Dwelling in Possibility: Women Poets and Critics on Poetry (Reading Women Writing) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801431999 ISBN 13: 9780801431999

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 1997

Synopsis

"Dwelling in Possibility is a splendid collaboration between poets and critics. Prins and Shreiber have interwoven sophisticated feminist critical essays with poetic meditations on genre and gender; the dialogues they set up are lyrically elegant as well as intellectually exhilarating. This collection not only sets a new standard for feminist theorizing about poetic genres, it performs the pleasures of feminist reading in all their diversity."-Mary Loeffelholz, author of Dickinson and the Boundaries of Feminist TheoryDwelling in Possibility cuts across conventional boundaries between critical and creative writing by featuring the work of both women poets and feminist critics as they explore and exemplify the relationship between gender and poetic genres. The contributors suggest new ways of thinking and writing about poetry in light of contemporary questions about history and identity. Most of the contributions are published here for the first time.

About this title

Review

"A lovely book.... This anthology is immensely erudite, detailed, precise, and thoughtful.... Every essay in this collection is a solid meal, nothing is skippable or skimmable."

--Meryl Altman "The Women's Review of Books "

"Dwelling in Possibility is a splendid collaboration between poets and critics. Prins and Shreiber have interwoven sophisticated feminist critical essays with poetic meditations on genre and gender; the dialogues they set up are lyrically elegant as well as intellectually exhilarating. This collection not only sets a new standard for feminist theorizing about poetic genres, it performs the pleasures of feminist reading in all their diversity."

--Mary Loeffelholz, author of Dickinson and the Boundaries of Feminist Theory

"The powerful insight of this 370-page collection of women's writing is that the participation of women poets in the public sphere cannot be measured adequately unless feminist genre theory learns how to 'open the borders'--to recognize how generic hybridity has helped to define cultural and political movements and to build connections between academics and other communities, as the book itself exemplifies."

--Contemporary Literature

Synopsis

This study seeks to cut across the conventional boundaries between critical and creative writing by featuring the work of both women poets and feminist critics as they explore and exemplifiy the relationship between gender and poetic genres. The contributors suggest ways of thinking and writing about poetry in light of contemporary questions about history and identity. The book covers a range in terms of time, geography and genre, considering poets from antiquity to the present and drawing on a variety of critical approaches. The topics include the transformation of classical lyric through the figure of Sappho and the transformative use of biblical material in women's verse. The poets whose work is represented (in prose as well as poetry) include: Eavan Boland; Olga Broumas and T. Begley; Anne Carson; Rachel Blau DuPlessis; Rita Dove; Marilyn Hacker; Joy Harjo; bell hooks; Susan Howe; Alicia Ostriker; M. Nourbese Philip; and Eleanor Wilner.

Also included are critical essays on such poets as: Emily Dickinson; Adrienne Rich; Lucille Clifton; Stevie Smith; and other Modernist writers, as well as poets from the Irish oral tradition, the Hellenistic period, the Renaissance and the 18th century. The contributors to the volume are: T. Begley; Eavan Boland; Angela Bourke; Olga Broumas; Anne Carson; Rita Dove; Rachel Blau DuPlessis; Susan Stanford Friedman; Kathryn Gutzwiller; Marilyn Hacker; Joy Jarjo; Diana Henderson; bell hooks; Susan Howe; Romana Huk; Akasha Hull; Virginia Jackson; Jayne Elizabeth Lewis; Alicia Ostriker; M. Nourbese Philip; Yopie Prins; Maeera Shreiber; Karen Swann; and Eleanor Wilner.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0801431999
• ISBN 13: 9780801431999
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 392
• Editor: Prins Yopie, Shreiber Maeera