Women Poets and Feminism
Before the 1960s, most women poets had adhered to an androgynous ideal, believing that gender made no difference in artistic excellence. This gender-blind position was, in effect, an early form of feminism that allowed women to argue for equal rights. By the late l960s, American women - many active in the civil rights struggle and protests against the Vietnam conflict, or influenced by the counterculture - had begun to recognize their own marginalization. Betty Friedan's outspoken The Feminine Mystique (1963), published in the year Sylvia Plath committed suicide, decried women's low status. Another landmark book, Kate Millett's Sexual Politics (1969), made a case that male writings revealed a pervasive misogyny, or contempt for women.
Besides the previously mentioned ones, other distinguished women poets of the period were Amy Clampitt, Rita Dove, Louise Glorie Graham, Carolyn Kizer, Maxine Kumin, Denise Levertov, Audre Lorde, May Swenson, and Mona Van Duyn.
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