Read more
How do women's poetic voices disrupt cultural forms? What is the relationship between female desire and the structures of poetry? Is 'writing the body' essentialist? Originally published in 1991, this title explores these questions in a sensitive and challenging study of female poetic strategies.
List of contents
Acknowledgements, Introduction: The Re-visionary Task, Part I: Rethinking Womankind, 1. A Song Out of Silence, 2. The Poet as Witness: Im/pertinence, Fidelity, Respect, 3. Unsettling Rational Violence: Susan Griffin’s Holistic ‘Knowing’, Part II: Constructing Myths of the Self, 4. Identity and Crisis: Sylvia Plath’s Quest for Integrity, 5. ‘What Girl Ever Flourished in Such Company?’, 6. Seductive Scenarios: Fighting Back, 7. Re-Creating ‘My Own Legend’: H. D.’s Helen in Egypt, Part III: Writing the Body: Desire and the M/Other-text, 8. On the Need To Go To the Sources, 9. Mother, Daughter, Sister, Lover: Adrienne Rich’s Dream of a Whole New Poetry, Part IV: Primary Intensities: Lesbian Poetry and the Reading of Difference, 10. Validating the Lesbian Body, 11. ‘Within the Fold of Purple: ‘H. D.’s Argument with Freud, 12. ‘God Claps and Claps/Her One Hand’, Conclusion, Notes, Select Bibliography, Index
Summary
How do women’s poetic voices disrupt cultural forms? What is the relationship between female desire and the structures of poetry? Is ‘writing the body’ essentialist? Originally published in 1991, this title explores these questions in a sensitive and challenging study of female poetic strategies.
