The Feminist Avant-Garde In American Poetry

The Feminist Avant-Garde in American Poetry offers a historical and theoretical account of avant-garde women poets in America from the 1910s through the 1990s and asserts an alternative tradition to the predominantly male-dominated avant-garde movements. Elisabeth Frost argues that this alternative lineage distinguishes itself by its feminism and its ambivalence toward existing avant-garde projects; she also thoroughly explores feminist avant-garde poets' debts and contributions to their male counterparts.
Frost focuses not on one particular “writing community” but on a diverse group of poets—Gertrude Stein, Mina Loy, Sonia Sanchez, Susan Howe, and Harryette Mullen—who make language the site of feminist politics. Her study also captures the range of aesthetics and politics that appears in the work of avant-garde women poets. In detailed close readings, Frost shows that throughout the eighty years addressed in this study, feminist avant-gardists have refuted traditional notions of female identity, producing texts that defy essentialist ideas and work against the gender differences built into language.
The Feminist Avant-Garde in American Poetry challenges the ways in which avant-garde writing has been defined and categorized, particularly in relating radical form and radical politics. This exploration expands traditional conceptions of feminism and feminist poetics in relation to avant-garde theories and practices. It also addresses issues of gender and race, thereby allowing for discussion of a rich range of feminist and linguistic concerns.
This fresh and significant study will be of great interest to scholars and students of poetry, literary criticism, and women's studies.