Great Poems By American Women

Superb, inexpensive anthology spans four centuries to include more than 200 inspiring poems by Emily Dickinson, Hilda Doolittle, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Amy Lowell, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, and others.

A monument to the literary genius of women throughout the ages, A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now is an invaluable collection. Here in one volume are the works of three hundred poets from six different continents and four millennia. This revised edition includes a newly expanded section of American poets from the colonial era to the present. "[A] splendid collection of verse by women" (TIME) throughout the ages and around the world; now revised and expanded, with 38 American poets.

This collection of 16 essays discusses the broad relationship of women poets to the American literary tradition

American women have created an especially vigorous and innovative poetry, beginning in 1632 when Anne Bradstreet set aside her needle and picked up her "poet's pen." The topics of American women poets have been various, their images their own, and their modes of expression original. Emily Stipes Watts does not imply that the work of American men and that of American women are two different kinds of poetry, although they have been treated as such in the past. It is her aim, rather, to delineate and define the poetic tradition of women as crucial to the understanding of American poetry as a whole. By 1850, American women of all colors, religions, and social classes were writing and publishing poetry. Within the critical category of "female poetry," developed from 1800 to 1850, these women experimented boldly and prepared the way for the achievement of such women as Emily Dickinson in the second half of the nineteenth century. Indeed at times—for example from 1860 through 1910—it was women who were at the outer edge of prosodic experimentation and innovation in American poetry. Moving chronologically, Professor Watts broadly characterizes the state of American poetry for each period, citing the dominant male poets; she then focuses on women contemporaries, singling out and analyzing their best work. This volume not only brings to light several important women poets but also represents the discovery of a tradition of women writers. This is a unique and invaluable contribution to the history of American literature.

Employing current work in gender studies, psychoanalysis, and literary criticism and focusing on Emily Dickinson, Marianne Moore, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich, the author delineates an alternative tradition of American women poets, what Diehl calls the American Counter-Sublime. "This is the best book on American women poets I have yet seen." American Literature. "... sophisticated and eloquently argued analysis of a female counter-sublime..." Sandra Gilbert. "... strong readings of Dickinson and Moore and... a vital polemic on behalf of feminist criticism." Harold Bloom. "This brilliant re-evaluation of major American women poets will be indispensable reading... A stunning and a magisterial achievement." Susan Gubar. "... a powerful thesis... a book that is as rich as it is dense in meaning." The Women's Review of Books.

Attempts to look at the literary tradition of American women poets and their place in the history of modern literature.

Budy's anthology compiles work from some of the United States' most talented female poets, exploring a wide variety of themes and tones ranging from the darkly passionate to the humorous.

Rich treasury of verse from the 19th and 20th centuries includes works by Edgar Allan Poe, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman, Langston Hughes, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, other notables.