Women's great poems: 100 Essential Modern Poems By Women
edited by Joseph Parisi and Kathleen Welton
Women's great poems: 100 Essential Modern Poems By Women
Summary.
Poets.
Comment Summary
There is much to commend
100 Essential Modern Poems By Women (2008)
edited by Joseph Parisi and Kathleen Welton.
It prints in full a hundred poems by 48 women poets,
with many partial quotations of their other poems in
the essay (by Parisi) on each poet.
The essays are terrific.
Parisi adds an essay on
Elizabeth Bishop,
whose will apparently forbade inclusion of her poetry in such an anthology.
Even
Mary Oliver
(whom I once heard say at a reading that she did not give permission for her work to
be included in a women-only anthology) is there.
So is
Kay Ryan.
[She is paired with
Mary Oliver
for "special thanks" in the Acknowledgments.
So perhaps she had expressed similar limitations previously.]
While Parisi's essays are interesting and informative, be warned that they outweigh the space devoted to the poets:
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The text totals 266 pages (for essays and women's poems).
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Only about 105 pages (40%) are occupied by poems.
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About 161 pages (60%) of essays.
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The essays and notes are terrific in giving a summary of each poet's body of work and her life.
Parisi includes many references to biographies and to critical works for more detailed study.
Mina Loy and Dorothy Parker, Louise Brogan and Stevie Smith particularly caught my eye.
The Australian Judith Wright also merits study, not least as the only Antipodean in the volume.
A final heads-up: the book does indeed include a lot of great poems and poets,
though it is a jingoistic collection:
- Parisi lists poets in birth order (1830 to 1954) EXCEPT that the first entry is
Emily Dickinson,
who is moved ahead of Christina Rossetti -- was born earlier ... but not in the USA.
- About 43 of the 49 featured poets were born in the USA.
- Includes Emma Lazarus as the third of 49 poets ... justified not by her complete body of work
nor her work on behalf of poetry, but by her having penned
the (no-longer-true) poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty:
"The New Colossus"
offering to accept all
"your tired, your poor,/
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,/
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore."
- No poet in translation! The collection is English-language poets only.
Poets
Poets by birth date
- 1830: Emily Dickinson.
Christina Rosetti.
- 1849: Emma Lazarus (whom T.S. Eliot is said to have called "the demon saleswoman of poetry").
- 1874: Amy Lowell.
- 1882: Mina Loy (who seems to have been "not only in the vanguard
but frequently ahead of it ". I hope to read Carolyn Burke's
"Becoming Modern " or similar.)
- 1884: Sara Teasdale.
- 1885: Elinor Wylie.
- 1886: H.D. [Hilda Doolittle]
- 1887: Edith Sitwell.
Marianne Moore.
- 1892: Edna St. Vincent Millay.
- 1893: Dorothy Parker ("acerbic vision and bittersweet wisdom").
- 1897: Louise Brogan: poetry editor and principal reviewer of verse for The New Yorker
(1931-1969). Her own work praised "by many fellow artists, notably W.H. Auden,
who also thought her the best American critic".
- 1902: Stevie Smith: "Dry but curiously upbeat tone amid dreary circumstances and even
disaster".
- 1905: Phyllis McGinley.
- 1911: Elizabeth Bishop.
- 1913: May Swenson.
Muriel Rukeyser.
- 1915: Ruth Stone.
Judith Wright (Australian).
- 1917: Gwendolyn Brooks.
- 1920: Amy Clampitt: "dense, rich language and an intricate style".
- 1921: Mona Van Duyn: "high craft and modest understatement".
- 1923: Denise Levertov.
- 1924: Lisel Mueller: "exactness of her observations ... emotional and philosophical implications".
- 1925: Carolyn Kizer.
Maxine Kumin.
- 1928: Anne Sexton.
- 1929: Adrienne Rich.
- 1932: Sylvia Plath.
Linda Pastan: "the premiere contemporary poet of
family life ... lucid but subtly rhythmic lines".
- 1934: Fleur Adcock: born in New Zealand; shows influences of
Elizabeth Bishop
and Philip Larkin.
Audre Lord.
- 1935: Mary Oliver.
- 1936: Marge Piercy. See especially her:
FOR THE YOUNG WHO WANT TO
Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.
...
Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.
...
The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.
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Lucille Clifton.
- 1939: Margaret Atwood.
- 1942: Marilyn Hacker.
Sharon Olds.
- 1943: Louise Glück.
Ellen Bryant Voigt.
Nikki Giovanni.
- 1944: Eavan Boland.
- 1945: Kay Ryan: "Few poets can say so much in so little space as Kay Ryan".
- 1947: Jane Kenyon.
- 1948: Heather McHugh.
- 1950: Carolyn Forché.
- 1952: Rita Dove.
- 1954: Louise Erdrich.
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