Selected Poems

by Aphra Behn, Malcolm Hicks (Editor)

In this collection Aphra Behn wittily negotiates the complexities and ironies of womens' roles in a society in which honor is a commodity. Candid and subtle, her poetry speaks with a distinctive, vigorous intelligence and satirical edge. This generous selection includes an introduction that sets her work in context, and provides notes on the text and suggestions for further reading.

Genres: Poetry, Feminism

102 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Aphra Behn, or Ayfara Behn, of the first professional women authors in English on Britain wrote plays, poetry, and her best known work, the prose fiction Oroonoko (1688).

Aphra Behn was a prolific dramatist of the Restoration and was one of the female. Her contributed to the amatory genre of literature. People sometimes refer to Delarivier Manley, Eliza Haywood, and her as part of "the fair triumvirate of wit."

In reckoning of Adeline Virginia Stephen Woolf, more important total career of Behn produced any particular work. Woolf wrote, "All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn … for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds." Victoria Mary Sackville-West called Behn "an inhabitant of Grub Street with the best of them, … a phenomenon never seen and … furiously resented." Felix Shelling called her "a very gifted woman, compelled to write for bread in an age in which literature … catered habitually to the lowest and most depraved of human inclinations. Her success depended upon her ability to write like a man." Edmund Gosse remarked that "the George Sand of the Restoration" lived the bohemian life in London in the 17th century as Paris two centuries later.

Reviews

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aphra Behn's poetry is not what you would expect from a poet in the 1600s she writes about male impotence and lesbianism and hemaphrodites and frankly writes about her attitudes and is not all restricted by her class or gender in a period where many current readers would expect her to have been vilified because of her subject matter

[Salomeja Sandroschvili]

All trembling in my arms Aminta lay...

[Sophie · Rating 5 out of 5]

what a queen

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

She’s skillful, and whilst many of the subjects don’t hold my interest, her confident intelligence shines through
A letter to the earl of Kildare, persuading him not to marry Moll Howard - it’s spectacular: “horns, horns, by wholesale, will adorn your brows, if ever you make that rampant whore your spouse”
She has something to say - and the way she writes to towhees, to appreciate their translation on Greek myth, to pass comment on affairs of the day, to give advice on matters of life and love, paints a picture of a confident woman in her prime

.” Love Armed” and “The Return” are modern, emotive, you can feel the woman present in the poetry.
“The Disappointment” is brilliant. “Her fair hand withdrew
Finding that god of her desires
Disarmed if all his awful fires”
On a locket of hair wove in a true loves knot
Song