North American Women Poets in the 21st Century

North American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Beyond Lyric and Language is an important new addition to the American Poets in the 21st Century series. Like earlier anthologies, this volume includes generous selections of poetry by some of the best poets of our time as well as illuminating poetics statements and incisive essays on their work. This unique organization makes these books invaluable teaching tools. Broadening the lens through which we look at contemporary poetry, this new volume extends our reading of each poet beyond the constraints of any one aesthetic, school, or movement; this volume pushes readers to see beyond the binary of lyric and language. What unites the varied approaches of these writers, is a commitment to creating new fields, new idioms, new vernaculars, and new forms. Key areas of conflict and concern, among the eleven poets, include genre and the nature of the lyric, connections between gender and aesthetics, and the nature of poetic language. Among the insightful pieces included in this volume are essays by Catherine Cucinella on Marilyn Chin, Meg Tyler on Fanny Howe, Elline Lipkin on Alice Notley, Kamran Javadizadeh on Claudia Rankine, Brian Teare on Martha Ronk, Michael Cross on Leslie Scalapino, Lynn Keller on Cole Swensen, Khadijah Queen on Natasha Trethewey, Lisa Russ Spaar on Jean Valentine, Julie Brown on Cecilia Vicuña, and Richard Greenfield on Rosmarie Waldrop. A companion web site will present audio of each poet's work.

North American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Beyond Lyric and Language is an important new addition to the American Poets in the 21st Century series. Like the earlier anthologies, this volume includes generous selections of poetry by some of the best poets of our time as well as illuminating poetics statements and incisive essays on their work. Among the insightful pieces included in this volume are essays by Catherine Cucinella on Marilyn Chin, Meg Tyler on Fanny Howe, Elline Lipkin on Alice Notley, Kamran Javadizadeh on Claudia Rankine, and many more. A companion web site will present audio of each poet's work.

Calling, Natasha Trethewey

Mexico 1969
Why not make a fiction

of the mind's fictions? I want to say
it begins like this: the trip

a pilgrimage, my mother
kneeling at the altar of the Black Virgin,
enthralled—light streaming in
a window, the sun
at her back, holy water
in a bowl she must have touched.

What's left is palimpsest—one memory
bleeding into another, overwriting it.
How else to explain

what remains? The sound
of water in a basin I know is white,

the sun behind her, light streaming in,
her face—

as if she were already dead—blurred
as it will become.

I want to imagine her beforethe altar, rising to meet us, my father
lifting me

toward her outstretched arms.
What else to make
of the mind's slick confabulations?
What comes back

is the sun's dazzle on a pool's surface,
light filtered through water
closing over my head, my mother—her body between me and the high sun, a corona of light
around her face.
Why not call it a vision? What I know is this:
I was drowning and saw a dark Madonna;
someone pulled me through
the water's bright ceiling
and I rose, initiate,
from one life into another.

Introduction, Kazim Ali and Lisa Sewell • MARILYN CHIN • Poems: From The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty: "So You Fucked John Donne"; From Rhapsody in Plain Yellow: "Blues on Yellow" - "Rhapsody in Plain Yellow"; From Hard Love Country: "Twenty-five Haiku" - "Brown Girl Manifesto (Too)" - "Black President" -"Beautiful Boyfriend" – "Formosan Elegy" • Poetics Statement: A Manifesto/ One Amongst Many • Essay: MARILYN CHIN'S HARD LOVE PROVINCE: An Erotics of Grief, Catherine Cucinella • FANNY HOWE • Poems: From The Lyrics: from "Forty Days": "8." – "12." – "13."; From Come and See: "A Hymn"; From Second Childhood: "For the Book" – "The Garden" – "Parkside" – "Evening" – "The Ninth Hour" • Poetics Statement • Essay: A PLACE APART: Sound, Silence, and Play in the Poetry of Fanny Howe, Meg Tyler • ALICE NOTLEY • Poems: From Grave of Light: "Dear Dark Continent" – "I the People"; From The Descent of Alette; From Mysteries of Small Houses: "Flowers"; From Reason and Other Women: "Growth of the Light Flat upon Her"; From Culture of One: "Carp Shoals and Tules"; From Songs and Stories of the Ghouls: "City of Ghostly Festivals" • Poetics Statement: The Responsibilities of Poetry • Essay: RESIST, REFRAME, INSIST: Alice Notley's Poetics of Inclusion, Elline Lipkin • CLAUDIA RANKINE • Poems: From Citizen • Poetics Statement • Essay: THE ATLANTIC OCEAN BREAKING ON OUR HEADS: Claudia Rankine and the Whiteness of the Lyric Subject, Kamran Javadizadeh • MARTHA RONK • Poems: From In a Landscape of Having to Repeat: "In a Landscape of Having to Repeat" – "Trying" – "A Photograph of a Plate Glass Window"; From Vertigo: "I cannot remember anything about this journey other than this" – "It is only a question of discovering how we can get ourselves attached to it again," Vija Celmins – "The shadows of clouds scudded across the steep slopes and through the ravines"; From Partially Kept: "The" – "Remembrance"; From Transfer of Qualities: "a glass bowl" – "corroded metal" – "the window" – "the book"; From Ocular Proof: "A blurry photograph" – "No Sky (after Robert Adams's California: Views)" – "As I understand my job, it is, while suggesting order, to make things appear as much as possible to be the way they are in normal vision" – "Elegy (and a photograph by Robert Adams)" • Poetics Statement • Essay: MARTHA RONK'S DISTRESSED LYRICS, Brian Tear • LESLIE SCALAPINO • Poems: From Way: "Floating Series 1"; From Defoe: "Notes to Waking Life"; From Day Ocean State of Stars' Life: "DeLay Rose"; From The Front Matter, Dead Souls: "Dead Souls" • Poetics Statement: Poetics • Essay: LESLIE SCALAPINO'S ANARCHIC MOMENT, Michael Cross • COLE SWENSEN • Poems: From Such Rich Hour: "May 21, 1420: The Signing of the Treaty of Troyes" – "December 25, 1456: Je Françoys Villon escollier"; From The Book of a Hundred Hands: "Shadow Puppets": "The First Movies" – "Birds" – "Advances in the Form"; From The Glass Age; From Ours: "A Garden is a Start"; From Gravesend: "A Ghost" – "Kent" – "One No" – "Gravesend" – "Who Walked"; From Landscapes on a Train; From Art in Time: Soutine: "Paysage à Céret, 1920" – "Paysage à Céret, 1921"; From On Walking On: "Wordsworth" – "George Sand: Promenades autour d'un village" – "Debord" • Poetics Statement • Essay: TRUTHS SURPASSING FACT: Cole Swensen's Research-Based Poetics, Lynn Keller • NATASHA TRETHEWEY • Poems: From Bellocq's Ophelia: "Bellocq"; From Native Guard: "Theories of Time and Space" – "Myth" – "Elegy for the Native Guard" – "Incident"; From Beyond Katrina: "Before Katrina"; From Thrall: "Elegy" – "Miracle of the Black Leg" – "Calling" – "Enlightenment" • Poetics Statement: From "Necessary Utterance: Poetry as a Cultural Force" • Essay: NATASHA TRETHEWEY'S PALIMPSESTIC POETICS, Khadijah Queen • JEAN VALENTINE • Poems: From Dream Barker: "First Love"; From Pilgrims: "The Child and the Terrorist, The Terrorist and the Child" – "Pilgrims"; From Home, Deep, Blue: "Trust Me" – "The First Station" – "The River at Wolf" – "World-light" – "Home" – "Little Map" – "The Blue Dory, The Soul"; From Break the Glass: "In prison"; From Shirt in Heaven: "A Child's Drawing, 1941" – "[The ship] is slowing giving up her sentient life. I cannot write about it." – "Song" – "Icebergs, Ilulissat" • Poetics Statement: Excerpt from "Interview of Jean Valentine," Michael Klein • Essay: SKIRTING HEAVEN: Jean Valentine's Late Dream-Work in Shirt in Heaven, Lisa Russ Spaar • CECILIA VICUÑA • Poems: "K'isa, alangó"; From Sabor a Mí: "Solitude" – "Mastaba" – "Mawida" – "Teresa the Idiot" – "Librarian Expedition"; From La WiK'una: "Unuy, The Water Sequence" – "Thirst" – "Unuy Quita" – "The Round Spring" – "Foggy Little Fog"; From Instan: "fables of the beginning and remains of the origin"; From Spit Temple: "The Quasar" – "The Undoer Doing (Muhammad Ali); From NEW AND SELECTED POEMS OF CECILIA VICUÑA: "Clepsydra" • Poetics Statement: Three Notes • Essay: RETURN OF THE DISAPPEARED: Cecilia Vinuna's Saboramis, Julie Brown • ROSMARIE WALDROP • Poems: From Blindsight: "Evening Sun"; From Love Like Pronouns: "Initial Conditions" – "Intentionalities"; From The Reproduction of Profiles: "The Feverish Propositions"; From Driven to Distraction: "Time Ravel"; From A Little Useless Geometry and Other Matters: "Point" – "Line"; From Figure to Proposition • Poetics Statement: Composition With With • Essay: ROSMARIE WALDROP: Attending to Absence, Driven to Distraction, Richard Greenfield