This comprehensive and feminine collection of poems gives evidence to what women have always known in their souls--that even though male poets are most often quoted as the heaven-blessed wordsmiths, women have always sung exquisite songs of divine praise, passion, and yearning. Editor and Pulitzer-Prize nominee Aliki Barnstone is a poet in her own right, and because of this she brings a keen literary eye to her selections. Since the volume reads in chronological order, it begins with Enheduanna (ca. 2300 BCE), who calls to the "moon goddess" Innanna. "We sing, mourn, and cry before you/and walk toward you along a path/from the house of enormous sighs." Every poem offers pause for reflection and is bound to stir enormous sighs of appreciation. Moving through centuries and millennia, Barnstone has included famous poets (Hildegarde of Bingen, Denise Levertov, Linda Hogan, Anne Sexton, Louise Erdrich) with the more obscure but equally divine. --Gail Hudson
From Kirkus Reviews
An anthology of more than two hundred poems by women from the ancient world to the present day, organized around the common ground of spirituality. Although the preface (not seen) by editor Barnstone (English/Univ. of Nevada) may explain her criteria for judgment, spiritual and visionary appear to be vague concepts in her hands, and the volume theyve given birth to seems deeply in thrall to the fuzziest nostrums of the feminist New Age. Were introduced to Hildegard of Bingen holding forth over there in the corner beside the eternally dreadful Phillis Wheatleywho should have been allowed to rest in peaceand poor Anne Bradstreet, who seems rather bored by the proceedings. Not to forget Sappho, or Sor Juana Inz de la Cruz: We have met them all before, but now theyre assembled together with Emily Dickinson, H.D., Marianne Moore, and Gwendolyn Brooksand we may be permitted to wonder if they find the party as odd as we do, and whether Saint Catherine of Siena and Sylvia Plath have very much to say to each other. Many of the ancient writers are practically unknown and deserve a larger audience, and the familiar faces are pleasant company at the worst of times (who wouldnt want to reread Mrs. Browning?), yet what exactly these writers have in common above the waist is far from clear. An authoritative mess. -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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