IT'S A WOMAN'S WORLD, A Century of Women's Voices in Poetry - Hardcover

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9780525463283: IT'S A WOMAN'S WORLD, A Century of Women's Voices in Poetry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0525463283 ISBN 13: 9780525463283

Publisher: Dutton Juvenile, 2000

Captures the spirit of women in the world today through a collection of sixty poems by various authors, such as Adrenne Rich and Lucille Clifton.

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Review:

"No, no, my God, we want to live!
Not watch our numbers melt away.
We want to have a better world,
We want to work--we must not die!"

Written by a 12-year-old Czechoslovakian poet, Eva Pickova, from the Terezin Concentration Camp, this verse represents one young woman's will to survive amid oppression and tragic circumstances. Editor Neil Philip has collected the work of various 20th-century girl and women poets around the world who write of their personal lives and in so doing, reach women everywhere. Radical, witty, sad, curious, these 61 poems reflect a diverse group of voices, emotions, cultures. Well-known writers such as Adrienne Rich, Dorothy Parker, and Sylvia Plath grace the pages, as do less familiar but no less mighty poets from Japan to Nigeria. Stunning black and white photography accompanies each section, which is divided into intriguing categories: "Dear Female Heart," "News of a Baby," "A Freedom Song," "Domestic Economy," "Power," "I Live with a Bullet," and "The Old Woman Gathered." A beautiful gift and celebration of strength for the young women of the world. (Ages 13 and older) --Emilie Coulter

From Publishers Weekly:

This anthology of 20th-century women's poems contains an impressive sampling from poets of diverse cultures. However, Philip's (Singing America) organizing principle, how poetry of this era "shows an attitude to love and marriage that would have been unthinkable in previous generations," necessarily results in a selection that is not representative. The poems here are heavily weighted toward pessimism and discontent, with little humor or joy. Eavan Boland's "It's a Woman's World," citing women's staying power; Judith Rodriguez's "Eskimo Occasion," which celebrates the joy of a new day; and May Sarton's "On a Winter Night," in which a woman contemplates her own burning desire to live and grow as she stares into a hearth fire, are the exceptions. More common are sentiments such as those expressed in Elizabeth Riddell's bleak "News of a Baby," which opens the section on childhood. After welcoming the baby "to the world of swords/ and deadlier words" and promising other horrors, the poet concludes, "Welcome, baby, no dread thing will be omitted./ We are your eager hosts." Marvelous black-and-white photographs of intriguing women from various countries preface each section, but they sometimes belie the contents of the poems to follow. The section on falling in love and getting married, for instance, features a cheery photograph of an embracing couple to usher in such poems as Dorothy Parker's sardonic "Chant for Dark Hours": "(All your life you wait around for some damn man!)." A narrow view of 20th-century women's voices. Ages 11-up. (Feb.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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