Forms of Expansion
Recent Long Poems by Women
Lynn Keller(Author)
University of Chicago Press
Will be published approx. on 4. August 1997
Book
Hardback
381 pages
978-0-226-42970-0 (ISBN)
Description
Contemporary American women are writing long poems in a variety of styles which repossess history, reconceive female subjectivity, and seek to revitalize poetry itself. This book explores this evolving body of work, offering revealing discussions of its diverse traditions and feminist concerns. The poets discussed include Rita Dove, Brenda Marie Osbey, Sharon Doubiago, Judy Grahn, Marilyn Hacker, Beverly Dahlen, Rachel Blau Du Plessis and Susan Howe. Arguing that women poets no longer feel intimidated by the traditional associations of long poems with the heroic, public realm or with great artistic ambition, Keller shows how the long poem's openness to sociological, anthropological and historical material makes it an ideal mode for exploring women's roles in history and culture. In addition, the varied forms of long poems - from sprawling free-verse epics and regular sonnet sequences to highly disjunctive experimental collages - make this hybrid genre easily adaptable to diverse visions of feminism and of contemporary poetry.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Publishing group
The University of Chicago Press
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 25 mm
Width: 22 mm
Thickness: 3 mm
Weight
680 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-226-42970-0 (9780226429700)
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Schweitzer Classification
Content
Acknowledgments Introduction: Pushing the Limits of Genre and Gender: Women's Long Poems as Forms of Expansion 1: "To Remember / Our Dis-membered Parts": Sharon Doubiago and the Complementary Woman's Epic 2: "Helen, Your Strength / Is in Your Memory": Judy Grahn's Lesbian Warriors and Gynocentric Tales of the Tribe 3: Sequences Testifying for "Nobodies": Rita Dove's Thomas and Beulah and Brenda Marie Osbey's Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman 4: Measured Feet "in Gender-Bender Shoes": Marilyn Hacker's Love, Death, and the Changing of the Seasons 5: "The Silences Are Equal to the Sounds": Documentary History and Susan Howe's "The Liberties" 6: Grand Collage "Out of Bounds": Feminist Serial Poems by Beverly Dahlen and Rachel Blau DuPlessis Conclusion: This Genre Which Is Not One: A Short Wrap-up on Long Poems by Women Notes Works Cited Index