Poetry from Sojourner: A Feminist Anthology

Ruth Lepson (Editor) Lynne Yamaguchi (Editor)

& 5 more

Description

Collection of poems from 25 years of Sojourner

For much of its history Sojourner was the most widely circulated feminist literary journal in America, and more than 1,200 poems have appeared in its pages since it began publication in 1975. Nearly 150 of those poems are collected in this volume, where together they form a powerful testament to the vibrancy, wit, and diversity of feminist poetry.

In addition to works by such well-known poets as Molly Peacock, Nikki Giovanni, Betsy Sholl, and Adrienne Rich, this collection includes poems by women from a host of different backgrounds, including many whose work appeared in print for the first time in Sojourner.

Some of these poems explode with energy, others speak with a haiku-like softness; some discuss love, lust, and sexuality, while others deal with loss, divorce, and revenge. The voices collected here are old and young, rural and urban, straight and gay, from mothers and daughters to wives, lovers, and countless others, all contributing to this anthology's wide-ranging conversation about feminism and feminist poetics.

Product Details

Price

$27.54

Publisher

University of Illinois Press

Publish Date

January 22, 2004

Pages

236

Dimensions

6.0 X 8.9 X 0.63 inches | 0.8 pounds

Language

English

Type

Paperback

EAN/UPC

9780252071546

BISAC Categories:

American - General

Anthologies (multiple authors)

Women's Studies

Women Authors

Feminism & Feminist Theory

Earn by promoting books

Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.

Become an affiliate

About the Author

Ruth Lepson is poet-in-residence at the New England Conservatory of Music. Her books of poetry are MORPHOLOGY, a collaboration with artist Rusty Crump, of photographs and prose poems (blazeVOX, 2007) and Dreaming in Color (Alice James Books). She edited Poetry from Sojourner: A Feminist Anthology (Univ. of Illinois Press). Her writing has appeared in Carve, Jacket, EAOGH, Shampoo, Agni, Harvard Review and other magazines, and she has read at the Bowery Poetry Club and La Mama Galleria in New York, on NPR's All Things Considered and at many other places. In recent years she has been collaborating with musicians, and her jazz and poetry group, low road, performs and has a CD forthcoming. She organized poetry readings for Oxfam America.

Molly Peacock is the author of eight collections of poetry, including The Analyst: Poems and Cornucopia: New and Selected Poems. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

Nikki Giovanni is an award-winning poet, writer, and activist. She is the author of more than two dozen books for adults and children, including Bicycles, Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea, Racism 101, Blues: For All the Changes, and Love Poems. Her children's book-plus-audio compilation Hip Hop Speaks to Children was awarded the NAACP Image Award. Her children's book Rosa, a picture-book retelling of the Rosa Parks story, was a Caldecott Honor Book and winner of the Coretta Scott King Award. Both books were New York Times bestsellers. Nikki is a Grammy nominee for her spoken-word album The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection and has been nominated for the National Book Award. She has been voted Woman of the Year by Essence, Mademoiselle, and Ladies' Home Journal. She is a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech, where she teaches writing and literature.

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012) was an award-winning poet, influential essayist, radical feminist, and major public intellectual of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She wrote two dozen volumes of poetry, including the National Book Award-winning Diving into the Wreck, and more than a half-dozen of prose.

Mary Loeffelholz (Ph.D. Yale) is Professor of English and Vice Provost for Academic Affairs at Northeastern University. She is the author of Dickinson and the Boundaries of Feminist Theory; Experimental Lives: Women and Literature, 1900-1945; and, most recently, From School to Salon: Reading Nineteenth-Century American Women's Poetry. With Martha Nell Smith, she edited the Blackwell Companion to Emily Dickinson. Her essays have appeared in such journals as American Literary History, English Literary History, the Yale Journal of Criticism, and Modern Language Quarterly

Reviews

"This collection of poems reminds me of found letters that describe more truthfully than any official history the mind-set of a generation. Feminism--when it still related to the natural world (beauty) and was committed to the pursuit of happiness in relationship--feminism as narrative--from page one onward is this anthology." -- Fanny Howe, author of One Crossed Out
"From Levertov, Rich, and Dove, through Hejinian, Howe, and Collins, to Moore, Becker, Potter, and Goldberg--there are poets included here whose work is, by any contemporary poetic standard, feminist and otherwise, enormously rewarding, challenging, and important." -- Kathy Fagan, editor of The Journal and author of The Charm

Poetry Is Not A Luxury