By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry

Table of contents

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• Title Page i
• Contents iii
• Acknowledgments vi
• Introduction 3
• "It's a Woman's Prerogative to Change Her Mind" 9
• I. Writing Their Lives 31
• Vesuvius at Home: the Power of Emily Dickinson 33
• Note 60
• Being a Dragon: On Marianne Moore 74
• My Plath Problem 82
• Edwin Muir and the Primal World 132
• Ii. a Poet's Tools: "The Incredible Difficulty of Saying Something True" 155
• A Meditation on Metaphor 157
• Some Notes on Silence 163
• A Cadenced Privacy (some Thoughts on Punctuation in Contemporary Poems) 172
• Use This Word in a Sentence: Experimental 187

• Title Page i
• Contents iii
• Acknowledgments vi
• Introduction 3
• "It's a Woman's Prerogative to Change Her Mind" 9
• I. Writing Their Lives 31
• Vesuvius at Home: the Power of Emily Dickinson 33
• Note 60
• Being a Dragon: On Marianne Moore 74
• My Plath Problem 82
• Edwin Muir and the Primal World 132
• Ii. a Poet's Tools: "The Incredible Difficulty of Saying Something True" 155
• A Meditation on Metaphor 157
• Some Notes on Silence 163
• A Cadenced Privacy (some Thoughts on Punctuation in Contemporary Poems) 172
• Use This Word in a Sentence: Experimental 187
• Myself a Kangaroo Among the Beauties 192
• A Genuine Article 196
• Iii. Critical Panoramas 211
• Confessions of a Postmodern Poetess 213
• Notes 225
• Playing the Changes 226
• La Faustienne 252
• Xio's Soakbook: Criticism Takes a Bath 277
• Poetry, Mattering? 317
• Iv. Reading Her Mind: Creeds and Memoirs 329
• Letter to a Young Woman Poet 331
• Sharon Olds a Student's Memoir of Muriel Rukeyser 345
• Poetry is Not a Luxury 364
• Meditations on "Mecca": Gwendolyn Brooks and the Responsibilities of the Black Poet 368
• 69 Hidebound Opinions, Propositions, and Several Asides from a Manila Folder Concerning the Stuff of Poetry 380
• Short Survey of Scruples 398
• On Being Unable to Read 403
• Notes on Contributors 421
• About the Editor 427