Women Poets and Tradition

This democratization of poetry during the 20th century extends not only to subject matter, but to the writers of poems themselves. While there have been great women poets from early times–Enheduanna and Greek poet Sappho being prime examples–limitations on women’s education, financial constraints, and the burdens of child-rearing and tending a household seriously inhibited any widespread tradition of women’s writing. Those poets who did succeed in creating time and space to write often had extraordinary circumstances in their favor, such as an independent income or an unusually enlightened environment in which to develop their talents. In the wake of pioneering poets of the 19th century such as Emily Dickinson, Christina Rossetti, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the 20th century has been rich in innovative and exciting poetry from women.

Early in the century, Russian poets Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetayeva wrote strikingly original lyrics. Among the modernists, Americans such as Gertrude Stein profoundly expanded the possibilities of poetic experiment, while Marianne Moore crafted complex collage poems, drawing on the vocabularies of zoology and botany. Canadian poet P.K. Page brought the lives of ordinary people burdened by the social conditions of the post-war world into view. In Chile, Gabriela Mistral wrote passionate lyrics exploring personal and national identity; she went on to become the first Latin American to win the Nobel Prize. Closer to the present, Elizabeth Bishop, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich have made crucial contributions to the development of a woman’s poetic tradition, exploring and challenging the centrality of conventional poetic subjects such as fame and the idealized beloved. Canadian poet Margaret Atwood examined both psyche and society through metaphors of encountering the wilderness. Contemporary poets including Americans Louise Glück, Jorie Graham, Ann Lauterbach, Jane Miller, Lucie Brock-Broido, C. D. Wright, Thylias Moss, Joy Harjo, and Canadian Anne Carson, continue to extend poetic possibilities in their work. While some of these poets resist being labeled feminists and feel that emphasizing that they are women writers lessens their impact, others readily embrace feminist ideals and the creation of a poetic style that reflects what they see as women's distinctive ways of being.