North American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Beyond Lyric and Language

Women poets writing at the intersections of different schools of poeticsNorth American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Beyond Lyric and Language is an important new addition to the American Poets in the 21st Century series. Like the earlier anthologies, this volume includes generous selections of poetry by some of the best poets of our time as well as illuminating poetics statements and incisive essays on their work. Among the insightful pieces included in this volume are essays by Catherine Cucinella on Marilyn Chin, Meg Tyler on Fanny Howe, Elline Lipkin on Alice Notley, Kamran Javadizadeh on Claudia Rankine, and many more. A companion web site will present audio of each poet's work.Calling, Natasha TretheweyMexico 1969 Why not make a fictionof the mind's fictions? I want to sayit begins like this: the tripa pilgrimage, my mother kneeling at the altar of the Black Virgin, enthralled―light streaming in a window, the sun at her back, holy water in a bowl she must have touched. What's left is palimpsest―one memory bleeding into another, overwriting it. How else to explainwhat remains? The sound of water in a basin I know is white,the sun behind her, light streaming in, her face―as if she were already dead―blurred as it will become. I want to imagine her beforethe altar, rising to meet us, my father lifting metoward her outstretched arms. What else to makeof the mind's slick confabulations? What comes backis the sun's dazzle on a pool's surface, light filtered through waterclosing over my head, my mother―her body between me and the high sun, a corona of light around her face. Why not call it a vision? What I know is this: I was drowning and saw a dark Madonna; someone pulled me through the water's bright ceiling and I rose, initiate, from one life into another. Read more