With poems in English by over one hundred female poets -- American, English, Scottish, Canadian, South African, Indian, Irish, and Australian -- this is an extraordinary collection that pays homage to four centuries of women's desires, friendships, and expressions of love. The collection is testimony to the rich tradition of female verse and the timelessness of love and creativity.
An Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller A Goop Book Club Pick "If you want your breath to catch and your heart to stop, turn to Kate Baer."--Joanna Goddard, Cup of Jo A stunning and honest debut poetry collection about the beauty and hardships of being a woman in the world today, and the many roles we play - mother, partner, and friend. “When life throws you a bag of sorrow, hold out your hands/Little by little, mountains are climbed.” So ends Kate Baer’s remarkable poem “Things My Girlfriends Teach Me.” In “Nothing Tastes as Good as Skinny Feels” she challenges her reader to consider their grandmother’s cake, the taste of the sea, the cool swill of freedom. In her poem “Deliverance” about her son’s birth she writes “What is the word for when the light leaves the body?/What is the word for when it/at last, returns?” Through poems that are as unforgettably beautiful as they are accessible, Kate Bear proves herself to truly be an exemplary voice in modern poetry. Her words make women feel seen in their own bodies, in their own marriages, and in their own lives. Her poems are those you share with your mother, your daughter, your sister, and your friends.
Spanning the centuries from Sappho's Greece to tenth-century Japan, from nineteenth-century Chile to Zindziswa Mandela's twentieth-century South Africa, the voices of these women poets express themes of love, injustice, motherhood, and loss, and the oppressions of race and sex. The sequence of the poems moves from youth to old age, and they bear witness to the triumphs as well as the pain and frustration of women in many times and in many places. Among the many poets whose work is included are Anna Akhmatova, Maya Angelou, Judith Kazantzis, Gabriela Mistral, Marge Piercy, Irina Ratushinskaya and Alice Walker. Illona Linthwaite began gathering this collection several years ago, initially for a theatrical performance. Here, in this unique exchange between women of many races, affirming their differences and what they have in common, are more than 150 poems which assert the black abolitionist Sojourner Truth's challenge, "Ain't I a Woman!" In addition to the poems, there are biographies of the 91 contributors.
For over 2,000 years women have been writing love poetry. Here is the first anthology of love poems written only by women. Poets from all ages and all parts of the world, expressing love not only for their male and female lovers, but for parents, children, friends, for art, God, nature, and homeland, are collected here, and include the works of: Sappho, Emily Dickenson, Ono no Komachi, Shadab Vajdi, Alice Walker, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and many more.
Jane Hirshfield, the award-winning author of THE OCTOBER PALACE and editor of WOMEN IN PRAISE OF THE SACRED, presents a scintillating new volume of poems to be published to coincide with the hardcover release of NINE GATES, the author's primer on the reading and writing of poetry.
Her seventh and most wide ranging collection. In the 1st of 2 sections, the poems move from the amusingly elegiac to the erotic, the classical to the funny. The 2nd section is a series of 15 poems for a calendar based on lunar rather than solar divisions
Inspired and inspirational, worldly wise, deeply felt, and often delightfully funny, here in one compact volume are 100 of the greatest poems written in English over the last century, memorable masterpieces that everyone should know and enjoy.
