A Book of Women Poets: From Antiquity to Now

by Aliki Barnstone (Editor), Willis Barnstone (Editor)

A monument to the literary genius of women throughout the ages, A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now is an invaluable collection. Here in one volume are the works of three hundred poets from six different continents and four millennia. This revised edition includes a newly expanded section of American poets from the colonial era to the present.

"[A] splendid collection of verse by women" (TIME) throughout the ages and around the world; now revised and expanded, with 38 American poets.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, Feminism, Female Authors

848 pages, Paperback

First published January 13, 1980

Reviews

[Lisa (Harmonybites) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Years ago I bought a book called Good Reading and to educate myself decided to make my way through the list of "100 Significant Books." I noted that of the 20 poets listed, only one, Emily Dickenson, was a woman. That made picking up this particular anthology of women poets irresistible. I found reading it that it had a value beyond the poems that made up the collection. For one--and this was reinforced by looking at the poetry section in the store recently--it's very hard to find a truly international collection of poetry; almost all the poets in anthologies sold in the United States wrote their works in English. Yet more than half of the poetry in this collection was not written in English--allowing me for the first time to get a truly world-wide sampling of the art with over fifty languages represented from every continent save Antarctica. I also found the short biographies that appeared after each poet's name enlightening. This wound up being just as valuable in terms of history as in literature. What particularly struck me was how personal the poetry read and the biographies reinforced that. Chinese poet Ts'ai Yen (175 - 239?) had been captured by the Huns, then had to leave her sons behind when she was let go. To then read her poem about her ordeal, "From 18 Verses Sung to a Tartar Reed Whistle" was a moving experience. Many of the lives of these poets were every bit as extraordinary as their poems.

The collection begins with what the book claims is "the world's first known writer" the Sumerian moon-priestess and princess Enheduanna (2285-2250 B.C.) and gives us the sweep of history up to today's living poets. Sometimes the attribution to a women poet is rather tenuous. Included for instance are many "anonymous" and "traditional" works with seeming female speakers and even such parts of the Bible as "The Song of Deborah" and "The Song of Songs." The introduction defines eleven poets as "key" and gives them extra space: Enheduanna of Sumeria, Sappho (who Plato called "the Tenth Muse"), the Chinese poets Yu Hsuan-chi of the T'ang Dynasty and Li Ching-chao of the Sung Dynasty, the Arabian Al-Khansa, the Hindu Mira Bai, Marie de France ("the great woman poet of Medieval Europe"), French Renaissance poet Louise Labe, the Mexican Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, and Americans Anne Bradstreet and Emily Dickenson.

In a way these were two books, because the experience of reading the non-English portions was definitely different than reading the ones not mediated by a translator. Even more than novels or plays poetry depends on the language it was written in for rhythm and rhyme and such effects as alliteration. I can't help but believe much was lost in these translations. I also feel poetry is benefited by familiarity and repetition. You "get" more. I think it was telling that in the Non-English portion of the book I recognized only three names--Sappho, Marie de France (who I had never actually read) and the Russian Anna Akhmatova. I think in that case, the poets had to push through more resistance to communicate with me. Despite that, there were definitely poems and poets that spoke to me. I loved the Ancient Egyptian "Hieroglyphic Texts" (probably helped they were translated by Ezra Pound), the "Song of Songs," modern Hebrew poet Dahlia Ravikovich's "Poem of Explanations," the poetry of Sappho, the erotic poems of Huang O, and the modern patriotic poem by Ch'iu Chi, the poems of disillusioned love by Louise Labe and everything included by Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Anna Akhmatova's "Requium" and "Lot's Wife." And this very short simple verse attributed to Frau Ava of Melk (ca 1160) was a gem:

I am yours, you are mine. Of this we are certain. You are lodged in my heart, the small key is lost. You must stay there forever.

And yes, there was much more that was striking and beautiful--those were just my favorites in that section. Then we move on to English, and I'm in much more familiar territory. I can say I recognized almost a quarter of the poets, although I'd read less than a dozen of the poems before, though among them were several old favorites by Emily Dickenson (and several that were new to me I loved) and Amy Lowell's "Patterns," which is one of the works that first made me love traditional poetry. And I found new works to love by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Christina Rossetti, Edna St. Vincent Millay. What surprised me was how many modern works I loved, and two-thirds of the poetry in English were by poets still living at the time of publication. By and large I'm not a fan of modern poetry--at least not those more avant garde than say Robert Frost. It's true that at times even when I did like one poem by a modernistic poet I often didn't like her others. Nevertheless, I was surprised to find myself liking, even loving, poems by Mina Loy ("Poe"), Ruth Stone ("On the Mountains"), Gwendolyn Brooks ("We Real Cool" and "Boys Breaking Glass"), Denise Levertov ("Overheard over S.E. Asia" and "The Roamer"), several of the brutal but beautiful poems of Sylvia Plath, Diane Wakoski ("Belly Dancing"), everything included by Margaret Atwood, Sharon Olds ("Sex Without Love"), Louise Gluck ("Lamentations") and really--you have to see the poetry of Mary Ellen Solt. Definitely a special collection worth treasuring.

[Stephy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aliki Barnstone and William Barnstone made many years work of bringing this book to fruition. To quote briefly from the Introduction:

"The earliest known writer in the world was a woman -Enheduanna, a Sumerian moon Priestess from the middle of the third millennium B.C. Not only do we have forty-three magnificent poems by her, but also the ancient texts, for they survive on sculpted cuneiform tablets. We even know her appearance, for a detailed relief sculpture of her face survives on a limestone disk."

From the dust jacket: Three hundred woman poets from six different continents and four millennia, including in this second edition a newly expanded section of American Poets from the colonial era to the present.

From my mother: "Anonymous means it was written by a woman." Lillian Hartsfield Lee 1921 - 1995

From my friend: "It's your birthday, and I thought you might like this book. Happy Birthday."
Ronald H. Anderson, Master of Understatement

[Hazel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a present (on request) for my 18th birthday. I loved it unreservedly, and read every single poem on every single page, and then my favourites over and over. My copy is now somewhat the worse for wear, having travelled through time and space with me while I tried to grow up! I'm going to go find it and put it on my bedside table, and see what it's like to be 18 again.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

"If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry."
-Emily Dickinson, 19th c., English (US)

Here and in the other world
happiness
comes to a person, not a gender.
-Honnamma, late 17th c., Kannada (India)

I've moved here to the Immortal's place:
Flowers everywhere we didn't plant before.

The courtyard trees are bent like clothes-horses.
At the feast, winecups float in a new spring.

Dark balcony. Path through deep bamboo.
Long summer dress. Confusion of books.

I sing in the moonlight and ride a painted boat,
Trusting the wind to blow me home again.
-Yü Hsüan-chi, Staying in the Mountains in Summer, 9th c., Chinese (China)

This anthology contains hundreds of women poets. Some I knew, and most I don't. Some I revisit, knowingly or otherwise, and those re-encounterings go for both good and ill. Some are new, yet admirably old, distant in land and tongue and time enough to give me hope for my other efforts conducted in far off centuries and non-Anglo tomes. Some I finally got a preliminary glimpse of after having long sought after them in a different form, and some of those, I don't deny, I wonder whether it is still worth the effort to acquire them. Some have passed by with their countless awards and presence in numerous other anthologies and, here, arrested my glance and intrigue for the first credible time. The vast majority I passed over, especially when everything grew modern and Anglo and white, although much of that reaffirmed my conclusion that those who bemoan Kaur's lack of poetical skill have no experience with what they speak of. The docked star is for the editors, as while they couldn't help an imbalance in the worthy works they access to, they could at least spare me lists of descriptives of how certain poets should be interpreted and stuck instead of biographical details and the odd theme or two. All in all, this was a deep dive into the panorama of past, present, and future in my engagement with poetry: what I've loved, what I've passed by with good reason, what I discover, what I hope to pursue to a far greater extent, and above all, a continuing exploration that may not be as potent in my path in novels or nonfiction, but is still worthy of pursuit. Not as mind-blowing an experience as I would have liked, but definitely a cornucopia for thought.

The sky is not falling.
The politicians have said so,
the directors,
the generals,
even the beggars confirm it.
-Claribel Alegría, Small Country, 20th c., Spanish (El Salvador)

War is not declared any more,
but simply continued.
-Ingeborg Bachmann, Every Day, 20th c., German (Austria)

If they ever think of building
a memorial to me in this country,

I solemnly give my consent,
only with this condition: not to build it

near the sea where I was born;
my last tie with the sea is broken;

nor in Tsarsky Sad by the hallowed stump
where an inconsolable shadow seeks me,

but here, where I stood three hundred hours
and they never unbolted the door for me.
-Anna Akhmatova, REQUIEM 1935-40, Epilogue, II, 20th c., Russian (Russia)

Goint into this was going into a history less than I had looking forward to for some time. I suppose, though, my time since my last excursion into such a similarly themed collection (Women Writing in India and Daughters of Africa come to mind) had made me forget that the work that ties it all together has as much to do with a successful anthology as the quality of the anthologized pieces. I was prepared for the Anglo/Eurocentric bias, but it still baffles me that there was so much of it in contrast to the Chinese or the Japanese works, to name a couple of the heavy hitters in nations of women poets. Still, I come to this collection from 2019, and it does contain women in translation that I haven't been able to get a hold of, including the first recorded poet hailing from nearly four and a half millennia ago. It also doesn't contain at least one woman winner of the Pulitzer for Poetry, a fact that I'm only aware of due to my having tracked the author down for this year's Quest for Women read. She wasn't the most creative of poets, but a number of her pieces were far more evocative than some of the amorphous bits tacked onto the end of this work, so I do have to wonder. As such, a slightly odd selection, especially the closer one got to the modern day, but that's what often happens with gargantuan, borderline unwieldy efforts in subjectivity. Still, I definitely got a lot out of this, and it reinvigorated my determination to continue my pursuit of poetry beyond the common scope of the ivory tower, as that needs as much work today as it ever did.

I walk down the garden paths,
And all the daffodils
Are blowing, and the bright blue squills.
I walks down the patterned garden paths
In my stiff, brocaded gown.
-Amy Lowell, Patterns, 20th c., English (US)

His lustrous bricks are brighter than blood,
His smoking mortar whiter than bone.

Set each sharp-edged, fire-bitten brick
Straight by the plumb-line's shivering length;
-Elinor Wylie, Sanctuary, 20th c., English (US)

Greece sees, unmoved,
God's daughter, born of love,
the beauty of cool feet
and slenderest knees,
could love indeed the maid,
only if she were laid,
white ash amid funeral cypresses.
-H.D., Helen, 20th c., English (US)

If it were three or four years ago, I'd be trawling through the GR databases, making sure that each and every poet and associated work was inputted accordingly. As it stands, my inability to do so these days works to my advantage, as I have far too much going on to get sucked into another grandiose project based around some ideal of consciousness raising. What I take from this will ideally shape my future reading, as the number of poets that I found myself newly intrigued by wrote long enough ago for me to consider reading them for the more mercantile, if well intentioned, purposes of fulfilling the constraints of various reading challenges. In the meantime, I'm taking these last few weeks of the semester one day at a time until I get in the clear, as the energy it takes to push far ahead has not been there of late. Come past December 10th, my time will free up enough for me to pay more attention to my closing in on the end of a year of reads, as well as begin to conceptualize my plans for the next.

It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
-Elizabeth Bishop, At the Fishhouses, 20th c., English (US)

it will be short, it will take all your breath
it will not be simple, it will become your will
-Adrienne Rich, Final Notations, 20th c., English (US)

[Sri Rahayu Yusop · Rating 5 out of 5]

I still cannot believe my good fortune of possessing this book.

[Sammy · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all-time favourite anthologies.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Song

I placed my dream in a ship
and the ship on top of the sea;
—and then parted the sea with my hands
to sink my dream in the deep.

My hands still drip with water
from the blue of the waves thus parted
and the color that runs from my fingers
colors the sands, now deserted.

The wind is approaching from afar,
the night in the cold submits;
under the waves lies dying
my dream, in the hold of a ship…

I will weep as much as needed,
so that I might the sea increase
and that my ship might come to the bottom
and that my dream might cease.

And then, all will be perfect:
the beach smooth, the waters ordered,
my eyes, dry as stones
my two hands, shattered.
-Cecilia Meireles

[Kyle Muntz · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of the poems in this anthology aren't actually very good, but it's an incredibly diverse collection (all women) that covers something like 4500 years, with writers from every continent that human beings have lived on, and it was incredibly interesting to look through.

[Tamara Hattis · Rating 5 out of 5]

My BIBLE. Best introduction to so many poets I hadn't heard of before but they also included most of the poets I had heard of.

[Shane Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection was too dry to get my wholehearted endorsement, but I did love a few of the poems. I think the editor has much more abstract tastes than I do, because the poems from poets who I know I like, such as Mary Oliver

These are my favorites:

Untitled by Marguerite Burnat-Provins

You told me: “I am not worthy of you.” And you hid your face from me.
But my kiss found it, and slipped lightly over your sweet golden temples where magic lies asleep.
What do you know about yourself? Nothing.
You know nothing of the charm and freshness that play around your beauty.
You know nothing of your laughter, similar to that of fountains.
You’ve never seen the shining nimbus that circles your head during times I wish were fatal, they give me so much happiness.
You’ve never seen your eyes where the whole sky catches fire and dies in the pleasure of my caresses.
You don’t hear the words which dissolve my soul and lead it toward paradise.
You don’t know anything, so shut up.

Glass by Takako U. Lento

They were dancing as if
swimming among the rocks
We stood by the wall.
drinking beer
out of the green-labeled cans.
We talked about
shadow plays, operas and
how your friend's father witnessed
Caruso break a goblet
by his forceful voice.
I laughed.
wishing I could break
the thin but inevitable glass
between me and your world.

[Tammy V · Rating 5 out of 5]

if you want to cover poetry by women of all nationalities the world over, from ca. 2300 B.C. to 1980 (first publication with a 2nd edition in 1992 but I don't know what was added or subtracted for that), then this is your book.

I read the book for a class, with concentration on early Sumarian, ancient Greek, Arabic (575 - 801), French and English, where we read the bulk of the class poems.

I was introduced to Linda Gregg, who I hadn't read before, and revisited Louise Bluck and Amy Lowell among many other names you would recognize immediately.

We did not read every poem, but were encourage to browse and to bring in poems not assigned in discussion; consequently, many poems I would not have read on my own came into my catalog of writers I have now heard of as well as seen their work analyzed.

I won't say that this is required reading for a poet, but I will say that it never hurts to know the genre in which you write, and that poets you've never heard of may spark your own creativity. I will keep it in my library for reference purposes.

[Brenda Damen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This father and daughter duo , Willis and Aliki Barnstone, curated poetry from everywhere in the world, and everywhere in time. I love the Sappho fragments, the shape poems, especially one called Marriage, by Mary Ellen Salt, a code poem derived from the universal language of signs and symbols, and a poem entitled "I Am Too Near" by Wislawa Szymborska, which says, in part: "I am too near for a bell dangling from my hair to chime.... He sleeps, more accessible now to her, seen but once, a cashier of a wandering circus with one lion."

[Rubel]

This is an absolutely gorgeous book.

[Valerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, exhaustive collection overall, but better as a reference material than something to pick up and enjoy like a regular poetry anthology.

[T. B. Vittini]

A fantastic anthology.

[L.A. Nichols · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best anthologies of female poets. Includes a large selection of non-European writers, which is rare in this sort of collection. Excellent introduction of female poets from across cultures and eras.

[Vex · Rating 4 out of 5]

I question some of the selections from individual poets, but it introduced me to lots of new poems and poets and covered a lot of ground and that’s ultimately what I was looking for.

[Valerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flipping through this book so I could refresh myself on some of the poems, I came across a fair number of complaints about being knocked up and forced into a nunnery. With that aside, it is a well organized look at women of the world throughout history. I've yet to find a happy book of poetry about love by women.

[Ariel Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Check out my fancy pants review on Wordpress!

In short, the editors & their choices really spoiled this book for me. There were some good introductions & some great poetry, but it was spoiled by the editorial decisions.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic collection that covers a much broader range of periods and cultures than most collections of male poets, let alone women poets. One of my favorite books; one of only two that I took with me when I moved overseas.

[Stef · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exhaustive!

[Michael Steger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb collection

[Pachyderm Bookworm · Rating 3 out of 5]

You want women's poetry? There's a'plenty here! Women's writing on everything, including everything you hope and fear!

[Granny · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my very favorite poetry anthologies -- strong, diverse voices!