A History of Twentieth-Century American Women's Poetry

摘要

Oftentimes a book title is a marker of convenience, signalling the marketplace position of its contents rather than accurately reflecting the diversity within the book. The title under review here is one such title. The ambition of a singular historical trajectory subtending the words "A History" is not the aim of this title. The positioning work undertaken in the Preface demonstrates that histories are plural; "history as multiple and layered, maintaining a keen awareness of the impossibility of a singular, comprehensive history of such poetic activity on the part of women writing between 1900 and 2000" (p. 17). The contextualizing provided in this Preface also anticipates the querying of validity which is, even now, still levelled at scholarship and creative endeavours foregrounding the work of women. In anticipation of this, editor Linda A. Kinnahan states: Adopting the critical stance that maintains a separate attention upon women poets, their poetic connections to one another, and their poetical developments, these essays further insist upon the significance of moving beyond and unsettling "the picture" by reading outside the frames of literary histories we have inherited, most often constructed around (and by) the work of men (p. 17).