Fire On Her Tongue: an eBook Anthology of Contemporary Women's Poetry [Kindle Edition]

Annette Spaulding-Convy (Editor), Kelli Russell Agodon (Editor)

Book Description

Fire On Her Tongue: An eBook Anthology of Contemporary Women's Poetry is the first electronic collection of poems by women writing today. Poets Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy, Co-Editors of Crab Creek Review and Co-Founders of Two Sylvias Press, have collaborated on this ground-breaking literary project. Featuring over 70 of the most extraordinary poets from a variety of backgrounds and whose ages span from thirteen to ninety-one, Fire On Her Tongue showcases superbly crafted poems exploring the contemporary woman’s experience. Fire On Her Tongue: An eBook Anthology of Contemporary Women's Poetry includes poems by Kim Addonizio, Nin Andrews, Madeline DeFrees, Patricia Fargnoli, Annie Finch, Kate Greenstreet, Lola Haskins, Jane Hirshfield, Keetje Kuipers, Dorianne Laux, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Alicia Ostriker, Natasha Sajé, Peggy Shumaker, Patricia Smith, A.E. Stallings, Rachel Zucker, and many other accomplished poets. Fire On Her Tongue is a unique collection created specifically with eBook readers in mind. This anthology has been entirely produced with a zero-carbon footprint as a “green” way to share today’s most exciting poetry with a larger audience. Fire On Her Tongue is an amazing resource for any reader or student who wants to explore an in-depth selection of work from some of today’s strongest women poets.

Product Details

• File Size: 491 KB
• Print Length: 497 pages
• Publisher: Two Sylvias Press (December 28, 2011)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B006R8Q9JK
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #512,677 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fire on Her Tongue January 21, 2012

By PDAdkins

Format:Kindle Edition

Review will also appear in New Book Review on 26 JAN 12: [...]

Fire on Her Tongue: An eBook Anthology of Contemporary Women's Poetry, (Two Sylvias Press, 2012, ISBN: 13: 978-1-937860-24-0, 491 kb, approximately 460 pp) is an eBook edited by Kelli Russell Agodon and Annette Spaulding-Convy. The editors present the work of 73 poets, both well known and emerging artists. This first-of-its-kind collection, available on Kindle, Nook, iBooks, Sony Reader, and twenty-eight other eBook retailers such as eBooks.com, IndieBound.org, Powell's and many others, provides an exciting overview of some of the best American writing today.

Fire on Her Tongue should not be confused with earlier comprehensive anthologies such as Hayden Carruth's The Voice That is Great Within Us, or a college textbook published by Norton, lugged to every introductory American literature course known to woman. Agodon and Spaulding-Convy present the poetry of contemporary women exclusively: there is no Robert Frost, W.C. Williams, Carl Sandburg, or Robert Creeley here. The collection is vivid and immediate, and the writers are all still living. This eBook captures the incredibly varied talents of the women included.

Anthologies are normally associated with canonical writing. With the usual exceptions of Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Gwendolyn Brooks, general anthologies almost universally neglect the presence, much less importance, of women poets. The adage that one must be dead to be a famous author seems especially fitting for these types of collections, many of which stop at Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. It is as if American women suddenly ceased writing to eternally mourn the deaths of these twin icons.... The fact that the press publishing this work is named Two Sylvias is doubly significant here. It marks the definitive passing of women's poetry from the enigmatic, suicidal Plath to her matrilineal descendants, so to speak. Deference is paid to America's colossal literary martyr, but it's time to move on, the editors declare.

And move on, they do! Though the poets are presented alphabetically, Kim Addonizio is a perfect opening writer for this groundbreaking collection. Members of the canon such as Alicia Ostriker and Patricia Smith stand alongside deserving lesser-known authors including Ivy Alvarez and Kate Lebo. Rachel Contreni Flynn and Annie Finch comfortably coexist. This is a collection for people who love poetry. And while academics will certainly find it an invaluable tool for mapping current literary trends women are exploring, the real worth is in its ability to share wonderful work with other readers, not dictate what is canonical or worthy of scholarly attention.

Some people might consider the heavy concentration of writers linked to Seattle as a weakness. Over 30 of the authors are indeed directly connected in some way to this city and surrounding area, as, too, are Agodon and Spaulding-Convy. The question might arise as to why Two Sylvias did not simply present the anthology exclusively as a showpiece of the incredibly vibrant Seattle poetry scene; there is certainly enough material to do so. Such criticism misses the point of the collection, however. The anthology has more of a conversational than authoritative feel. Essentially, here are two highly knowledgeable women from the Pacific Northwest respecting their audience with questions such as, "Hey, have you read THIS writer? She's awesome! This one, too. Do you know her? She's really fantastic!"

Fire on Her Tongue is a celebration of women's poetry, a party, not a granite monument. It's not the work of two editors showing off how smart they are, but instead how excited they are about the current state of women's poetry in America. Buy it! Read it! You'll find their enthusiasm is catching. Read more ›

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Very nice March 12, 2013

By Nancy Turnbough

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

It's hard to find womens poetry in kindle form. This is a good book. I hate minimum word requirements, they suck.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful collection of women's poetry April 16, 2012

By M.

Format:Kindle Edition

I love this book -- it is at once impossible to put down (the poems are so engaging) and impossible not to (each poem is so affecting that I found myself taking time to absorb and ponder each one). It's a treat to read the work of well established as well as emerging poets, and it's also a wonderful celebration of women's writing. This is a book I will pick up time and time again in the years to come.

Forgetting English: Stories

4.0 out of 5 stars It appears to be alive, well and vibrant, truly vibrant. November 10, 2012

By PL

Format:Kindle Edition

This project began as an idea shared between the two editors, Kelli Russell Agodon & Annette Spaulding-Convy, who after the purchase of a Nook and an I-Pad realised that poetry was being left behind in the eBook revolution. While technology was striving forward carrying with it, the novelists, memoirists and nonfiction writers, they felt that the poets were being left behind, and this left them with a question - could they do something about it?

So, in 2011 they set about contacting their favourite female poets and asked them if they would feature in an eBook anthology. This left them with a new question, could they successfully tackle the formatting issues that would be raised by attempting to present poetry in this way, could they as editors of a print journal, publish the first eBook of contemporary women's poetry?

The result is Fire On Her Tongue, proudly featuring over 70 poets, each represented by several of their works and each having a small bio with a link to their own site. The poets age ranges from thirteen to ninety one and cover most of the USA, some are urban, some rural, some are academics or professionals, some are stay at home Mums, but all are poets.

Negative Four Hundred.

The rain carves patterns

into my window.

It will be different this time,

I promise,

The words crisscross over

stones.

I remember she told me,

Curved hips,

they are like waves.

She could hear my heartbeats,

every breath.

Every day we mapped it,

found a beginning but no end.

I whisper the name

of my being:

human....

Maya Ganasen

This is a collection I've had for a while now and I'm constantly amazed at the range of poetry contained within it's electronic pages. Yes they are all predominantly written by women living in America, which does limit it to an anthology of contemporary American women's poetry, which would be a more accurate title, but that's just a small niggle, and one that doesn't fit with the ethos behind Fire On Her Tongue, which was to represent Kelli Russell Agodon & Annette Spaulding-Convy favourite female poets in a way that would do them justice, in a way that left a zero carbon footprint, and was available on most eBook formats

This is a worthy addition to any E-library, in fact any library and one that you could constantly dive into and find new gems, maybe by poets already known but also by poets yet to have hit the mainstream of this genre, in this respect it provides a wonderful overview of the state of women's poetry in America today and if this collection is anything to go by, it appears to be alive, well and vibrant, truly vibrant. Read more ›