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More female poets please

 
  

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Crow Jane
11:30 / 09.08.01
I checked my bookshelves the other day and was DISGUSTED with myself when I realised that the ONLY female poets represented are Jo Shapcott and Carol Anne Duffy (neither of whom are exactly striking a blow for a new poetry, are they?). PLEASE help me rectify this APPALLING state of affairs and recommend some really good female poets. I don't care whether they're alive or dead (though obviously I'm aware of major writers such as Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, H. D. and Anne Finch, so no head patting please).

Ta.
 
 
Ellis
11:34 / 09.08.01
There's always Jewel, she has written a book of poems. I haven't read it, but the blurb says it is quite good.
 
 
deletia
11:38 / 09.08.01
Sucks.
Donkey.
Cock.

There's a Bloodaxe anthology with some good stuff in - will check names tonight if poss.
 
 
Ierne
11:49 / 09.08.01
Audre Lourde.
Nikki Giovanni.
 
 
Crow Jane
12:07 / 09.08.01
Thank you. Is the Bloodaxe anthology still available, Mr HAUS?
 
 
Whisky Priestess
12:11 / 09.08.01
Elizabeth . . . aargh, begins with a B . .. Canadian, wrote The Moose . . . bugger.

To be honest a lot of female poets are crap, which is probably why they're under-represented in your collection. I wouldn;t worry about it. CAD and JS are two who aren't, but they have precious little company.

Fucking Selima Hill is rubbish, U.A Fanthorpe pretty good - Judith Kazantzis (daughter of the Duke of somewhere - you'd never guess) sentimental and mediocre. Wendy Cope is good in some ways, disappointing in others, but generally entertaining.

I am superb but as yet unpublished except for here http://www.absinthe-literary-review.com/poetics/4x2II.htm and in Stand somewhere.

Hear Sappho's pretty good too . . .
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
12:23 / 09.08.01
I say, that one about gardens is rather good, WP...
 
 
Crow Jane
12:29 / 09.08.01
U. A. Fanthorpe! Of course! She wrote that poem about a portrait of a Tudor statesman, didn't she?

Elizabeth Bishop? Jennings? I am scrabbling after names...
 
 
Opalfruit
12:51 / 09.08.01
Christina Rosetti (Goblin Market, lots about being dead)

Chloe Poems.. sorry no that's a drag poet... (can be quite funny though)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (call me Sexist but I only know her through Robert Brownings Poems). (Lots about isolation, longing and the like)

Charlotte Smith

Stevie Smith (Just wonderful, most famous poem is "Waving, Not Drowning")

Hmmm, most are from the 19th Century, only 1 20th C. poet there (Sylvia Plath, CA Duffy).

There's a name that escapes me... argh Black really famous poet, can't remember her name.. really famous though!
 
 
Kit-Cat Club
13:14 / 09.08.01
What about the following (sorry if I'm going over ground you already know...):

Charlotte Mew (whose work is available in Penguin Modern Classics, I think)
Anne Sexton
Elizabeth Daryush (though if you boycott her on the grounds that she wrote that wretched poem about the breakfast and the love-letter I think it would be understandable)
the Brontes (Emily in particular)
err... Gillian Clarke, Judith Wright, Patricia Beer, May Sarton... Paula Meehan, maybe.

I reviewed a collection by Joanne Limburg and strongly advise you not to buy that as it was abominably trite.
 
 
moriarty
15:44 / 09.08.01
quote:Originally posted by Whisky Priestess:
Elizabeth . . . aargh, begins with a B . .. Canadian, wrote The Moose . . . bugger.


She's not really Canadian, but are you thinking Elizabeth Bishop?
 
 
Ierne
16:12 / 09.08.01
Vita Sackville-West?
 
 
ynh
16:45 / 09.08.01
I'll second Barrett Browning, but you really want to get the entire text of "Aurora Leigh" rather than just excerpts. Makes old Rob look like dirty pants.

Barbara Guest (b. 1920), lauguage poet, sort of playing in the semiotic garden.

Chicana poets: Luz María Umpierre-Herreram (heavy on the Spanish), Sandra Cisneros (light), Julia de Burgos (often in both English and Spanish)
 
 
z3r0
17:15 / 09.08.01
There is Mina Loy, whose style Ezra Pound was fond of...:: without further ado:

Lunar Baedeker
Mina Loy

--
A silver Lucifer
serves
cocaine in cornucopia

To some somnambulists
of adolescent thighs
draped
in satirical draperies

Peris in livery
prepare
Lethe
for posthumous parvenues

Delirious Avenues
lit
with the chandelier souls
of infusoria
from Pharoah's tombstones

lead
to mercurial doomsdays
Odious oasis
in furrowed phosphorous---

the eye-white sky-light
white-light district
of lunar lusts

---Stellectric signs
"Wing shows on Starway"
"Zodiac carrousel"

Cyclones
of ecstatic dust
and ashes whirl
crusaders
from hallucinatory citadels
of shattered glass
into evacuate craters

A flock of dreams
browse on Necropolis

From the shores
of oval oceans
in the oxidized Orient

Onyx-eyed Odalisques
and ornithologists
observe
the flight
of Eros obsolete

And "Immortality"
mildews...
in the museums of the moon

"Nocturnal cyclops"
"Crystal concubine"
-------
Pocked with personification
the fossil virgin of the skies
waxes and wanes----
 
 
grant
19:16 / 09.08.01
Following Zero's lead -- one of my favorite poets (I was just talking about her two days ago at work): Sara Teasdale.
I first read her in a Ray Bradbury story, which used this poem in a powerfully evocative way. The setting is an automated house which is slowly falling apart because its denizens left/died in some global calamity, and the computer hasn't figured it out yet. The house reads this poem to a housewife who you realize has been gone for years, and it's absolutely chilling:

There Will Come Soft Rains
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.


And fuck y'all for not mentioning

Dorothy Parker.

Cherry White

I never see that prettiest thing-
A cherry bough gone white with Spring-
But what I think, "How gay 'twould be
To hang me from a flowering tree."

A Very Short Song

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.
 
 
grant
19:18 / 09.08.01
quote:Originally posted by Opalfruit:
There's a name that escapes me... argh Black really famous poet, can't remember her name.. really famous though!


bell hooks?

Maya Angelou?
 
 
grant
19:20 / 09.08.01
"Love Calls Me to Places I Would Not Ordinarily Go":
bell hooks

Love calls me to places
I would not ordinarily go,
To landscapes of desire so barren
and dark
Stripped naked and raw,
This heart bursts open, bleeds
Into an infinity
Of unrequited longing.
 
 
grant
19:23 / 09.08.01
"Rememberance"
by Maya Angelou

Your hands easy
weight, teasing the bees
hived in my hair, your smile at the
slope of my cheek. On the
occasion, you press
above me, glowing, spouting
readiness, mystery rapes
my reason

When you have withdrawn
your self and the magic, when
only the smell of your
love lingers between
my breasts, then, only
then, can I greedily consume
your presence.
 
 
Opalfruit
21:16 / 09.08.01
quote:Originally posted by grant:


Maya Angelou?



That's the one.
 
 
The Return Of Rothkoid
21:48 / 09.08.01
Edith Sitwell? I didn't know if she's exactly considered major, but she's extremely strange. I had the good fortune to see a performance of Façade, which is a collection of her poems set to music by Walton, a couple of years ago; intriguing stuff. Especially as Walton's wife was the female reader, and came onstage in a teal outfit that made her look like a peacock; I wish my nan was that cool.
 
 
sleazenation
10:13 / 10.08.01
Not adding any new ones here but i just want to re-emphasise Christina Rosetti (goblin market of its sensual vitality and no thankyou john simply for being a witty and sharp put down for any marriage proposal) and
Dorothy Parker. As Grant points out-- 'm surprised she wasn't mentioned immediately.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
10:25 / 10.08.01
Flyboy - cheers, glad you liked it. Did you notice it's an acrostic? For some reasons I write a lot of them.

Bishop! Elizabeth Bishop! I have two sets of her collected poems and still can't remember her bloody name . . .

Emily Bronte: yes, second that motion.

Vita on the other hand was a far better lesbian than she ever was a poet, plus she's deeply unfashionable at the mo (andfor the last fifty years - not that that's a criticism, but you might find it hard to get your hands on her stuff. "The Land" was the most famous one I think.)

Fanthorpe: read "Rivers"

And Maya's "Remembrance" is one of those poems I so love, which seem so sensitive and delicate and moving but are in fact about somebody coming all over her tits.
 
 
z3r0
10:29 / 10.08.01
well done, grant!!
 
 
pebble
10:43 / 10.08.01
Despite having never heard of her before I really enjoyed a collection by Adrienne Rich I picked up a while ago. Sorry, don't know any online versions of her poems or know any to type in.

Also I've been known to enjoy some of Susan Wicks work - but I'm really not sure why.
 
 
ephemerat
11:23 / 10.08.01
quote:And so it ends
Vita Sackville-West

And so it ends,
We who were lovers may be friends.
I have some weeks in which to steel
My heart and teach myself to feel
Only a sober tenderness
Where once was passion's loveliness.

I had not thought that there would come
Your touch to make our music dumb,
Your meeting touch upon the string
That still was vibrant, still could sing
When I impatiently might wait
Or parted from you at the gate.

You took me weak and unprepared.
I had not thought that you who shared
My days, my nights, my heart, my life,
Would slash me with a naked knife
And gently tell me not to bleed
But to accept your crazy creed.

You speak of God, but you have cut
The one last thread, as you have shut
The one last door that open stood
To show me still the way to God.
If this be God, this pain, this evil,
I'd sooner change and try the Devil.

Darling, I thought of nothing mean;
I thought of killing straight and clean.
You're safe; that's gone, that wild caprice,
But tell me once before I cease,
Which does your Church esteem the kinder role,
To kill the body or destroy the soul?


quote:Sorrow
Edna St Vincent Millay
Sorrow like a ceaseless rain
Beats upon my heart.
People twist and scream in pain, --
Dawn will find them still again;
This has neither wax nor wane,
Neither stop nor start.

People dress and go to town;
I sit in my chair.
All my thoughts are slow and brown:
Standing up or sitting down
Little matters, or what gown
Or what shoes I wear.


And I have to add yet another poem by the wonderful Dorothy Parker (it's probably her most famous one):

quote:Resumé
Dorothy Parker
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
 
 
deletia
12:02 / 10.08.01
Parker's poetry is funny, but not exactly deathless; just memorable. Her short stories and theatre reviews are better.

I'd go for Elizabeth Jennings, Sappho definitely if your Ancient Greek is up to snuff. Possibly Carole Satyamurti...
 
 
Opalfruit
14:04 / 10.08.01
quote:Originally posted by The Haus of Jericho:
Sappho definitely if your Ancient Greek is up to snuff.


...and at the opposite side of the scale lets have Semonides who wrote about that common Ancient Greek belief that Women were put on the Earth to make men's lives miserable.... (no. 7's the fun one where he compares women to the attributes of animals with only the Bee woman being the good one, Beautiful, servile, productive etc...)

Sorry digressed.
 
 
Crow Jane
14:40 / 10.08.01
I fear my ancient Greek is less than acceptable, Mr Haus - translations are hopeless, I take it?

But again, thank you one and all - a great many ideas to diminish my funds. You may yet see the fruits in Creation (if I can overcome my sorry nerves - I am nothing compared to Whisky Priestess).
 
 
deletia
15:32 / 10.08.01
Translations...I don't know any offhand - there's not really enough to make a book. There is a Loeb, coupeld with Alcaeus but that's just a literal translation and not terribly inspiring.#

Anyone know of a faithful, well-written translation of Sappho?
 
 
Cavatina
04:33 / 11.08.01
There's an electronic resource, The Poems of Sappho translated by Edwin Marion Cox (1925) and transliterated by J. B. Hare (2000), published by Internet Sacred Text Archive (2000). Not being a classicist, I can't comment on its reliability.

There are very few fragments in The Penguin Book of Women Poets (1978)

Other female poets not mentioned: Denise Levertov, Kathleen Raine, Gwen Harwood
 
 
Cavatina
04:37 / 11.08.01
And we mustn't forget Gertrude Stein.
 
 
Deep Trope
12:01 / 11.08.01
Two.
Words.
Anna.
Akhmatova.

Don't know what came over me.
 
 
Whisky Priestess
12:04 / 11.08.01
Maya.
Angelou's.
Boy.
Friend?
 
 
Cavatina
01:02 / 12.08.01
Some say an army on horseback,
some an army on foot,
still others say a fleet of ships remains
the most beautiful sight in
this dark world;
but I say it is
whatever you desire.

Sappho


Is this translation up to scratch, Haus? (It prefaces Moments of Desire: Sex and Sensuality by Australian Feminist Writers)
 
 
passer
16:37 / 17.08.01
I'm all for reading the Greek, but for those of you who don't enjoy tortuous grammar and ridiculous morphology, I like the Barnard translation of Sappho myself.

Excerpts are available
here.

Cavatina-
It's fine translation as these things go. I personally prefer to read "whatever you desire" as "your beloved" for technical reasons I'm willing to bore people with via e-mail if they're curious.
 
  

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