The Poet Divided /Subversion and the Self

To consider political poetry by North American women we must have a complete explanation of how "political" is being defined. American poets do not fear execution or banishment, but rather silencing in the form of censorship, marginalization and the canonization of literature defined according to rules of the often patriarchal literary establishment. By political poetry, we mean work that defines the individual in a conflicting relation to society. Poets whose work has been politicized over the years have written about the chaos of experiencing the edge of life. Much of the political poetry that has emerged has come from women who speak out of silence, words leaping out of the void. Political poetry by women comes from the dark no place. For lesbians, for writers of color, this place is where a scrap a voice is heard, where the last part of the map of people was not colored in. Where the land is still uncharted, songs still unsung. Muriel Rukeyser, Judy Grahn, Adrienne Rich, Lucille Clifton and others are discussed in this volume on American women s political poetry in the last half of the 20th century.