Coming to Light: American Women Poets in the Twentieth Century

by Diane Wood Middlebrook (Editor), Marilyn Yalom (Editor)

This collection of 16 essays discusses the broad relationship of women poets to the American literary tradition

This collection of sixteen essays helps bring light to questions central to feminist criticism of poetry: How have women achieved distinction as poets in a tradition scarce in exemplary women? How does their poetry derive from specifically female experience in our polarized gender system?

Coming to Light considers the work of Elizabeth Bishop, Louise Bogan, Lucille Clifton, H.D., Denise Levertov, Mina Loy, Marianne Moore, Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, Anne Sexton, and Native American poets, as well as the broad relationship of women poets to American literary tradition.

“An extremely important book, both in illuminating feminist poetics and in providing a historical overview of women poets in the 20th century – from Mina Loy’s revolutionary erotic free verse to Anne Sexton’s ironic restructuring of myth in her Transformations… A feast of information and insight.”
– Choice

288 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1985

About the author

Middlebrook, who taught at Stanford for 35 years, was perhaps best known for Anne Sexton: A Biography. Its intense scrutiny of the poet's life made it "one of the turning points of late 20th-century biography," according to the newspaper. Middlebrook published several other well-received biographies and works of criticism, and was known for funding various arts organizations and literary salons for women. Born in Pocatello, Idaho, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Washington in 1961 and earned her Ph.D. from Yale in 1968. She married Carl Djerassi, inventor of the birth-control pill in 1985.