Chapter 10 - Feminism and Women’s Poetry from 1970 to 2000

Summary

This chapter discusses how contemporary poets are influenced and inspired by the rise of second-wave feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s, which unleashed a broad surge of poetry by women who began to write openly about their lives and to use their work to directly critique sexism and patriarchy. The chapter examines debates and tensions within women’s poetry of the period, including fraught questions about how poetry might best address female experience, gender roles, race and intersectionality, the relation between poetry and politics, and the tension between more mainstream lyric approaches and more avant-garde experimental feminist poetry. The chapter focuses on a range of representative poets, including Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Lucille Clifton, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Marilyn Chin, and Kathleen Fraser.