NANCY MOREJON: “Elogia de la Dialéctica,” in Breaking the Silences: Twentieth Century Poetry by Cuban Women, edited by Margaret Randall (1982, Pulp Press, Box 3868 MPO, Vancouver, Canada V6B 3Z3).
JEAN MUNDY: From “Rape— For Women Only” by Jean Mundy, Ph.D., unpublished paper presented to the American Psychological Association, September 1, 1974, New Orleans, Louisiana.
SYLVIA PLATH: Brief excerpts from pp. 465 and 466 from Letters Home by Sylvia Plath: Correspondance 1950–1963 by Aurelia Schober Plath. Copyright © 1975 by Aurelia Schober Plath. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers. From Letters Home by Sylvia Plath: Correspondance 1950–1963 by Sylvia Plath (Faber & Faber Ltd., 1999]. Copyright © The Estate of Sylvia Plath, 1999. Reproduced by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd.
RAINER MARIA RILKE: From The Essential Rilke, selected and translated by Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann. Translation copyright © 1999 by Galway Kinnell and Hannah Liebmann. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers.
YANNIS RITSOS: Excerpts from “Romiosini,” translated by Kimon Friar, from Selected Poems, 1938–1988, edited by Kimon Friar and Kostas Myrsiades, with additional translations by Athan Anagnostopoulos. Copyright © 1988 by BOA Editions, Ltd. Reprinted by permission of BOA Editions, Ltd., www .boaeditions.org.
RAMI SAARI: “Searching the Land” by Rami Saari, reprinted by permission from With an Iron Pen: Twenty Years of Hebrew Protest Poetry, edited by Tal Nitzan and Rachel Tzvia Back, the State University of New York Press © 2009, State University of New York. All rights reserved.
JAMES SCULLY: From Line Break: Poetry as Social Practice, published by Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press, 2005. Copyright © 1998 by James Scully. Reprinted by permission of the author.
AHARON SHABTAI: “The Fence” by Aharon Shabtai, reprinted by permission from With an Iron Pen: Twenty Years of Hebrew Protest Poetry, edited by Tal Nitzan and Rachel Tzvia Back, State University of New York Press © 2009, State University of New York. All rights reserved.
SUE SILVERMARIE: “The Motherbond,” copyright © 1974 by Susa Silvermarie. Reprinted by permission of the author.
CARROLL SMITH-ROSENBERG: From “The Female World of Love and Ritual,” copyright © by Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, Mary Frances Berry Collegiate Professor Emerita. Reprinted by permission of the author.
WALLACE STEVENS: “Of Modern Poetry,” “The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm,” “The Idea of Order at Key West,” “The Man with the Blue Guitar,” “The Comedian as the Letter C,” and “Contrary Theses [I]” from The Collected Poems by Wallace Stevens, copyright © 1954 by Wallace Stevens and copyright renewed 1982 by Holly Stevens. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber.
ALLEN TATE: “Sonnets for Christmas” and “Sonnets for Christmas II” from Collected Poems 1919–1976 by Allen Tate. Copyright © 1977 by Allen Tate. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux. “Remarks on the Southern Religion” by Allen Tate, from I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, (Louisiana State University Press, 1930, 1977).
ANITA VALERIO: Selection from “I Am Listening: A Lyric of Roots” from A Gathering of Spirit, Sinister Wisdom 22/23 (1983, edited by Beth Brant). Copyright © by Max Wolf Valerio. Reprinted by permission of the author. For his more recent work, see https://hypotenusewolf.wordpress.com.
VIRGINIA WOOLF: Excerpt from The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf. Copyright 1925 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, renewed 1953 by Leonard Woolf. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of The Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS: From The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, Volume I: The Poems Revised by W. B. Yeats, edited by Richard J. Finneran. Copyright © 1940 by Georgie Yeats, renewed 1968 by Bertha Georgie Yeats, Michael Butler Yeats, and Anne Yeats. Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
DAVID ZONSHEINE: From “A Personal and Political Moment,” Haaretz (November 7, 2004).
Index
Page numbers listed correspond to the print edition of this book. You can use your device’s search function to locate particular terms in the text.
abortion-rights movement, 192–93, 241
Abu Ghraib prison, 357
Abu-Jamal, Mumia, 336, 357
Adler, Frances Payne, 341
Adonis, 365
Adorno, Theodor, 359
Africa, secret sororities and female economic networks in, 180, 379n
African Americans:
in advertising, 260, 276
mass incarceration of, 357
poetry by, 239
African American women:
lesbian continuum and, 188–89, 196
as nannies and nursemaids, 144–46
slaveowners’ rape of, 99–100
women’s liberation and, 331–32
“Africanism,” 277, 383n
“After great pain, a formal feeling comes—” (Dickinson, #341), 62
Against Our Will (Brownmiller), 371n
Age of Reason, The (Paine), 202
Ahmad, Aijaz, 333
Akiba, 314
Alberta Alone (Sandel), 127
Alcott, Abigail, 111
Alcott, Bronson, 111
Alcott, Louisa May, 111
alienation, 243
American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, 316
American frontier, women in, 124
American Poetry Review, xv, xix, 73n
Amherst, Mass., Dickinson’s home in, 39, 40, 41
anger:
of daughters toward mothers, 125, 134–35
of women, 12, 18–19
women writers’ suppression of, 6, 18
anger, motherhood and:
directed at children, 86, 87, 88–89, 95, 96–97, 113
at manipulation of mother-child relationship, 98
repression of, 85
and sense of powerlessness, 95
as taboo, 89
“Anger and Tenderness” (Rich), xix, 85–106
ani-yun-wiyu (“real people”), 282
Another Country (Baldwin), 300
Anthon, Kate Scott, 41, 181
anticommunist witch hunts, 315
anti-Semitism, 199–200, 214, 267
unacknowledged pervasiveness of, 198, 201–3, 208, 231
Anzaldúa, Gloria, 280–82
apartheid, 355
“Arcturus is his other name” (Dickinson, #70), 47
arrested sexual development, of men, 175, 176
art:
commodification of, 322–23, 329
as conversation, 245
democracy and, 323–24
dialogue between society and, 349
encapsulation of, 241
federal funding for, 324–25
justice and, 319–20, 324
making of, as basic need, 287
as precious resource, 243
privilege and, 287
resilience of, 322–23
see also poetry, poetics
artists’ colonies, 287
Arts of the Possible (Rich), xx
“Arts of the Possible” (Rich), xiv, 326–44
assimilation, Jews and, 207–8, 210, 212, 214, 217, 231, 316
“A still—Volcano—Life—” (Dickinson, #601), 51–52
Aten, 115
Atlas of the Difficult World, An (Rich), xiii
“Atlas of the Difficult World, An” (Rich), xviii
atomic bomb, 229, 261
Atwood, Margaret, 131–33
Auden, W. H., xv, xvi, 8, 264–65
“Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” (Rich), 8–9
Aurora Leigh (Barrett Browning), 57
Austen, Jane, 6, 18
“Aut
umn Day” (Rilke), 297–98
Awakening, The (Chopin), 127, 188
Baca, Jimmy Santiago, 278–79, 281
Bachelard, Gaston, 29
“Backside of the Academy, The” (Rukeyser), 316
Baldwin, James, 213, 215, 236–37, 240, 241, 300, 357
Baltimore, Md., xiv
AR’s childhood in, 199–204
World War II and, 261
barren women, 79, 85, 94, 140
Barrett Browning, Elizabeth, 41, 43, 57, 234
Barry, Kathleen, 169, 172–76
Beauvoir, Simone de, 133n–34n, 142n, 143, 215–16, 236, 237, 240
Becoming Visible: Women in European History (Bridenthal and Koonz, eds.), 375n
Bedouin, 294–95, 296–97
Beguines, 180
Bell, Vanessa, 116
Benedict, Ruth, 141
Bernstein, Charles, 295n–96n, 305n
Bethel, Lorraine, 188–89
Bianchi, Martha Dickinson “Matty,” 39
Birmingham, Ala., 199
birth control, 94–95, 124
Bishop, Elizabeth, xx, 5, 218–27, 381n
balance of power as theme of, 224, 225–26
Brazil and, 224–27
outsiderhood as theme of, 220–21, 222, 224, 227
Black English, 240
Black women, see African American women
Blake, William, 230, 232, 258
“Blood, Bread, and Poetry” (Rich), xiii, xx, 228–45
Bolts of Melody (Dickinson), 49
Book of Common Prayer, 267
Borderlands/La Frontera (Anzaldúa), 280–82
Bowles, Samuel, 41, 43
Bradstreet, Anne, xviii
Brazil, Bishop and, 224–27
“Brazil, January 1, 1502” (Bishop), 225
Breaking the Silences (Randall, ed.), 242–43
Brecht, Bertolt, 359
Brennan, William, 324
Brontë, Charlotte, 143, 189
Brontë, Emily, 57, 143
Brontë family, 41
Brownmiller, Susan, 82, 171, 371n
Brussels International Tribunal on Crimes against Women, 182–83
Brutus, Dennis, 355–56
Bryher, 180
Budbill, David, 299
Bureau of Justice Statistics, 357
“Burglar of Babylon, The” (Bishop), 226
Burlak, Anne, 317
Byron, George Gordon, Lord, 232
Calhoun, A. W., 99–100
Cambridge, Mass., xiv, 199, 204
cante jondo, 292
capitalism, 241, 322
compulsory heterosexuality and, 161, 177
as dehumanizing force, 342, 343
democracy and, 327
economic and social inequality and, 327, 328, 335–36, 341–42
exploitation of women by, 161, 170–71
feminism and, 332
glorification of, 327–28, 340–41
“Caryatid” (Rich), 73–75
Cavin, Susan, 176–77
Cellblock Visions: Prison Art in America (Kornfeld), 323
censorship, 338–39
Césaire, Aimé, 322
Change of World, A (Rich), xv
Auden’s introduction to, 264–65
Char, René, 349
Chase, Richard, 48
chauvinism, pervasiveness of, 242
“Chemin de Fer” (Bishop), 221–22
Chesler, Phyllis, 22, 370n
Chicanos, 279, 280, 281–82
child abuse, 104n
childbirth:
as psychic crisis, 101
writing poetry compared to, 280
child care, gender roles and, 79, 80, 162, 163, 166
child-care centers, 371n
childlessness:
as choice, 140–41
false polarity of motherhood and, 141–44
mother’s envy of, 140
negative connotations of, 140, 142–43
as rejection of institution of motherhood, 142
as threat to patriarchy, 143
children:
and demands for attention, 87–88
male power over, 167
“Children and Work in the Lives of Women” (Rossi), 159
China, marriage-resistance sisterhoods in, 180–81
Chodorow, Nancy, 135n–36n, 163–64, 194
Chopin, Kate, 127, 188
Christianity, 266–67
as social norm, 203
CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 232
Cicero, 129
City of Night (Rechy), 281
City University of New York, 214, 215
Civil Rights movement, 213–15, 224, 239
Claiming Breath (Glancy), 278, 282–84
“Clarities” (Gelman), 342–43
Cliff, Michelle, xviii
Clinton, Bill, 319, 321
Cocktail Party, The (Eliot), 266
Cody, John, 52
Cold Spring, A (Bishop), 223
Cold War, 232, 235
Colette, 189
Collected Poems (Bishop), xx
Collected Poems (Lawrence), xv
Collected Poems (Rukeyser), 315
Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, 270, 274
“Comedian As the Letter C, The” (Stevens), 272–73
Commentary, 214
Common Reader, The (Woolf), 370n
communal responsibility, xii
communism, 315, 327, 341
Complaints and Disorders (Ehrenreich and English), 161
Complete Poems (Dickinson), 49
Complete Poems, 1927–1979 (Bishop), xx, 218–27
compulsory heterosexuality, 210
capitalism and, 161, 177
destructive nature of, 187–88
economic consequences of, 190
and economic exploitation of women, 170–71
education of women and, 190
false consciousness of women and, 176–77, 192, 194
false dichotomies created by, 190–91
as female sexual slavery, 174, 175
feminists and, 157–97
and fragmenting of emotional/erotic experience, 164, 165
historical resistance to, 159, 162–63, 178, 182, 191, 195
and ideology of uncontrollable male sex drive, 174–75
lesbian existence and, 159–60, 177
as maintenance of mother-son relationship, 177
male power in enforcement of, 168–69
marriage and, 183–84
servicing of male needs as basis of, 173
single women and widows viewed as deviant in, 162
woman identification as suppressed by, 166
women as male property in, 158, 167, 168, 177
women’s double life in, 184–87, 188, 190
women’s natural preferences and, 181–82
women’s supposed collaboration with, 162, 182
“Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (Rich), xiii, xviii, xix
concentration camps, 203–4
Congress, U.S., anti-immigrant legislation in, 358
connectedness, of women, 153, 154, 155, 156
male denunciation of, 176–77
see also woman identification; women, relationships between
Conrad, Alfred, xvii
consciousness, awakening of, 3–4, 18
Conway, Jill Kerr, 153
“Cootchie” (Bishop), 224
corridos, 282
Courage to Refuse movement, 362, 363
creativity, in women, patriarchal control of, 105, 168
Crisis, 338
“Crumbling is not an instant’s Act” (Dickinson, #997), 66
culture:
appropriation of, 296
ideology and, 150
daemonic possession, writing of poetry as, 47, 52–53, 55, 57–58, 280
Dalton, Roque, 310
Daly, Mary, 19, 156, 173, 178
Darwish, Mahmoud, 337
daught
ers:
infanticide and, 115–16
as mothers, 144
Davidowicz, Lucy, 217
Davis, Angela, 217
Decision, 315
Decter, Midge, xiv
“Defence of Poetry, The” (Shelley), 352
deMause, Lloyd, 115
Demeter, 128–31
democracy, 320
art and, 323–24
capitalism and, 327
literacy and, 339–40
democratic institutions, undermining of, 321–22, 336
Democratic Party, 356–57
Democratic Vistas (Whitman), 301
Diamond Cutters, The (Rich), xv, xvii
Dickinson, Austin, 43
Dickinson, Edward, 43
Dickinson, Emily, xix, 8, 39–67, 118–19, 143, 181, 289, 317
daemonic possession in, 47, 52–53, 55, 57–58
editor’s alterations to poems of, 48–49
exploration of psychic extremity in, 58–67
freedom and, 39, 42, 44
friends and correspondents of, 41
home of, 40, 41, 42
masculine pronoun as used by, 43, 46–47
metaphors as used by, 43, 54
patriarchal culture and, 46, 47, 67
personal crisis of, 59
postage stamp in honor of, 44–45
self-imposed seclusion of, 41, 42, 48
self-knowledge of, 47, 53–54
split persona of, 57–58
supposed naiveté of, 48
women’s relationships with, 43–44
Dickinson, Lavinia “Vinnie,” 41
Dickinson, Martha, see Bianchi, Martha Dickinson “Matty”
Dickinson, Susan Gilbert, 41, 181
dictatorships, U.S. support of, 356–57
Dinnerstein, Dorothy, 162–63, 164, 172, 182, 194
Dionne quintuplets, 260
disclosure, xiii–xiv
displacement, the displaced, silence and, 330
dispossessed, history of, 235–36
dissent, dissenters, xiii, xiv, 13, 300, 331
“Distance Between Language and Violence, The” (Rich), 257–63
“Diving into the Wreck” (Rich), xi
Dolphin, The (Lowell), 73, 75
Dominated Man (Memmi), 142n
Donne, John, 8
Doolittle, Hilda, see H.D.
Dost, Abdul Rahim, 362
Drama of the Gifted Child, The (Miller), 103n–4n
Duchess of Malfy, The (Webster), 253–54
Dunayevskaya, Raya, 289
Duncan, Robert, 291, 293–94, 302–8, 309–10
economic and social inequality, 241, 319–20, 321, 322, 324, 326–27
capitalism and, 327, 328, 335–36, 341–42
Edison, Thomas A., 317
education:
elitism in, 339–40
Essential Essays Page 41