(Ebook) The Feminist Avant-Garde In American Poetry by Elisabeth A. Frost ISBN 9780877458364, 0877458367

(Ebook) The Feminist Avant-Garde In American Poetry by Elisabeth A. Frost ISBN 9780877458364, 0877458367

This work 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 towards 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 80 years addressed in this study, feminist avant-gardists have refuted traditional notions of femals identity, producing texts that defy essentialist ideas and work against the gender difference built into language.