From Publishers Weekly
Poet and River City editor Bryan presents illuminating essays by 21 women poets on their relation to literary history. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
"Sometimes I can't help envy women, because they have no imagination," moaned Keats after a hard day's writing. That women are in any way deficient in this regard will come as a surprise to readers who have known and loved the women poets represented here, among them Amy Clampitt, Maxine Kumin, and Eavan Boland. Like all women who write, these poets find themselves working within a tradition that is not only defined by the masculine viewpoint but often openly contemptuous of their own. How do we do it? wondered poet Bryan. To find out, she actively solicited these essays, which range from Boland's startling analysis of the female as muse (and not much more) in Irish poetry to Alicia Ostriker's account of her protracted battle to acknowledge William Blake's dismissal of women. Though one would have welcomed the inclusion of younger poets who came of age after feminism hit its stride, these wide-ranging accounts are invariably thoughtful and refreshingly varied. Important for academic collections and a definite plus in public libraries where poetry is read seriously.- Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

FROM OUR EDITORS

In her quest to understand the topic of gender and poetry, and the varying influences upon the literary form, poet and editor Sharon Bryan has compiled these essays by 22 women poets including Wendy Battin, Maxine Kumin, Amy Clampitt, Joy Harjo, & others.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Sharon Bryan, poet and editor of River City, wrote to almost eighty women poets asking them how they felt about their particular relationship to literary tradition in her quest to understand and sort out her own confusions on the topic of gender and poetry. This volume of twenty-two essays by women poets is the fruit of that venture. Among topics considered are the childhood experiences that shaped these authors both as writers and as women, to the thoughts on the poets who most influenced their work. The approaches to these issues are as broad and diverse as the backgrounds of the authors, who represent several generations of contemporary writers. They range from Eavan Boland's essay in which she explores her roots as an Irish poet, to Maxine Kumin's consideration of her generation's shaping context, to Amy Clampitt's account of her decision to become a poet, to Joy Harjo's powerful sense of other traditions, especially her Muscogee background. Moving, personal, and brave, these essays show us what it means to be a woman who writes. Despite the common threads in the experience of these women, there is no clear consensus; Where We Stand represents a plurality of voices, not a chorus.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

This excellent idea for a book is well served by Bryan's 21 contributors, each of whom tells us what poetic tradition means to her and how she fits into or departs from it. Arguments build from independent stances. Joy Harjo, for example, a Muscogee writer, finds poetry to be communal and shared by nature, but had to craft ``my own language out of the language of exclusion'' imposed by male Anglo culture. Not radical but critical is Deborah Tall, who believes ``that if we owe literary tradition anything, it's our conscious revision of it.'' In an especially spirited essay, Anne Stevenson notes that ``for a writer it is generally an advantage to be free of power,'' and suggests that women exercise that freedom, rather than too quickly abandon it. For her part, Pattiann Rogers questions the very position that men have had it easier as writers. Originally published as an issue of the literary journal River City , which Bryan edits, the essays show how relative is the term ``tradition,'' and how widely it can be interpreted. The book also points to the vitality of pluralism in contemporary American poetry, here female and many-minded. (Nov.)

Library Journal