By Herself

Have women moved beyond the status of cultural outsiders to become full participants in poetry and its criticism? In By Herself: Women Reclaim Poetry, contemporary women poets reconsider their art form on their own terms, and the results are telling: a collection of essays that are original, challenging, playful, and ruthlessly individualistic.

Many of the essays in this provocative collection are new; others are “classics” of poetry criticism. Together, they cover a dazzling scope: discussions of craft,  reappraisals of both female and male poets, explorations of larger themes and traditions, poetic creeds, personal meditations, and enlightened backtalk. Experimental writers rub elbows with traditionalists; exciting newcomers mix it up with some of the best known poets of the day. Editor Molly McQuade has gathered a potent quorum of voices that explore the wide diversity and range of contemporary American poetry—all from the point of view of some of the genre’s re-empowered participants.