Coming to Light

This collection of sixteen essays helps bring light to questions central to feminist criticism of poetry: How have women achieved distinction as poets in a tradition scarce in exemplary women? How does their poetry derive from specifically female experience in our polarized gender system?

Coming to Light considers the work of Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Bogan, Lucille Clifton, H.D., Denise Levertov, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, and Native American poets, as well as the broad relationship of women poets to American literary tradition.

“An extremely important book, both in illuminating feminist poetics and in providing a historical overview of women poets in the 20^th century – from Mina Loy’s revolutionary erotic free verse to Anne Sexton’s ironic restructuring of myth in her Transformations… A feast of information and insight.”
– Choice