Experiments in poetic biography: Feminist threads in contemporary long form poetry

This essay examines a selection of long poems by contemporary women poets that represent examples of "poetic biography," to consider the diversity of ways in which feminist poets are writing/documenting the lives of histori- cal figures. Scholars have variously addressed connections between feminist theory and biography writing. Sara Alpern et al. explore how "[f]eminist bi- ographers are not only restoring 'invisible' women to the record but enlarg- ing our perspective of the record" (6), while the Personal Narratives Group considers the ways in which "[t]he feminist revision of the search for knowl- edge has sent us to new methods and new places, and has encouraged the hunt for new sources of insight into women's realities" (263).1 These attempts to examine formal, stylistic, and research innovations undertaken by (mostly female) authors who are writing about the lives of women subjects, however, do not address the potential for poetry to expand the field of biographical writing in relation to the female historical voice (as both the writer and the written). This essay is interested in such an investigation, and how poetry offers unique and adaptable frameworks for the poet's singular encounter/s with the subject