American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language (Wesleyan Poetry) [Paperback]

Claudia Rankine (Editor), Juliana Spahr (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Wesleyan Poetry | Publication Date: August 13, 2002

Poetry in America is flourishing in this new millennium and asking serious questions of itself: Is writing marked by gender and if so, how? What does it mean to be experimental? How can lyric forms be authentic? This volume builds on the energetic tensions inherent in these questions, focusing on ten major American women poets whose collective work shows an incredible range of poetic practice.
Each section of the book is devoted to a single poet and contains new poems; a brief "statement of poetics" by the poet herself in which she explores the forces -- personal, aesthetic, political -- informing her creative work; a critical essay on the poet's work; a biographical statement; and a bibliography listing works by and about the poet. Underscoring the dynamic give and take between poets and the culture at large, this anthology is indispensable for anyone interested in poetry, gender and the creative process.

CONTRIBUTORS: Rae Armantrout, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Lucie Brock Broido, Jorie Graham, Barbara Guest, Lyn Hejinian, Brenda Hillman, Susan Howe, Ann Lauterbach, Harryette Mullen.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

New poetry by Lucie Brock-Broido, Harryette Mullen, Ann Lauterbach, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Brenda Hillman, Jorie Graham and others is featured in American Women Poets of the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language, a collection that explores how or whether gender influences contemporary poetry by women. The volume, edited by poets Claudia Rankine (Plot) and Juliana Spahr (Fuck You Aloha I Love You), includes a "poetic statement" by each of the 10 featured poets, in which she discusses aesthetics and identity, as well as a critical essay on each poet's work and a bibliography.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

At first, an anthology of women poets in the 21st century seems somewhat premature. But on analysis, the editors have made careful selections that reveal the direction lyric poetry is heading. Accomplished poets themselves, Rankine (English, Barnard Coll.) and Spahr (English, Univ. of Hawaii) believe that women are major contributors to innovation a key element in lyric poetry, which is characterized preeminently by the speaker's sharing his or her thoughts and feelings. Just as Sappho helped define the genre when it debuted in ancient Greece as a brief, personal song accompanied by the lyre, so the poets selected here among them Rae Armatrout, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Jorie Graham, Barbara Guest, Susan Howe, and Harryette Mullen force us to redefine lyric poetry. In particular, their use of modernist techniques such as fragmentation, disjunction, parataxis, and run-ons and their rejection of confessional techniques and the personal singular voice allow these poets to create a new structure. Many of the resulting images are startling and unique, such as Ann Lauterbach's "lizard's billowing throat hiccups on a wall." Each poet is represented by several new poems, a critical essay, a brief biography, and a bibliography; in addition, the poets comment on their own work. This volume will be useful for academic libraries and larger public libraries with substantial literature and poetry collections. Nedra C. Evers, Sacramento P.L., CA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan; 1st edition (August 13, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819565474
• ISBN-13: 978-0819565471
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #577,866 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Modernist techniques within lyric contexts, June 17, 2009

By 

Paul A. Baker "communicator" (Madison, Wis., US) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language (Wesleyan Poetry) (Paperback)

This book presents the work of 10 important contemporary poets: Rae Armantrout, Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Lucie Brock-Broido, Jorie Graham, Barbara Guest, Lyn Hejinian, Brenda Hillman, Susan Howe, Ann Lauterbach, and Harryette Mullen.

Each is represented by a sample of work, a brief poetics statement, and a critic's essay which provides context to readers new to the work.

In her introductory essay co-editor Juliana Spahr says this collection aims to begin a dialogue between the two often falsely separated poetries of Language poetry and lyric. "The unevenness of these two terms, one a social grouping and the other a genre, remains a sign of some dissonance even as critics often pit Language and lyricism against each other with straw-man models," she writes.

Rae Armantrout writes that her own poetry involves an equal counterweight of assertion and doubt. "It's a Cheshire poetics, one that points two ways then vanishes in the blur of what is seen and what is seeing, what can be known and what it is to know." Hank Lazer writes that Armantrout "gives us a typically lyrical moment, but that moment inevitably is tied to some counterbalancing skepticism, so that the moment becomes ironized or self-conflicted."

Susan Howe says, "I think a lot of my work is about breaking free. Starting free and being captured and breaking free again and being captured again." Ming Qian Ma writes that Howe's poetry demonstrates a bent to contrive a method, or countermethod, to break free from the language trap through a `productive violence' highly informed rather than random."

Spahr says, "Reading these essays all together has shown me that, while there is a clear difference in intent between a poem written for investigating the self and one written for investigating language or community, it is more and more the case that the techniques used might be similar. In other words, form is no longer the clear marker of intention or meaning that it was 30 years ago."