Marianne Moore is one of the most accomplished female American poets (as well as simply American poets), but she is not alone. Her sisters in verse stretch back to the pre-Revolutionary era and have shaped and enriched the genre as much as their male counterparts. The fact that they have done so in a highly patriarchal, male-genius-oriented field is even more of a testament to the breadth of their ambition and vision.
The two most notable early poets are Phillis Wheatley and Anne Bradstreet. Wheatley (1753-1784) was notable not just for her gender but for her race: she was an African-American slave in colonial America. Wheatley was probably kidnapped and most certainly experienced the Middle Passage, but she enjoyed a relatively comfortable and privileged life with the couple that purchased her. She was educated and began to write and publish poetry; her verse is often religious, and while it does deal with Africa and some other racial/gender issues, it is not particularly critical.
Anne Bradstreet traveled to the New World with John Winthrop on the Arbella, and settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She was a loving wife and mother and often wrote of her husband and children. Her poems are infused with Puritan doctrine, but are surprisingly honest about her religious doubts and worldly concerns. She openly admired Queen Elizabeth I and wrote a poem about that female monarch, as well as reflective poems about her poetry.
In the antebellum and Civil War era, the most notable female poet is, of course, Emily Dickinson (1830-1886). A brilliant but reclusive young woman, Dickinson was educated and well-read, but did not engage much with the outside world. Upon her death her family discovered about 1800 poems bound together in “fascicles;” they were not titled and had unique structures and punctuation. The first edition of her work was released in 1890, although early editors often altered her work to have more traditional form. She is revered for her phenomenal originality, precise and lucid images, metaphysical ruminations, and startling metaphors.
Much of women’s literary accomplishments in the decades following the Civil War tended to be in the form of novels and other prose writings, but a few women distinguished themselves as poets. Louisa May Alcott wrote some poetry, as did Julia Ward Howe and Margaret Fuller. Emma Lazarus was one of the most prominent poets of her day, revered in literary circles and one of the country’s most distinguished 19th century Jewish Americans. Encouraged by her father to write, Lazarus composed poems in her teenage years and continued to write for the rest of her life. She is perhaps best known for “The New Colossus,” which appears on the Statue of Liberty.
