Innovative Women Poets

Publisher description

Stylistic Innovation, Conscious Experience, and the Self in Modernist Women's Poetry examines representations of philosophical discourses in Modernist women's writing. Philosophers argued in the early twentieth century for an understanding of the self as both corporeal and relational, shaped and reshaped by interactions within a community. The once clear distinction between self and other was increasingly called into question. This breakdown of boundaries between self and world often manifested in the style of early twentieth-century literary works. Modernist poetry, like stream of consciousness fiction, used metaphor, sound, and a revision of received grammatical structures to blur the boundaries between the individual and collective. This book explores the ways that feminist writers like Mina Loy, H.D., Gertrude Stein, and Marianne Moore used style and technique to respond to these philosophical debates, reclaiming agency over a predominantly male philosophical discourse. While many critics have addressed the thematic content of these writers' work, few scholars have taken up this question while focusing on the style of the writing. This book shows how these feminist poets used seemingly small stylistic choices in poetry to make necessary contributions to contemporary philosophical discourses, ultimately rendering these philosophical conversations more inclusive.

Trace the diverse networks, influences, dialogues, dialectics, and interventions that make Canada's women writers a powerful force in avant-garde literature.

Mina Loy, Twentieth-Century Photography, and Contemporary Women Poets- Front Cover -- Mina Loy, Twentieth-Century Photography, and Contemporary Women Poets -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of figures -- Acknowledgements -- Permissions -- Introduction -- Notes -- Chapter 1: Loy among the photographers: poetry, perception, and the camera -- Portraits and photographers -- Julien Levy and the modern photograph -- Islands in the Air and the figure of the photographer -- Vision and poetry -- Notes -- Chapter 2: Surrealism and the female body: economies of violence -- Surrealist contexts and contextualized Surrealism -- Surrealist cameras -- Loy and the female body of Surrealism -- The Surrealist mannequin -- Hans Bellmer, bodies, and war -- Notes -- Chapter 3: Portraits of the poor: the Bowery poems and the rise of documentary photography -- The 1930s and the rise of documentary -- Urban documentary and the visual rhetoric of poverty -- Portraits of the poor -- "Hot Cross Bum" and the tabloids: Sequence as portrait -- Notes -- Chapter 4: From patriotism to atrocity: the war poems and photojournalism -- Patriotism and the poetics of the mural photo-exhibit -- The rise of photojournalism -- The female gaze and the gendered body -- Atrocity and the female body -- Photographing the bomb -- Notes -- Chapter 5: Gendering the camera: Kathleen Fraser and Caroline Bergvall -- Kathleen Fraser and visual reassembly: "[T]he screen was carried inside her"--Caroline Bergvall's rearticulated bodies: Photography and the graphic page -- Coda: Looking back to Loy -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index

Although Greek society was largely male-dominated, it gave rise to a strong tradition of female authorship. Women poets of ancient Greece and Rome have long fascinated readers, even though much of their poetry survives only in fragmentary form. This pathbreaking volume is the first collection of essays to examine virtually all surviving poetry by Greek and Roman women. It elevates the status of the poems by demonstrating their depth and artistry. Edited and with an introduction by Ellen Greene, the volume covers a broad time span, beginning with Sappho (ca. 630 b.c.e.) in archaic Greece and extending to Sulpicia (first century B.C.E.) in Augustan Rome. In their analyses, the contributors situate the female poets in an established male tradition, but they also reveal their distinctly “feminine” perspectives. Despite relying on literary convention, the female poets often defy cultural norms, speaking in their own voices and transcending their positions as objects of derision in male-authored texts. In their innovative reworkings of established forms, women poets of ancient Greece and Rome are not mere imitators but creators of a distinct and original body of work.

This Companion is aimed at students and poetry enthusiasts wanting to deepen their knowledge of some of the finest modern poets. It provides new approaches to a wide range of influential women's poetry, a chronology and guide to further reading.

Fragmented and forgotten, the women poets of ancient Greece and Rome have long been overlooked by translators and scholars. Yet to Antipater of Thessalonica, writing in the first century AD, these were the 'earthly Muses' whose poetic skills rivalled those of their heavenly namesakes. Today only a fraction of their work survives - lyrical, witty, often innovative, and always moving - offering surprising insights into the closed world of women in antiquity, from childhood friendships through love affairs and marriage to motherhood and bereavement. Josephine Balmer's translations breathe new life into long-lost works by over a dozen poets from early Greece to the late Roman empire, including Sappho, Corinna, Erinna and Sulpicia, as well as inscriptions, folk-songs and even graffiti. Each poet is introduced by a brief bibliographical note, and where necessary her poems are annotated to guide readers through unfamiliar mythological or historical references. In an illuminating introduction, Josephine Balmer examines the nature of women's poetry in antiquity, as well as the problems (and pleasures) of translating such fragmentary works. Classical Women Poets is a complete collection for anyone interested in women's literature, the ancient world, and - above all - poetry. It is a companion volume to Josephine Balmer's edition Sappho: Poems and Fragments, also published by Bloodaxe.