Our focus is poetry from the last three decades-we begin with Sylvia Plath's Ariel, composed in 1962, and end with Rita Dove's Pulitzer prize-winning Thomas and Beulah, published in 1987. Many of the poets we study have won major prizes and have provoked responses from other poets and critics that testify to their significance in opening new directions for contemporary poetry-Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich.

While women poets clearly read, borrow from, and themselves often influence poetry written by men, their work, read together, demonstrates striking resemblances that feminist critics have described as a "female literary tradition." Other questions that feminist critics have developed for exploring the significance of gender in literary creativity include what it might mean to read and write as a woman in a range of artistic, historical, and cultural contexts: the experiences of being mother and daughter, the poetic responsibilities of being a political actor or historical witness, the changing forms of filial and sexual love in the late twentieth century.

For several women poets, constructing a personal identity as poet and woman has involved negotiating cultural inheritances. We'll see how gender intersects with ethnicity in the work of Audre Lorde, Cathy Song, Louise Erdrich, Yvonne Sapia, and Rita Dove. Our primary purpose will be to analyze how individual poets and poems work, what makes each poet's voice, subjects, and treatment distinctive.

No matter the size of the course, the format will include occasional lectures, regular discussion, and in-class work in small groups. I'll expect you to be a productive member of a discussion group and to be responsible for the regular critique of other students' essays. Writing for the course will include two analytical essays (5-8 pages) written through the draft method, short written responses (ungraded but required) to 5 of the 10 poets we study, and a comprehensive essay final exam.

Not open to first-year students. Prerequisite: at least one college literature course.