Lyric Interventions: Feminism, Experimental Poetry, and Contemporary Discourse Review

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(More customer reviews)In five chapters Linda Kinnahan explores linguistically innovative poetry by contemporary women in North America and Britain that represents feminist reconsiderations of the lyric subject. Kinnahan discusses women avant-garde poets within a critical discourse largely centered upon men until the past five years or so; calls attention to innovative women poets advancing a feminist sensibility; considers an experimental alternative to male-centered narratives and theorizations of Language writing; and discusses women's innovative poetry to include the British context.

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Lyric Interventions explores linguistically innovativepoetry by contemporary women in North America and Britain whoseexperiments give rise to fresh feminist readings of the lyric subject.The works discussed by Linda Kinnahan explore the lyric subject inrelation to the social: an "I" as a product of social discourse and as aconduit for change.

Contributing to discussions of language-oriented poetriesthrough its focus on women writers and feminist perspectives, this studyof lyric experimentation brings attention to the cultural contexts ofnation, gender, and race as they significantly shift the terms by whichthe "experimental" is produced, defined, and understood.

This study focuses upon lyric intervention in distinct butrelated spheres as they link public and ideological norms of identity.Firstly, lyric innovations with visual and spatial realms of culturalpractice and meaning, particularly as they naturalize ideologies ofgender and race in North America and the post-colonial legacies of theCaribbean, are investigated in the works of Barbara Guest, KathleenFraser, Erica Hunt, and M. Nourbese Philip. Secondly, experimentalengagements with nationalist rhetorics of identity, marking the works ofCarol Ann Duffy, Denise Riley, Wendy Mulford, and Geraldine Monk, areexplored in relation to contemporary evocations of "self" in Britain.And thirdly, in discussions of all of the poets, but particularlyaccenuated in regard to Guest, Fraser, Riley, Mulford, and Monk, formalexperimentation with the lyric "I" is considered through genderedencounters with critical and avant-garde discourses of poetics.

Throughout the study, Kinnahan seeks to illuminate andchallenge the ways in which visual and verbal constructs function tomake "readable" the subjectivities historically supporting white,male-centered power within the worlds of art, poetry, social locations,or national policy. The potential of the feminist, innovative lyric togenerate linguistic surprise simultaneously with engaging riskystrategies of social intervention lends force and significance to thepublic engagement of such poetic experimentation.

This fresh, energetic study will be of great interest toliterary critics and womens studies scholars, as well as poets on bothsides of the Atlantic.