Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Eighteenth-century Women Poets , edited by Roger Lonsdale, is an eye-opener. Julia Briggs described it in The Times as "a brilliant and original anthology." Both epithets are just. It is original for no one before Lonsdale thought to look at eighteenth-century poetry by women for anything more than historical interest. The anthology is also brilliant because the discriminating taste of its editor ensured a selection of the liveliest and wittiest poetry of the time. The poetry becomes its own argument for its continued relevance and strength. The voices, from a cross-section of classes, are varied and individual, particularly those of Annie Finch (Countess of Winchilsea), Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Mary Jones, Mary Leapor, Susanna Blamire, Anna Lestitia Barbauld, Anna Seward, Charlotte Smith, Ann Yearsley, Elizabeth Hands. Even lesser talents are represented by one or two of their most distinctive contributions.  Lonsdale's informative introduction gives the hist...

I Do, I Do In me (the worm) clearly is no righteousness, but this— persistence             H.D., “The Walls Do Not Fall” I’m eating my way through the books of dead women poets— Aemilia Lanyer’s garden where Eve is blameless the robin-eye in Elizabeth Bishop Phillis Wheatley’s bird- of-paradise the swart swan song by Marianne Moore Anna Wickham’s strangled cry the tunes of Li Qingzhao Annie Finch, not the American anthologist, the Countess of Winchilsea the living are eaten too Elisabeth Bletsoe’s Sherborne Woodcock, Pied Wagtail, Starling Molly Peacock Rita Dove And one born in Ghana whose name is a birdcall Ata Ama Aidoo

Pleasures and Praise and Plenty If they’re denied, I on myself can live —Annie Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, “On Myself” Plenty I can do without, having dined with less. If truth be told, a cast-off jacket suits me best. Praise is harder to surrender, the sweet reply, the world’s applause, but recognition is not I. Most sore it is to be denied, most sorry be, the morning sun that filters through the locust tree and so is altered as it alters everywhere the Baptist church, the balding head, the baby chair.