Cheryl Walker

I adore this anthology, partly because it shuns Emily Dickinson in favor of the female poets she overshadowed and partly because Walker takes mostly secular poems, many of them rife with the beginning of feminism.

I am taking a survey of 19th and 20th century American poetry and read this anthology as part of a class project. I was initially disappointed at being assigned this anthology because I had been hoping for Amy Lowell's imagism anthology. However, after reading and annotating the diversity of poems in this anthology, I am glad to have been assigned it. I actually enjoyed reading these women's poetry more so than Whitman, Melville, Whittier, Emerson, Longfellow, and the other hegemonic poets of the time.

Walker's aim was to illuminate the reading public of the popular female poets of the nineteenth century and remember the work of those who deserve another chance in the spotlight. I am thankful she edited and assembled the way she did, for I now have a few new favorite poets!… (more)