Introduction / Molly McQuade
"It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind" / Elizabeth Macklin
Vesuvius at home : the power of Emily Dickinson / Adrienne Rich
The difficult miracle of Black poetry in America, or, Something like a sonnet for Phillis Wheatley / June Jordan
Being a dragon : on Marianne Moore / Cynthia Zarin
My Plath problem / April Bernard
"Either I'm nobody, or I'm a nation" / Rita Dove
Edwin Muir and the primal world / Mary Kinzie
A meditation on metaphor / Alicia Ostriker
Some notes on silence / Jorie Graham
A cadenced privacy / Brenda Hillman
Use this word in a sentence : experimental / Ann Lauterbach
Myself a kangaroo among beauties / Lucie Brock-broido
A genuine article / Heather McHugh
Confessions of a postmodern poetess / Annie Finch
Playing the changes / Eleanor Wilner
La Faustienne / Lyn Hejinian
Xio's soakbook : criticism takes a bath / S.X. Rosenstock
Against decoration / Mary Karr
Poetry, mattering? / Susan Wheeler
Letter to a young woman poet / Eavan Boland
A student's memoir of Muriel Rukeyser / Sharon Olds
Poetry is not a luxury / Audre Lorde
Meditations on "Mecca" : Gwendolyn Brooks and the responsibilities of the Black poet / Elizabeth Alexander
69 hidebound opinions, propositions, and several asides from a manila folder concerning the stuff of poetry / C.D. Wright
Short survey of scruples / Molly McQuade
On being unable to read / Valerie Cornell.
