Anthologies

The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women

The Traditions in English, Second Edition

Edited by Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar

New York: Norton, 1985, 1996

PREFACE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

JULIAN OF NORWICH (1342-C. 1416)

A Book of Showings

[God the Mother]

From The Fifty-ninth Chapter

The Sixtieth Chapter

The Sixty-first Chapter

MARGERY KEMPE (C. 1373-1438)

The Book of Margery Kempe

[On Female Celibacy]

Chapter 3. Her Vision of Paradise

Chapter 4. Her Temptation to Adultery

Chapter 11. On the Way Back from York

JULIANA BERNERS (C. 1388-?)

The Book of St. Albans

Hunting Terminology

Beasts of Venery

Beasts of the Chase

Note Here the Age of a Hart

The Hare

The Reward for the Hounds

More about the Hare: Why the Hare Voids Its Dung Standing Up

QUEEN ELIZABETH I (1533-1603)

The Doubt of Future Foes

On Monsieur's Departure

Speech to the Troops at Tilbury

MARY SIDNEY HERBERT, COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE (1562-1621)

To the Thrice-Sacred Queen Elizabeth

Psalm 58 Si Vere Utique

ISABELLA WHITNEY (FL. 1567-1573)

The Author . . . Maketh Her Will and Testament

A Communication Which the Author Had to London Before She Made Her Will

The Manner of Her Will and What She Left to London and to All Those in It at Her Departing

AEMILIA LANYER (1569-1645)

Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum

[To the Virtuous Reader]

[Eve's Apology in Defense of Women]

The Description of Cooke-ham

ELIZABETH CARY (1585-1639)

The Tragedy of Mariam, the Faire Queene of Jewry

Act 3, Scene 3 [On the Duties of a Wife]

Act 4, Scene 8 [Mariam's Fate]

MARY WROTH (1587?-1651/53)

Pamphilia to Amphilanthus

1 ("When night's black mantle could most darkness prove")

8 ("Love, leave to urge")

11 ("The weary traveler who, tired, sought")

24 ("When last I saw thee, I did not thee see")

25 ("Like to the Indians, scorched with the sun")

43 ("Night, welcome art thou to my mind distressed")

64 ("Love like a juggler comes to play his prize")

74 Song ("Love, a child, is ever crying")

From A Crown of Sonnets Dedicated to Love

77 ("In this strange labyrinth, how shall I turn?")

78 ("Is to leave all and take the thread of love")

79 ("His flames are joys, his bands true lovers' might")

89 ("Free from all fogs but shining fair and clear")

91 Song ("Sweet, let me enjoy thy sight")

96 ("Late in the forest I did Cupid see")

103 ("My muse, now happy, lay thy self to rest")

Literature of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

ANNE BRADSTREET (1612-1672)

The Prologue

In Honor of That High and Mighty Princess Queen Elizabeth of Happy Memory

The Author to Her Book

To My Dear and Loving Husband

A Letter to Her Husband, Absent upon Public Employment

To Her Father with Some Verses

For Deliverance from a Fever

From Meditations Divine and Moral

Here Follows Some Verses upon the Burning of Our House, July 10th, 1666. Copied out of a Loose Paper

MARGARET CAVENDISH, DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE (1623-1673)

The Poetess's Hasty Resolution

An Excuse for So Much Writ Upon My Verses

Female Orations

JANE LEAD (1624-1704)

A Fountain of Gardens

[The First Vision]

[The Second Vision]

KATHERINE PHILIPS (1632-1664)

Friendship's Mysteries, to My Dearest Lucasia

To My Excellent Lucasia, on Our Friendship

On the Death of My First and Dearest Child, Hector Philips

To Sir Amorous La Fool

A Married State

MARY ROWLANDSON (C. 1636-1711)

A Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson

The Third Remove

APHRA BEHN (1640-1689)

The Willing Mistress

Love Armed

The Disappointment

On Her Loving Two Equally

To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman

Oroonoko, or The Royal Slave

LADY MARY CHUDLEIGH (1656-1710)

From The Ladies' Defense

To the Ladies

ANNE KILLIGREW (1660-1685)

Upon the Saying That My Verses Were Made by Another

To My Lord Colrane, In Answer to His Complemental Verses

ANNE FINCH, COUNTESS OF WINCHILSEA (1661-1720)

A Letter to Daphnis, April 2, 1685

The Introduction

Adam Posed

The Circuit of Apollo

The Spleen

To the Nightingale

Friendship between Ephelia and Ardelia

A Nocturnal Reverie

The Apology

The Answer

DELARIVIER MANLEY (C. 1663-1724)

From The New Atlantis

[A Fury of a Wife: On Sarah Egerton]

[The New Cabal: New-Formed Amities against the Hymeneal Union]

MARY ASTELL (1666-1731)

Ambition

A Serious Proposal to the Ladies

[A Religious Retirement]

LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU (1689-1762)

Saturday--The Small-Pox

Epitaph

An Answer to a Love-Letter in Verse

Epistle from Mrs. Yonge to Her Husband

Verses

To the Countess of Bute, Lady Montagu's Daughter

[On Her Granddaughter]

ELIZA HAYWOOD (1693?-1756)

Fantomina: Or, Love in a Maze

ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD (1743-1825)

The Rights of Woman

Washing-Day

ABIGAIL ADAMS (1744-1818)

Letters to John Adams

[Man Is a Dangerous Creature], November 27, 1775

[Remember the Ladies], March 31, 1776

[Absolute Power over Wives], May 7, 1776

CHARLOTTE SMITH (1749-1806)

[Pressed by the moon, mute arbitress of tides]

Thirty-Eight

Beachy Head

[Imperial lord of the high southern coast]

[An early worshipper at Nature's shrine]

FRANCES BURNEY (1752-1840)

The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay

Letter from Miss F. Burney to Mrs. Phillips [Authoress of "Evelina"]

PHILLIS WHEATLEY (C. 1753-1784)

On Being Brought from Africa to America

To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth

To S.M., A Young African Painter, on Seeing His Works

To His Excellency, General Washington

MARY ROBINSON (1758-1800)

London's Summer Morning

January, 1795

To the Poet Coleridge

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT (1759-1797)

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

Introduction

From Chapter II. The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed

From Chapter XIII. Some Instances of the Folly which the Ignorance of Women Generates

HELEN MARIA WILLIAMS (1762?-1827)

Letters Written from France

Volume 1, Letter 1

Volume 2, Letter 1

Volume 3, Letter 1

Literature of the Nineteenth Century

MARIA EDGEWORTH (1768-1849)

The Grateful Negro

DOROTHY WORDSWORTH (1771-1855)

From The Grasmere Journals

Peaceful Our Valley, Fair and Green

JANE AUSTEN (1775-1817)

Love and Friendship

REBECCA COX JACKSON (1795-1871)

Gifts of Power

A Dream of Slaughter

The Dream of the Cakes

The Dream of Washing Quilts

MARY SHELLEY (1797-1851)

Introduction to Frankenstein

The Mortal Immortal: A Tale

SOJOURNER TRUTH (c. 1797-1883)

Ain't I a Woman?

What Time of Night It Is

Keeping the Thing Going while Things Are Stirring

ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING (1806-1861)

A True Dream

Grief

To George Sand: A Desire

To George Sand: A Recognition

The Cry of the Children

The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim's Point

Hiram Powers' "Greek Slave"

Sonnets from the Portuguese

V ("I lift my heavy heart up solemnly")

XXII ("When our two souls stand up erect and strong")

XLIII ("How do I love thee? Let me count the ways")

Aurora Leigh

Book I [Aurora's Parents]

Book I [Aurora's Journey to England and Education There by Her Father's Sister]

Book II [Romney's Proposal of Marriage to Aurora and Her Refusal]

Book V [Aurora's Theories of Poetry]

A Curse for a Nation

Mother and Poet

MARGARET FULLER (1810-1850)

Woman in the Nineteenth Century

[Prejudice against Women]

[Muse and Minerva]

[The Future of Women]

ELIZABETH CLEGHORN GASKELL (1810-1865)

Cranford

Chapter I. Our Society

Chapter II. The Captain

FANNY FERN (SARA WILLIS PARTON) (1811-1872)

Mrs. Adolphus Smith Sporting the "Blue Stocking"

Hour-Glass Thoughts

Mr. Pipkin's Ideas of Family Retrenchment

Lady Doctors

Moral Molasses; or, Too Sweet by Half

The Boston Woman

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE (1811-1896)

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Chapter XXX. The Slave Warehouse

The Minister's Housekeeper

HARRIET JACOBS (C. 1813-1897)

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Chapter XXI. The Loophole of Retreat

From Chapter XXIX. Preparations for Escape

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON (1815-1902)

From Address to the New York State Legislature, 1860

CHARLOTTE BRONTË (1816-1855)

Jane Eyre

EMILY BRONTË (1818-1848)

[Tell me, tell me, smiling child]

[I am the only being whose doom]

[Alone I sat; the summer day]

F. de Samara to A.G.A. ("Light up thy halls! 'Tis closing day")

The Night-Wind

[Riches I hold in light esteem]

[Aye, there it is! It wakes to-night]

A Day Dream

R. Alcona to J. Brenzaida ("Cold in the earth, and the deep snow piled above thee!")

[Ah! why, because the dazzling sun]

The Prisoner: A Fragment

[No coward soul is mine]

Stanzas ("Often rebuked, yet always back returning")

GEORGE ELIOT (1819-1880)

The Lifted Veil

Brother and Sister

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1820-1910)

Cassandra

[Women's Time]

[The Savior of Her Race]

FRANCES E. W. HARPER (1825-1911)

The Slave Mother

The Tennessee Hero

Vashti

Aunt Chloe's Politics

Learning to Read

HARRIET E. ADAMS WILSON (1828?-1870?)

Our Nig

[Frado's Childhood]

EMILY DICKINSON (1830-1886)

24 ("There is a morn by men unseen--")

103 ("I have a King, who does not speak--")

209 ("With thee, in the Desert--")

211 ("Come slowly--Eden!")

249 ("Wild Nights--Wild Nights!")

258 ("There's a certain Slant of light")

271 ("A solemn thing--it was--I said--")

280 ("I felt a Funeral, in my Brain")

288 ("I'm Nobody! Who are you?")

303 ("The Soul selects her own Society--")

312 ("Her--'last Poems'--")

322 ("There came a Day at Summer's full")

327 ("Before I got my eye put out")

341 ("After great pain, a formal feeling comes--")

365 ("Dare you see a Soul at the White Heat?")

384 ("No Rack can torture me--")

392 ("Through the Dark Sod--as Education--")

401 ("What Soft--Cherubic Creatures--")

425 ("Good Morning--Midnight--")

435 ("Much Madness is divinest Sense--")

441 ("This is my letter to the World")

454 ("It was given to me by the Gods--")

462 ("Why make it doubt--it hurts it so--")

465 ("I heard a Fly buzz--when I died--")

479 ("She dealt her pretty words like Blades—")

508 ("I'm ceded--I've stopped being Theirs--")

512 ("The Soul has Bandaged moments--")

520 ("I started Early--Took my Dog--")

528 ("Mine--by the Right of the White Election!")

569 ("I reckon--when I count at all--")

579 ("I had been hungry, all the Years--")

593 ("I think I was enchanted")

601 ("A still--Volcano--Life--")

613 ("They shut me up in Prose--")

642 ("Me from Myself--to banish--")

657 ("I dwell in Possibility--")

669 ("No Romance sold unto")

670 ("One need not be a Chamber--to be Haunted--")

709 ("Publication--is the Auction")

712 ("Because I could not stop for Death--")

722 ("Sweet Mountains--Ye tell Me no lie--")

732 ("She rose to His Requirement--dropt")

754 ("My Life had stood--a Loaded Gun—")

858 ("This Chasm, Sweet, upon my life")

959 ("A loss of something ever felt I--")

986 ("A narrow Fellow in the Grass")

1072 ("Title divine--is mine!")

1129 ("Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--")

1138 ("A Spider sewed at Night")

1282 ("Art thou the thing I wanted?")

First draft

Second draft, c. 1873

1317 ("Abraham to kill him")

1445 ("Death is the supple Suitor")

1562 ("Her Losses make our Gains ashamed--")

1651 ("A Word made Flesh is seldom")

1657 ("Eden is that old-fashioned House")

1670 ("In Winter in my Room")

1705 ("Volcanoes be in Sicily")

1732 ("My life closed twice before its close--")

1737 ("Rearrange a Wife's affection!")

Letters

233 (c. 1861) [Daisy and Her Master]

248 (early 1862?) [Daisy Kneels a Culprit]

260 (April 15, 1862) [Say If My Verse Is Alive?]

261 (April 25, 1862) [My "Companions"]

265 (June 7, 1862) [Fame]

268 (July 1862) [My Business Is Circumference]

CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (1830-1894)

Song ("When I am dead, my dearest")

Symbols

After Death

A Soul

The World

Dead before Death

Cobwebs

Shut Out

A Triad

A Birthday

Up-hill

The Convent Threshold

Goblin Market

In an Artist's Studio

Eve

Enrica, 1865

Venus's Looking-Glass

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS (1831-1910)

Life in the Iron-Mills

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT (1832-1888)

Little Women

Chapter 1. Playing Pilgrims

Chapter 2. Merry Christmas

Turn-of-the-Century Literature

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON (1840-1894)

Miss Grief

ALICE MEYNALL (1847-1922)

The Sunderland Children

Parentage

A Father of Women: Ad Sororem E. B.

ALICE JAMES (1848-1892)

The Diary

[My First Journal!] (May 31st, 1889)

[My Microscopic Field] (July 12th [1889])

[Pharasaism; Death] (February 17th [1890])

[My "Hidden Self"] (October 26th [1890])

[Going Downhill] (May 31st [1891])

[This Long Slow Dying] (February 2nd [1892])

[Physical Pain] (March 4th [1892])

Final Entry by Katharine P. Loring

SARAH ORNE JEWETT (1849-1909)

A White Heron

KATE CHOPIN (1850-1904)

The Awakening

MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN(1852-1930)

Old Woman Magoun

LADY AUGUSTA GREGORY (1852-1932)

Spreading the News

OLIVE SCHREINER (1855-1920)

Woman and Labor

[Sex-parasitism]

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935)

She Walketh Veiled and Sleeping

False Play

The Mother's Charge

The Yellow Wallpaper

MARY ELIZABETH COLERIDGE (1861-1907)

The Other Side of a Mirror

Regina

The Devil's Funeral

The Witch

Doubt

The White Women

Marriage

EDITH WHARTON (1862-1937)

The Angel at the Grave

The Other Two

MAY SINCLAIR (1863-1946)

Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched

MARY AUSTIN (1868-1934)

The Walking Woman

CHARLOTTE MEW (1869-1928)

The Farmer's Bride

The Quiet House

HENRY HANDEL RICHARDSON (1870-1946)

Two Hanged Women

Early-Twentieth-Century Literature

WILLA CATHER (1873-1947)

Coming, Aphrodite!

DOROTHY RICHARDSON (1873-1957)

Death

Women and the Future

AMY LOWELL (1874-1925)

The Letter

Venus Transiens

Madonna of the Evening Flowers

The Weather-Cock Points South

Opal

Decade

Summer Rain

A Critical Fable

[On T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound]

The Sisters

GERTRUDE STEIN (1874-1946)

The Gentle Lena

Picasso

Ada

Miss Furr and Miss Skeene

ALICE DUNBAR-NELSON (1875-1935)

Mr. Baptiste

I Sit and Sew

ANNA HEMPSTEAD BRANCH(1875-1937)

Sonnets from a Lock Box

XIV ("What witchlike spell weaves here its deep design")

XXV ("Into the void behold my shuddering flight")

XXXI ("I say that words are men and when we spell")

GERTRUDE BONNIN (ZITKALA SÁ) (1876-1938) (16)

The Trial Path

VIRGINIA WOOLF (1882-1941)

22 Hyde Park Gate

Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights

A Woman's College from Outside

Moments of Being

"Slater's Pins Have No Points"

A Room of One's Own

[Shakespeare's Sister]

Professions for Women

The Death of the Moth

SUSAN GLASPELL (1882-1948)

Trifles

MINA LOY (1882-1966)

Gertrude Stein

Three Moments in Paris

One O'Clock at Night

Omen of Victory

Photo after Pogrom

Songge Byrd

Nancy Cunard

Portrait of a Nun

Feminist Manifesto

ANNE SPENCER (1882-1975)

White Things

Lady, Lady

Letter to My Sister

Innocence

KATHARINE SUSANNAH PRICHARD (1883-1969)

The Cooboo

ANZIA YEZIERSKA (C. 1883-1970)

Where Lovers Dream

ANNA WICKHAM (1884-1947)

Meditation at Kew

The Affinity

Divorce

Dedication of the Cook

ELINOR WYLIE (1885-1928)

The Eagle and the Mole

Atavism

Wild Peaches

Full Moon

Let No Charitable Hope

One Person

XII ("In our content, before the autumn came")

To a Lady's Countenance

Pastiche

ISAK DINESEN (1885-1962)

The Blank Page

RADCLYFFE HALL (1886-1943)

Miss Ogilvy Finds Herself

H. D. (HILDA DOOLITTLE) (1886-1961)

Orchard

Oread

Sea Poppies

Garden

Eurydice

Fragment Thirty-six

Helen

The Master

Tribute to the Angels

1-3

8-14

24-29

35-43

EDITH SITWELL (1887-1964)

En Famille

Sir Beelzebub

Aubade

Lullaby

Serenade: Any Man to Any Woman

Song ("Where is all the bright company gone—")

MARIANNE MOORE (1887-1972)

Sojourn in the Whale

Those Various Scalpels

Poetry

To a Snail

Sea Unicorns and Land Unicorns

An Egyptian Pulled Glass Bottle in the Shape of a Fish

Silence

No Swan So Fine

The Jerboa

The Paper Nautilus

His Shield

O to Be a Dragon

KATHERINE MANSFIELD (1888-1923)

The Daughters of the Late Colonel

The Fly

KATHERINE ANNE PORTER (c. 1890-1980)

The Jilting of Granny Weatherall

ZORA NEALE HURSTON (1891-1960)

Sweat

How It Feels to Be Colored Me

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY (1892-1950)

First Fig

Second Fig

[Oh, oh, you will be sorry for that word!]

[I, being born a woman and distressed]

Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree

The Buck in the Snow

To Inez Milholland

[Women have loved before as I love now]

[Oh, sleep forever in the Latmian cave]

Childhood Is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies

Apostrophe to Man

Rendezvous

The Fitting

[I too beneath your moon, almighty Sex]

[The courage that my mother had]

An Ancient Gesture

Aria da Capo

DJUNA BARNES (1892-1982)

How It Feels to Be Forcibly Fed

Cassation

REBECCA WEST (1892-1983)

Indissoluble Matrimony

DOROTHY PARKER (1893-1967)

Résumé

One Perfect Rose

News Item

Song of One of the Girls

A Pig's-Eye View of Literature

The Lives and Times of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron

Oscar Wilde

Harriet Beecher Stowe

D. G. Rossetti

Thomas Carlyle

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Walter Savage Landor

George Sand

The Waltz

JEAN RHYS (1894?-1979)

The Insect World

LOUISE BOGAN (1897-1970)

Medusa

The Crows

Women

Cassandra

The Crossed Apple

Evening in the Sanitarium

Several Voices out of a Cloud

The Dream

RUTH PITTER (1897-1992)

The Military Harpist

The Irish Patriarch

Old Nelly's Birthday

Yorkshire Wife's Sage

MARITA BONNER (1899-1971)

On Being Young--a Woman--and Colored

ELIZABETH BOWEN (1899-1973)

The Demon Lover

MERIDEL LE SUEUR (1900-)

Annunciation

Later-Twentieth-Century Literature

STEVIE SMITH (1902-1971)

Papa Love Baby

This Englishwoman

Lord Barrenstock

Dear Female Heart

Souvenir de Monsieur Poop

Human Affection

The Wanderer

Lightly Bound

Not Waving but Drowning

How Cruel Is the Story of Eve

ANAÏS NIN (1903-1977)

Birth

DILYS LAING (1906-1960)

Sonnet to a Sister in Error

The Double Goer

Let Them Ask Their Husbands

Prayer of an Ovulating Female

M. F. K. FISHER (1908-1992)

The Flaw

DOROTHY LIVESAY (1909-)

Green Rain

Eve

The Three Emily's

The Children's Letters

EUDORA WELTY (1909-)

A Worn Path

ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911-1979)

The Man-Moth

Roosters

The Fish

Invitation to Miss Marianne Moore

In the Waiting Room

One Art

Pink Dog

Gwendolyn

[Gender and Art]

MARY LAVIN (1912-)

In a Café

MARY MCCARTHY (1912-1989)

Memories of a Catholic Girlhood

Names

MAY SARTON (1912-1989)

My Sisters, O My Sisters

Letter from Chicago

The Muse as Medusa

MURIEL RUKEYSER (1913-1980)

Boy with His Hair Cut Short

More of a Corpse than a Woman

Who in One Lifetime

Letter to the Front

VII ("To be a Jew in the twentieth century")

Night Feeding

The Birth of Venus

The Power of Suicide

The Poem as Mask

Käthe Kollwitz

Myth

Along History

TILLIE OLSEN (C. 1913-)

Tell Me a Riddle

RUTH STONE (1915-)

In an Iridescent Time

Periphery

The Song of Absinthe Granny

Second-hand Coat

Names

Things I Say to Myself While Hanging Laundry

MARGARET WALKER (1915-)

Dark Blood

Lineage

Molly Means

Kissie Lee

Whores

JUDITH WRIGHT (1915-)

Half-Caste Girl

The Sisters

Ishtar

Request to a Year

To Another Housewife

Eve to Her Daughters

Naked Girl and Mirror

"Rosina Alcona to Julius Brenzaida"

Some Words

Counting in Sevens

CARSON MCCULLERS (1917-1967 )

The Ballad of the Sad Café

GWENDOLYN BROOKS (1917-)

the mother

a song in the front yard

The Sundays of Satin-Legs Smith

The Womanhood

3 ("Stand off, daughter of the dusk")

The Bean Eaters

We Real Cool

Bronzeville Woman in a Red Hat

The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmett Till

To the Diaspora

The Coora Flower

MURIEL SPARK (1918-)

The Black Madonna

DORIS LESSING (1919-)

One off the Short List

MAY SWENSON (1919-1989)

Women

Bleeding

GWEN HARWOOD (1920-)

In the Park

The Sea Anemones

Mother Who Gave Me Life

Mid-Channel

HISAYE YAMAMOTO (1921-) (27)

Seventeen Syllables

GRACE PALEY (1922-)

Enormous Changes at the Last Minute

NADINE GORDIMER (1923-)

Town and Country Lovers

DENISE LEVERTOV (1923-)

The Goddess

Song for Ishtar

Hypocrite Women

In Mind

The Ache of Marriage

Eros at Temple Stream

Abel's Bride

The Son

Stepping Westward

The Mutes

Canción

Divorcing

The Dragon Fly-Mother

Ancient Airs and Dances

Dyptich

Evening Train

PATRICIA BEER (1924-)

Witch

Brunhild

The Bull

In Memory of Constance Markiewicz

Mating Calls

Transvestism in the Novels of Charlotte Brontë

FLANNERY O'CONNOR (1925-1964)

Good Country People

CAROLYN KIZER (1925-)

Pro Femina

Three ("I will speak about women of letters, for I'm in the racket")

Semele Recycled

MAXINE W. KUMIN (1925-)

Making the Jam without You

The Envelope

How It Is

MARGARET LAURENCE (1926-1987)

The Loons

ANNE SEXTON (1924-1974)

Her Kind

The Moss of His Skin

Housewife

Somewhere in Africa

Consorting with Angels

Sylvia's Death

In Celebration of My Uterus

MAYA ANGELOU (1928-)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

[The Peckerwood Dentist and Momma's Incredible Powers]

CYNTHIA OZICK (1928-)

The Shawl

URSULA FANTHORPE (1929-)

For Saint Peter

After Visting Hours

Only Here for the Bier

1. Mother-in-law

2. King's Daughter

Women Laughing

From the Third Storey

URSULA K. LE GUIN (1929-)

Sur

She Unnames Them

PAULE MARSHALL (1929-)

Poets in the Kitchen

ADRIENNE RICH (1929-)

Aunt Jennifer's Tigers

Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law

"I Am in Danger--Sir--"

Diving into the Wreck

Power

Twenty-one Love Poems

XI ("Every peak is a crater")

(The Floating Poem, Unnumbered)

XXI ("The dark lintels, the blue and foreign stones")

Phantasia for Elvira Shatayev

An Atlas of the Difficult World

Final Notations

In Those Years

To the Days

When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision

TONI MORRISON (1931-)

Sula

ALICE MUNRO (1931-)

Wild Swans

SYLVIA PLATH (1932-1963)

The Disquieting Muses

The Colossus

You're

Mirror

The Bee Meeting

The Arrival of the Bee Box

Stings

The Swarm

Wintering

Daddy

Medusa

Ariel

Nick and the Candlestick

Lady Lazarus

Words

Edge

EDNA O'BRIEN (1932-)

A Rose in the Heart

FLEUR ADCOCK (1934-)

For a Five-Year-Old

Miss Hamilton in London

Against Coupling

The Voyage Out

On the Border

Street Song

KAMALA DAS (1934-)

An Introduction

AUDRE LORDE (1934-1992)

Coal

On a Night of the Full Moon

Now That I am Forever with Child

From the House of Yemanjá

The Women of Dan Dance with Swords in Their Hands

Kitchen Linoleum

The Electric Slide Boogie

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

[Origins]

LUCILLE CLIFTON (1936-)

admonitions

the astrologer predicts at mary's birth

anna speaks of the childhood of mary her daughter

mary's dream

how he is coming then

holy night

a song of mary

island mary

move

if our grandchild be a girl

my dream about being white

BESSIE HEAD (1937-1986)

Snapshots of a Wedding

DIANE WAKOSKI (1937-)

Blue Monday

Ringless

My Trouble

The Mirror of a Day Chiming Marigold

Medea the Sorceress

The Photos

CARYL CHURCHILL (1938-)

Top Girls

JOYCE CAROL OATES (1938-)

Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

MARGARET ATWOOD (1939-)

This Is a Photograph of Me

Spelling

Waiting

Asparagus

Marsh Languages

Morning in the Burned House

Rape Fantasies

There Was Once

The Little Red Hen Tells All

ANGELA CARTER (1940-1992)

The Company of Wolves

MAXINE HONG KINGSTON (1940-)

No Name Woman

BOBBIE ANN MASON (1940-)

Wish

BHARATI MUKHERJEE (1940-)

The Management of Grief

AMA ATA AIDOO (1942-)

The Message

GLORIA ANZULDÚA (1942-)

Tlilli Tlapalli/The Path of the Red and Black Ink

MARILYN HACKER (1942-)

Almost Aubade

Ballad of Ladies Lost and Found

Runaways Café I

Runaways Café II

From Orient Point

From Cancer Winter

SHARON OLDS (1942-)

The Language of the Brag

Rite of Passage

The One Girl at the Boys' Party

This

The Mortal One

LOUISE GLÜCK (1943-)

Illuminations

Dedication to Hunger

4. The Deviation

Windows

Terminal Resemblance

First Memory

Vespers

Lullaby

The Gold Lily

EAVAN BOLAND (1944-)

In His Own Image

Anorexic

The Muse Mother

Degas's Laundresses

BUCHI EMECHETA (1944-)

The Joys of Motherhood

The Mother's Mother

ALICE WALKER (1944-)

In Search of Our Mother' Gardens

ANNIE DILLARD (1945-)

Holy the Firm

The Death of a Moth

LINDA HOGAN (1947-)

The Avalanche

Germinal

The Hands

Bamboo

LESLIE MARMON SILKO (1948-)

Yellow Woman

JAMAICA KINCAID (1949-)

Girl

JORIE GRAHAM (1951-)

Orpheus and Eurydice

Concerning the Right to Life

RITA DOVE (1952-)

The House Slave

Thomas and Beulah

The Great Palaces of Versailles

Wingfoot Lake

Persephone, Falling

Sonnet in Primary Colors

LUCI TAPAHANSO (1944-)

Blue Horses Rush In

Leda and the Cowboy

LORNA DEE CERVANTES (1954-)

Cannery Town in August

For Virginia Chavez

Emplumada

On Touring her Hometown

Y Volver

LOUISE ERDRICH (1954-)

Saint Marie

CATHY SONG (1955-)

The Youngest Daughter

Heaven

Frameless Windows, Squares of Light

REBECCA BROWN (1956-)

Forgiveness

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHIES

INDEX

top of page