Author Description

This anthology will, for the first time, reveal the incredible breadth and richness of women's verse written during this key period. Readers will find here many poems on traditional women's subjects - love, death, spirituality, and nature - but they will also uncover ironic resistance to stock images of femininity and women's work. Besides conventional romance, these writers celebrate maternal love and "mother-want," sisterly devotion, and (by the end of the century) the bonds of lesbian passion. There's even a mock heroic poem entitled "Sappho Burns Her Books and Cultivates the Culinary Arts" by Elizabeth Moody. The women writers in this volume, whether driven to compose by artistic ambition, economic necessity, or moral conviction, sharply etch the defects of the social order around them in verse that is often highly political. But these poets also find much to praise and celebrate and do so with unparalleled emotion, observation, and lyricism. This is a breathtakingly rich collection, and one that will continue to resonate and reward for years to come.