AN ANTHOLOGY OF GREAT U. S. WOMEN POETS 1850-1990; Temples and Palaces (DJ Protected by a Brand New, Clear, Acid-Free Mylar Cover)

Ruihley, Glenn Richard

ISBN 10: 0965573508 / ISBN 13: 9780965573504

Published by The Mosaic Foundation, 2007

About this Item

Green cloth cover is pristine. Boards and spine are straight. Binding is tight. Pages are clean and pristine. Book has never been cracked open. Dust jacket has several very faint stains but overall in very good+ condition. DJ protected by a brand new, clear, acid-free mylar cover. We add mylar covers to all books with DJs to preserve the DJs and add luster to magnify their beauty. (If pictured, shown without the mylar cover for an accurate representation of dust jacket. ).

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: AN ANTHOLOGY OF GREAT U. S. WOMEN POETS 1850-1990; Temples and Palaces (DJ Protected by a Brand New, Clear, Acid-Free Mylar Cover)
• Publisher: The Mosaic Foundation
• Publication Date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0965573508
• ISBN 13: 9780965573504
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Fine+
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good+
• Seller catalogs:
  • Poetry

About this title

Synopsis

In the U.S. literary world, critics and scholars of poetry forever move in circles around a few sacred beings: Shakespeare, Keats, Poe, Blake, Byron, Whitman, Shelley, and T. S. Eliot. Even among our women poets there are three Empresses---Dickinson, Moore, and Plath---who beguile countless eager academic courtiers to their thrones. Sadly, it was Plath's early death by suicide that won her great devotion. But it is no more odd than the fact that their prestige has kept the great achievements of our mainstream lyrical women poets unrecognized, stifled, and hidden from readers' eyes. Even the few women lyricists w ho remain in print---such as Millay, H.D., and Bogan---appear in demeaning printed versions with everything they wrote being stuffed between two covers with no regard for assessing the poems' quality and no help from sympathetic editors. Conversely, in selections of their poetry, only the most academic verses are chosen to represent their poetry.

Covering the period from Emily Dickinson to the present day, this anthology collects all our classic women poets in one volume for the first time. It proposes that their best poems have a value different from but equal to the writings of the most admired poets. With a few exceptions, the eighteen poets included are represented by coherent sequences of poems that develop lines of thought and display the poets' stylistic brilliance. Part Four consists of critical-biographical essays on these women. These incorporate extensive biobliographies, which enhance the book's value as a reference tool.

Though many of these poets' volumes are out of print, and most of them are unknown even to the most literate readers, these women belong at the center of American literature, masters of their art who contributed unique insights into the human experience.

Contents

Part One: Penumbra
Edith Thomas (1854-1925)
Lizette Reese (1856-1935)
Anna H. Branch (1875-1937)
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Part Two: Bright Sunlight
Amy Lowell (1874-1925)
Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)
H.D. (1886-1961)
Marianne Moore (1887-1972)
Sara Teasdale (1884-1933)
Elinor Wylie (1885-1928)
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950)
Louise Bogan (1897-1970)

Part Three: New Heavens for Old
Leonie Adams (1899-1988)
May Swenson (1913-1989)
Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
Maxine Kumin (born 1925)
Gwendolyn Brooks (born 1917)

After receiving a Ph. D. from the University of Wisconsin, Glenn Richard Ruihley began teaching in the English Department at Eastern Michigan University. His principal interest has been the period of poetic revival and experiment that began in 1912, in particular the women poets of that period who explore the inner life and spirituality. He is also the author of August Ruihley: A Private History.

From the Author

With a few notable exceptions such as Sappho in ancient times and Emily Dickinson in our own, women poets are seen as not good enough. Because of this bookstores offer so little of their writing that even the sturdiest can be shunted out of the mainstream and permanently lost. In the anthologies sold in these stores, women poets have always been marginalized, as in the RINEHARD BOOK OF VERSE, 1952, containing five women among seventy-seven poets; AMERICAN POETRY SINCE 1940, 1968, six women among forty-eight; or THE CLASSIC HUNDRED: ALL-TIME FAVORITE POEMS, 1990, one woman among forty-eight.

In literary history or criticism American women poets are usually ignored or treated with contempt, as in David Perkins' hatchet murder of Edna St. Vincent Millay in his HISTORY OF MODERN POETRY, Horace Gregory's poisonous stabs at AMY LOWELL: PORTRAIT OF THE POET IN HER TIME, or Conrad Aiken's airy dismissal of Sara Teasdale in his essay, "It is in Truth a Pretty Toy."

My anthology rejects this bias and pays belated tribute to our classic women poets. It collects eighteen of them for the first time in one book, and each poet is represented by a substantial block of writing sufficient to define her achievement. Their poems, sometimes out of print for decades, are arranged in sequences that develop themes, tell stories, trace lines of thought or display the poets' stylistic brilliance. Radical innovation appears side by side with writing in traditional modes. But the emphasis, as shown in the abundance of sonnets, has always been on poems of complex artistry allowing comparison with the temples and palaces erected to assert human spirituality and splendour.

In my preface, foreword, and the biographical-critical essays which conclude the volume, I advance the thesis that the best of these equal the best writing in English by male poets. Different from but equal to the verses by males, the women surpass the men in their fuller treatment of the inner life. Those who look for this element in writing are likely to see it as the most valuable ingredient of poetry.

In all there are 477 poems, nearly one hundred pages of essays and bibliographies by the editor, three emblematic drawings, and portaits of three poets. The poets are: Edith Thomas, Lizette Woodworth Reese, Anna Hempstead Branch, Emily Dickinson, Amy Lowell, Gertrude Stein, H.D., Marianne Moore, Sara Teasdale, Elinor Wylie, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Louise Bogan, Leonie Adams, May Swenson, Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Maxine Kumin, and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Writing Emily Dickinson late in that poet's life, Helen Hunt Jackson censured her as a "great poet" who was "too stingy" to offer her verses in printed volumes. Why has the American literary establishment been too narrow, too stingy to recognise the greatness of our mainstream lyrical women poets and to provide access to them by the reading public?