Poems from the Women's Movement

The poetry in this book has the same flaw that many of the era has; it is pretentious and precious at the same time. For some reason, people of the mid twentieth century thought they could change the world by writing poetry no one could understand...perhaps no one understands it because it is meaningless? While the women writing this poetry were part of the woman's movement, I would be hard pressed to call it feminist poetry. Most of it seemed to revolve around the same old patriarchal structures of man/woman relationships, sex, and so forth. Some of it was lesbian poetry, but that is not enough to make something feminist. It has to have something to do with the ideas and goals of the women's movement. Being part of that doesn't show more automatically make your poetry part of the women's movement. Overall, I would say it was not particularly satisfying. show less

It's very likely that the women's movement truly began in literature and poetry for when women had the power and ability to put pen to paper is where we began to get free.

The famous lines by Muriel Rukeyser, "What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?"

(Foretelling the words "me too" by Turana Burke in 2006)

Answer: "the world would split open"