Love's Witness: Five Centuries of Love Poetry by Women [Paperback]

Jim Hollis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 1993

Book jacket/back: The work of women poets is often overlooked in anthologies, and collections of love poetry are no exception. This delightful and highly original collection redresses that imbalance, and shows that on the subject of romantic and sexual love women can be just as eloquent as men -- or moreso. Here, the bitter and the sweet mingle as women from the last five hundred years write about jealousy, fikleness, exhiliaration, the pain of parting, and the transience of love. Included are poems from a huge range of women's love poetry which has remained largely invisible since the fifteenth century, as well as poems by well-known names such as Stevie Smith, Emily Dickenson, Christina Rossetti, Emily Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Edith Wharton, Katherine Mansfield Amy Lowell, George Eliot and even Queen Elizabeth I.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Drawing upon women's writings from Queen Elizabeth I to Wendy Cope, this lengthy anthology understandably encompasses a wide range of styles. It is the result of editor Hollis' long-standing appreciation of love poetry bumping up against her disappointment at the scarcity--judging by the meager representation in previous anthologies--of women's contributions to it. In her presentation, she eschews chronology for a less formal order in which the poems can be read independently of one another or in small, complementary groupings. The selections, all English-language poems (no translations appear), attest both the commonality of feelings among women separated by centuries and the contrasts between these same women on account of historically increasing rights for women. They richly present women's voices speaking of the pains and pleasures of love--its highs, lows, and intermediate gradations. Hollis, who has compiled five earlier anthologies, says of the contents of her latest that "ultimately the most important thing is that the poems should be allowed to speak for themselves and appreciated for the fine and extensive body of work they represent." Whitney Scott

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf (October 26, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786700300
• ISBN-13: 978-0786700301
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,974,680 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Love in All Its Fury!, July 15, 2006

By 

Ruth Z. Deming "Backyard Trees" (Willow Grove, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Love's Witness: Five Centuries of Love Poetry by Women (Paperback)

Searching for a wedding gift, I came upon this delightful 286-page 1993 volume filled with surprises. Hadn't known that Queen Elizabeth I wrote tender lyrical verse, exemplified in the title "When I was Fair and Young." Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood ("The Handmaid's Tale") writes about the joys & tribulations of married love: "This word [love] is not enough but it will have to do." No compendium can be complete without the exquisite sexual poems by Sharon Olds. Her "The Connoisseuse of Slugs," referring to her fascination with that garden creature, "their gelantinous bodies at my mercy," ends the poem with the words, "Years later, when I first saw a naked man....gleaming in the dark air, eager and so trusting you could weep."

Neither must we forget Phyllis McGinley, her sentiment similar to "Dover Beach," where she pleads in "Midcentury Love Letter" - "Stay near me. Speak my name. Oh, do not wander... in this precipitous night."

Thanks also to anthologist Hollis for introducing us to many unknown poets including Karen Gershon who writes "be David to make me Bathsheba, elaborate me with legends."

Alas, while the poetry soars, some of the bios are slipshod. Most are as fascinating as the poems, but in several cases, Hollis unaccountably failed to research the year in which the poet was born.

Nothing's perfect. Except these ancient words of a woman mourning the death of her husband: "Tell thy soul thou roots are left in mine."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and filled with surprises, December 10, 2000

By 

Reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Love's Witness: Five Centuries of Love Poetry by Women (Paperback)

This is a great book! While the quality of the poems varies widely (there being a few which really don't deserve a place in any anthology), you will find many surprises in this book, some derived from the sheer historical interest of the works, some from unexpectedly masterly poems from little-known authors who will give you lines to remember! Every once in a while, a particular line or poem would leave me stunned at its beauty and the way it portrayed something I had personally felt (which is, by the way, one of the most important things that poetry aims at). See for example the work of Sarah Maguire, Patricia Beer, Kath Fraser and Marion Strobel, to name only a few. The biographical info is particularly useful if you want to read more from any of the authors, and also because of the interesting (if, inevitably, succinct) data it provides on these creative and talented women.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must for the romantic, male or female., April 29, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Love's Witness: Five Centuries of Love Poetry by Women (Paperback)

To think that women's views on love and relationships as far back as 500 years ago hasn't changed one bit and never will. So diverse, yet so common. The selections are excellent!