A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women

A Formal Feeling Comes: Poems in Form by Contemporary Women This is a gentle exploration of the work of women poets who write in a formal way or within a formal tradition. As well as featuring excellent poems by virtuoso formalists like Emily Dickinson, and contemporary poets in the new formalist movement like Marilyn Hacker, Annie Finch has done a great job in making available the work of these women poets. Now that so much modern free verse is merely telegraphese, what we find here is the basic notation of poetry, in its glory as sound and sense. Lovers of poetry can find here favourite sonnets by Edna St. Vincent Millay and Eleanor Wylie, and find treasures of poems made available here for the first time in one volume

This anthology is very useful to anyone who wants to read contemporary poetry in traditional forms. I like the range of poets displayed ( from Rhina Esphillat to Nikki Giovanni to Honor Moore) and the way poets bend and extend the traditional forms we usually think of as confining. The authors also give a brief commentary on their work, which helps give the reader insight into how and why poets choose certain forms.