CONTEMPORARY poetry by women worldwide is, of course, common, now that women’s voices in literature from diverse nations are quite normal. But if we insist that it is the informative and perceptive quality of poetry that is a priority, and not the gender, sexual orientation, or race it comes from, then our discovery of such a priority will probably depend on a fraction of such published poetry.
One exemplary home of such poetry is, again, the USA, where, for a while, it seemed as if black poets were destined or compelled to see themselves vis-à-vis whites, or forever oppressed by them.
Not so anymore, as a bonanza of exciting poetry collections by new female and male Black-American poets writing on any topic, but perhaps, more importantly, looking at themselves both self-critically and positively, have emerged with an approach to verse as informative as journalism, and descriptive and tonal as the best avant-garde fiction.

New feminine poetry
Of such black female poets, the books of Rita Dove, June Jordan, Marilyn Nelson, Patricia Smith, among others, stand out. Rita Dove, in fact, has been Poet Laureate of the United States during the past decade, and also an editor of ‘The Best American Poetry 2000’, a yearly edition of the most amazing new poetics and poetry in the USA.
Have women poets advanced the descriptive prose poetry narrative tradition inherited from Whitman, Baudelaire, Saint John Perse, Pound, etc? Leading American women poets have realised that the usual slim format restricts their freedom to explore in poetry.
Jorie Graham’s collections arrest everyone with their freewheeling Whitmanesque lines which command us once we read. And this refers especially to men, because her poems erase the vanity of possessiveness, not as physical pleasure, but as omnipotent desire.
‘THE ERRANCY’ is one of her many outstanding collections which reads like a never ending obsession to know exactly what she means. If you have read the amazing Marianne Moore, an earlier 20th Century American poetess, then you have experienced one of the greatest American poets whose influence registered on Graham.
‘The Errancy’ begins with the poem, ‘The Guardian Angel of the Little Utopia’, and immediately plays with sexual significations:
‘Shall I move the flowers again?/Shall I put them further to the left/Into the light?’
In another poem called ‘Untitled One’, she really confronts the ultimate quest of her own exploratory writing; she writes:
‘I tried to feel the days go one without me…/The small hole inside I’m supposed to love /I tried to house it – no, I tried to gorge it/I hovered around it with sentences, to magnify the drama.’
Jorie Graham’s poems are questions upon questions. She has made a whole poetic style out of questions. She empties us of our naïve desire for make-believe absolutes and perfect answers; but by doing this, she is not negative or being negative; she clears the table for fresh food offered to body and soul, and the reader’s mind is now at the same liberated threshold as the poet’s. After all their anxiety and tension, her poems leave us relaxed and cleansed. Yet they are not held together by a framework of formal metre, but a framework of focused thought and observation flowing and ebbing.

Diane Wakoski
Since 1962, Diane Wakoski, of California, has made her books unique by projecting herself in easily-read but highly visual imaginative, perceptive and sensitive poetry. Her works not only look at American culture, its heroes, unconventional social lifestyles, etc with iconoclastic wit, but aids our quest for a pleasurable personal culture and lifestyle, incorporating the influence of high-quality films, literature, visual art, cuisine, and love affairs.
In one of her delightful collections of a substantial 184 pages, ‘ARGONAUT ROSE’ of 1998, some of her poems bring to life characters found in unique 20th Century American figurative paintings, such as this one by Edward Hopper, with customers sitting at a nighttime snack bar; it’s called ‘Sitting at Hopper’s Marble Top table’. She writes:
‘Once she felt as if the sun gave her a glaze/that any lover would lick off, that anyone would want to taste…/She will enjoy knowing life is only a/doorway/to art, that it is an echo, a reminder, a suggestion/at its richest, an innuendo!’
In another brilliant poem (and they are often three or four pages long) called ‘Night blooming jasmine: The myth of Rebirth in Berkeley, California’, she writes:
‘No, she is going for The New York Times, she’s slim/in her dark clothes, she has cheek bones and ankles/that the screen will notice./She is not made to protest/war or loss of free speech, she is made for a dark espresso/bar, a grocery/smelling of fresh pasta and tins of tomato paste.’
Her poems go right to the heart of lifestyles which perhaps became trendy in California long before other places automatically followed, due to the spread of urban social trends. Her poems make witty comments on men, sometimes ‘ex’ lovers turned ‘gay’ men, etc, and women who continue to find comfort and pleasure in an ordinary ‘straight’ world.
In ‘Costa Rican Coffee’, she writes:
‘How lucky you are in this loveless world/to have a cup of coffee to start the day…/ you aren’t in a movie, you aren’t/rich or happy, you aren’t/even doing something meaningful with your life. It’s just/a new day, and you remember that/the arms which held you/during the night/have been missing for centuries.’
Women poets mentioned here, especially Dove, Jordan, Graham and Wakoski, have produced collections of narrative quality and length more interesting and exciting than many novels.