The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women

by Susan Aizenberg (Editor), Erin Belieu (Editor), Jeremy Countryman (With)

Overview

A collection of nearly 400 poems by more than 100 different writers, The Extraordinary Tide synthesizes and celebrates an entire era of poetry by women in America. Long overdue, the anthology includes America's most recognized poets as well as those emerging as exciting new artists of contemporary verse.

Featuring recent work by poets as aesthetically diverse as Ai, Jane Kenyon, Ann Lauterbach, Carolyn Forché, and Leslie Scalapino, the collection is the most complete map now available of a vastly underexplored landscape in American writing. Also included are poems by Julia Alvarez, Lucille Clifton, Alice Fulton, Tess Gallagher, Amy Gerstler, Jane Hirschfield, Heather McHugh, Alice Notley, Lucia Perillo, Marie Ponsot, Mary Jo Salter, Ellen Bryant Voigt, C. D. Wright, and many others.

"The delights of this anthology are in its plurality, its collection of such a rich and varied sampling of that tide flooding American shores."—from the Foreword by Eleanor Wilner, author of Otherwise and Sarah's Choice

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231119634
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	03/14/2001
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	6.04(w) x 8.97(h) x 1.03(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Susan Aizenberg is assistant professor of english and creative writing at Creighton University and the poetry editor of The Nebraska Review, both in Omaha, Nebraska. Her poems have appeared in places such as Chelsea, ONTHEBUS, Prairie Schooner, and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Her collection of poems, Peru, appeared as part of the Graywolf Press Take 3 Series. She teaches at Creighton University.Erin Belieu, a contributing editor at AGNI, The Kenyon Review, and The Journal, teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Ohio University. Belieu is the author of two poetry collections from Copper Canyon Press, One Above & One Below(2000) and Infanta (1995), which was a selection of the National Poetry Series. Her poems have appeared in places such as The New York Times, The Yale Review, TriQuarterly and The Atlantic Monthly.

Table of Contents

Marjorie Agosin
Ai
Susan Aizenberg
Sandra Alcosser
Elizabeth Alexander
Pamela Alexander
Julia Alvarez
Angela Ball
Dorothy Barresi
Robin Becker
Erin Belieu
Linda Bierds
Chana Bloch
Michelle Boisseau
Catherine Bowman
Luci Brock-Broido
Olga Broumas
Teresa Cader
Marilyn Chin —Lucille Clifton
Judith Ortiz Cofer
Martha Collins
Jane Cooper
Kate Daniels
Madeline DeFrees
Toi Derricotte
Deborah Digges
Rita Dove
Nancy Eimers
Lynn Emanuel
Angie Estes
Kathy Fagan
Canice Favilla
Carolyn Forché
Alice Fulton
Tess Gallagher
Amy Gerstler
Patricia Goedicke
Beckian Fritz Goldberg
Jorie Graham
Linda Gregerson
Linda Gregg
Marilyn Hacker
Rachel Hadas
Kimiko Hahn
Susan Hahn
Brenda Hillman
Jane Hirshfield
Linda Hogan
Janet Holmes
Fanny Howe
Marie Howe
Lynda Hull
Barbara Jordan
Allison Joseph
Brigit Pegeen Kelly
Jane Kenyon
Mary Kinzie
Carolyn Kizer
Maxine Kumin
Ann Lauterbach
Dorianne Laux
Cleopatra Mathis
Gail Mazur
Heather McHugh
Lynne McMahon
Sandra McPherson
Jane Miller
Susan Mitchell
Thylias Moss
Lisel Mueller
Laura Mullen
Carol Muske
Marilyn Nelson
Alice Notley
Naomi Shihab Nye
Sharon Olds
Jacqueline Osherow
Alicia Suskin Ostriker
Linda Pastan
Molly Peacock
Lucia Perillo
Marie Ponsot
Minnie Bruce Pratt
Claudia Rankine
Hilda Raz
Martha Rhodes
Adrienne Rich
Mary Ruefle
Kay Ryan
Mary Jo Salter
Leslie Scalapino
Grace Schulman
Maureen Seaton
Rebecca Seiferle
Vivian Shipley
Aleda Shirley
Betsy Sholl
Maurya Simon
Cathy Song
Elizabeth Spires
Pamela Stewart
Susan Stewart
Ruth Stone
Stephanie Strickland
Terese Svoboda
Ann Townsend
Chase Twichell
Leslie Ullman
Jean Valentine
Mona Van Duyn
Ellen Bryant Voigt
Belle Waring
Rosanna Warren
Rachel Wetzsteon
Susan Wheeler
Elanor Wilner
C. D. Wright

What People are Saying About This

Sherod Santos

Reluctant as American poetry has been to embrace its own majority, the almost inestimable variety, abundance, and accomplishment of this anthology makes one shudder to think how half-hearted our national literature would be without the voices that are gathered here. It's as if, at last, Eurydice had cleared the vast silence of the underworld, and in so doing she has fashioned a music that enlarges the voice in all of us.

— Sherod Santos, author of The Pilot Star Elegies

Rafael Campo

Stunning in its accomplishment and breathtaking in scope, The Extraordinary Tide is an anthology like no other: rather than merely defining some very particular territory, the work of the women writers gathered herein in fact gorgeously illuminates all of contemporary American letters.... Utterly necessary reading for all of us, who have learned from the likes of Dickinson and Bishop, whose distinguished company is joined by these diverse and essential writers of our time.

— Rafael Campo, author of Diva and What the Body Told

From the Publisher

This long-overdue anthology... is truly extraordinary in regards to the sheer scope and variety found in its poets and poems.

Editorial Reviews

It has been too long since such a comprehensive collection was published, and anyone who cares about women's poetry should read it.... This book deserves a place on your bookshelf alongside the Norton and Oxford anthologies.

San Diego Union Tribune

The Extraordinary Tide is an extraordinary and important anthology that anyone interested in contemporary American poetry will want to read and cherish. The voices in this book are diverse; the kinds of poems gathered here are various in style and subject. But the one assumption that underlies and animates every line of every poem is that inclusiveness, intellectual and imaginative restlessness, impurity and radical play are the life blood of our language and our literature, renewing the very conventions and traditions they resist. Contemporary American women poets have given a great gift to all students of poetry, to all of us who go to poetry for news of what it means to be a human being at this moment in our history.

Alan Shapiro

It has been too long since such a comprehensive collection was published, and anyone who cares about women's poetry should read it.... This book deserves a place on your bookshelf alongside the Norton and Oxford anthologies.

San Diego Union-Tribune

Reluctant as American poetry has been to embrace its own majority, the almost inestimable variety, abundance, and accomplishment of this anthology makes one shudder to think how half-hearted our national literature would be without the voices that are gathered here. It's as if, at last, Eurydice had cleared the vast silence of the underworld, and in so doing she has fashioned a music that enlarges the voice in all of us.

Sherod Santos

Stunning in its accomplishment and breathtaking in scope, The Extraordinary Tide is an anthology like no other: rather than merely defining some very particular territory, the work of the women writers gathered herein in fact gorgeously illuminates all of contemporary American letters. . . . Utterly necessary reading for all of us, who have learned from the likes of Dickinson and Bishop, whose distinguished company is joined by these diverse and essential writers of our time.

Rafael Campo

One had hoped that by this time there would be no need for an anthology like The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women, but its existence testifies to the continuing negative gender politics of poetry. Poet and Nebraska Review poetry editor Susan Aizenberg and poet Erin Belieu (Infanta) have brought together more than 400 poems by 118 poets; anyone who has doubted the richness of poetry by women in the U.S. will no longer be able to do so, despite the paucity of work by experimentalists. ( Apr.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

There is no political or thematic agenda for the anthology, no aesthetic or prosodic unanimity to its styles or substance. The only purpose is to gather such a company into a single volume to record the accomplishments of the last few decades. Some 120 poets contribute one to five poems each. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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