and Brenda Marie Osbey's Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman 4: Measured Feet "in Gender-Bender Shoes": Marilyn Hacker's Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons 5: "The Silences Are Equal to the Sounds": Documentary History and Susan Howe's "The Liberties" 6: Grand Collage "Out of Bounds": Feminist Serial Poems by Beverly Dahlen and Rachel Blau DuPlessis Conclusion: This Genre Which Is Not One: A Short Wrap-up on Long Poems by Women Notes Works Cited Index
