This semester at FSU, I took my first poetry-centric course, Women in Literature. While I’m an English major, poetry isn’t my preferred genre, and I don’t usually read a lot of poetry in my free time, either. However, after taking LIT 3383 this semester, I’ve grown a newfound appreciation of the genre and find myself reading more of it in my spare time.
This list is a compilation of women whose poetry I’ve enjoyed the most, including a few of whom I’ve read throughout this semester. These poets are great picks for celebrating National Poetry Month, which takes place every April, and they celebrate both the integral role of poets in our culture and the importance of female voices within literary spaces.
- Elsa Gidlow
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Elsa Gidlow is a Canadian-American poet, and her work presents a prominent female voice within the literary space. Her works feature feminist and queer themes, especially with her poems about lesbian relationships.
Gidlow’s style is rich with sensual imagery of women, yet her works are neither degrading nor objectifying in how she depicts women. Her first book of poetry, On a Gray Thread (1923), was the first openly lesbian poetry collection in the United States.
One of her standout works is “Ectasy,” which I enjoy for how Gidlow uses the imagery of stars. My favorite lines within the poem are “Time is a rhymeless poem / Without any end Written in space,” and “Stars, turn from your courses, Spill into my hands!” These lines exemplify the ethereal quality of Gidlow’s poetry and how she uses such rich imagery to show intense passion.
- Emily Dickinson
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Emily Dickinson is one of the greatest and most recognizable poets of all time. Dickinson has a unique stylistic voice in her poetry, emphasized by how she utilizes personification in her poetry, as she takes abstract concepts and concrete objects and turns them into unique works that anybody can enjoy. The vastness of her poetry collection means that Dickinson’s work includes a variety of poems that anybody can enjoy.
My personal favorite is her poem “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers,” which demonstrates Dickinson’s unique skill in personifying abstract concepts. I enjoy the line, “I’ve heard it in the chillest land – / And on the strangest Sea – / Yet – never – in Extremity, / It asked a crumb – of me.
- audre lorde
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Audre Lorde was a self-described “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet,” and her life dedicated to activism is shown in her works, where she tackles a variety of themes. Lorde’s poetry is a call for social and racial justice. She used the experiences of marginalization she faced and the intersectionality of her identity to create multi-layered commentaries in her poetic activism through storytelling.
One of her most popular works is “Sisters in Arms.” This poem is about the women who suffered under apartheid in South Africa, a cause that Lorde herself was dedicated to. This poem describes the power of sisterhood, of bonding together to fight against inequality.
This is especially true for Lorde, a second-wave feminist who advocated for women of color in the intersectionality of race and gender. This poem calls all women to stand against misogyny, homophobia, and racism, saying, “‘Someday you will come to my country / and we will fight side by side?’”
- Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
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Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz was a Mexican poet whose desires were founded in her intellectual drive and love of learning. Sor Juana displayed her intellectual talent at a young age, and was sent to Mexico City to encourage her education; she then spent time in the viceroy’s court as a handmaiden but then turned to the convent to continue her educational pursuits.
Sor Juana was a playwright, author, and poet. She was also an advocate for women’s literacy, shown by both her poetic works and her “Respuesta a Sor Filotea” (“Response to Sister Filotea”), in which she defended women’s rights to education.
A standout work of Sor Juana’s is her poem “Stupid, Conceited Men” (a title that varies depending upon the translation), in which she criticizes the hypocrisy of men’s desires. Sor Juana writes, “Silly, you men – so very adept / at wrongly faulting womankind, / not seeing you’re alone to blame / for faults you plant in woman’s mind.”
- Adrienne Rich
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Adrienne Rich was a well-known poet who was a committed activist, feminist, mother, and lesbian, and she wrote extensive volumes of poetry, which showcase the internal conflicts she had with the many roles she occupied. Rich came out as a lesbian in the 1970s and became lovers with another poet, Michelle Cliff; the pair were together for 36 years until Rich died in 2012.
Two of my favorite works of hers are “Poem II” and “Planetarium.” The former was a work from a collection of love poems Rich wrote for Cliff, Twenty-One Love Poems. The latter is one of Rich’s feminist works, which was published in her collection The Will to Change. In this poem, she uses astronomy and space-related metaphors to show the marginalization of women and the importance of the re-examination of women’s identities. - sappho
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No list of women’s poetry is complete without Sappho. Many people are familiar with Sappho’s imagery but may not have read her entire works themselves. Sappho’s works are splintered into fragments, as her works were lost to time and persecution due to her relationships with other women. The words “sapphic” and “lesbian” originate from her name, Sappho, and where she lived, the Isle of Lesbos.
Sappho was also known as the “Tenth Muse,” and her works feature recurring themes of the yearning and loss she feels for other women, especially those who are absent within her works. She has only one complete poem, “Ode to Aphrodite,” but her collection also features a variety of small fragments, many of which are only one sentence or one word.
Fragment 41, a shorter fragment, reads, “For you beautiful women / my mind never changes.” This fragment perfectly encapsulates how Sappho speaks of women she desires, whom she describes with tender care and adoration within her poetry.
Poetry is a difficult genre to enjoy if you’re not reading poetry you’re personally interested in. By taking a poetry course this semester, I didn’t just learn how to analyze poetry better and what kind of poetry I like to read, but also the power of women’s voices in the poetic space. Poetry can be the most personal of the literary genres, but its emotional depth makes it so interesting to read, especially when you find poets whose work you enjoy!
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