Overview

Positioning poet Ruth Whitman as a necessary and radical voice within the American poetry canon. Ruth Whitman's poetry and other creative work have left an undeniable mark on twentieth-century literature. Known as a poet and a translator of Yiddish poetry, Whitman was intensely interested in gender and women's stories. For the first time in a single volume, readers can engage with her eight published books of poetry as well as the never-before-seen Atlantic Light and her prose practicum, Becoming a Poet. The first half of the collection contains persona poems of fascinating women—from Tamsen Donner of the ill-fated Donner Party, to Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut, to modern dancer Isadora Duncan. The second half takes up many themes, including Jewishness, domestic life, and motherhood. Whitman's distinctive methods and influences, alongside her unique poetic technique, make clear her commitment to expanding the boundaries of poetic form as well as exploring gender, family, the self, creativity, mortality, and memory in poetry. This text firmly positions Whitman as a necessary and radical voice within the American poetry canon.

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9780814352458

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Reviews

Becoming a Poet is an exciting, instructive, readable guide to the poetic process, from its inception to the finished poem. -- ""The Writer"" A work of beauty and force . . . a major achievement. -- ""Booklist"" Ruth Whitman has recreated the journal that Tamsen Donner lost on her nightmarish journey to California in 1846. . . . The journal, transforming historical fact into poetic insight, is a testimony to optimism, dogged survival, integrity, and courage of a woman pioneer. -- ""The Boston Globe"" She celebrates rich emotion yielding the most meaningful love--the verse itself has a deceptive simplicity, hiding allusiveness behind a straightforward style and unaffectedly uniting rhythm and subject matter. -- ""The Saturday Review"" With this book . . . she takes her place as a notable poet on the American scene. -- ""The Boston Globe""

Author Information

Ruth Whitman (1922–99) was a renowned poet, translator, and performer. She published fourteen volumes of poetry—original works and several translations of Yiddish poetry, including An Anthology of Modern Yiddish Poetry (Wayne State University Press). Whitman won numerous awards, fellowships, and grants, including a 1984–85 Senior Fulbright Writer-in-Residence Fellowship to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a 1974–75 National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Grant. During her career, Whitman taught at many universities, including Harvard, Radcliffe, and MIT. David Houghton is an adjunct professor of English in New England. He coauthored The Chinese of the Mendocino Coast with Dorothy Bear and teaches writing, rhetoric, and literature. He is the son of Ruth Whitman.

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