Jayne Cortez, Adrienne Rich, and the Feminist Superhero (eBook)

This collection of essays on the topics of feminist voice, vision, and performance in political poetries by Jayne Cortez and Adrienne Rich includes visual art and commentary by the feminist sculptor Linda Stein. The book examines the rise of the American popular-culture female superhero—notably, Wonder Woman—exploring the textuality of female-poetic activism through this superhero theme.

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One a lyric confessional poet and essayist, the other a jazz spoken-word performance artist, Adrienne Rich and Jayne Cortez were American feminist superheroes who produced extensive bodies of poetic work that reveal strangely overlapping visions, but in radically different voices and poetic styles. This book reconsiders the poetry activism of Cortez and Rich side-by-side, engaging poetics theory, cultural studies, and popular media in its literary analyses. A collection of eight integrated chapters by multiple poetry critics, as well as an artist-statement narrative by Wonder Woman sculptor Linda Stein, the book focuses upon the voice of bravado, the various calls for global justice, and Third Wave feminist intersectional critiques all embodied within these two womens poetic texts. The book also examines the twentieth-century figure of the American superhero, particularly Wonder Woman, bringing popular-culture studies into conversation with literary criticism, as well as visual art through the inclusion of Steins commentary and illustrations. This beautiful and compelling book experiments with the festschrift concept by inviting multiple and competing disciplinary views on U.S. feminist poetics, womens art and aesthetics, racial and sexual identities, as well as politics and performanceall in tribute to the power of poetry by Cortez and Rich.