Poetry for Students, Volume 29

Poem in Which My Legs Are Accepted Kathleen Fraser’s ‘‘Poem in Which My Legs Are Accepted’’ was first published in 1968 inThe Yo ...

verse and sang silly songs. She majored first in philosophy and then in English literature at Occidental College in California, ...

work, including ‘‘Poem in Which My Legs Are Accepted,’’ which originally appeared in Paul Carroll’s influential anthologyThe You ...

quickly revealed to be the narrator’s own legs. Whether good or not, it is clear from the first line that her legs elicit strong ...

are a backdrop to the contrasting beauty of a man’s legs. Lines 52 and 53 mention dancing, a euphemism for sex. The calm joy and ...

This new self-awareness is evident in the final two stanzas, where the narrator, still physically active, embraces the capabilit ...

works. Free verse and experimental line breaks give the poet deeper control over the cadence of language and the importance impa ...

In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was passed, which was significant for women because Title VII makes discrimination against women i ...

and as an experimental writer.’’ In response to this lack of venue for experimental feminist writ- ers, Fraser founded the avant ...

in the strength of her legs, despite her inability to make them slim, brown, and flawless, in accord with social and cultural di ...

love them for what they can do. Placing this revelation in the context of the liberation move- ment, the critic Lynn Keller note ...

encountered some ‘‘wonderfully intelligent poems’’ by Adrienne Rich. But her next important teacher, in 1963, represented a very ...

speaker has great fun leading us on, encouraging us to imagine her roles in such sensuous detail that we’re at least momentarily ...

proper possession of men. It is not surprising, then, that expectations associated with lyric— involving, for instance, closure, ...

videotape recordings by contemporary poets in North America), and founding editor of HOW(ever)(1983-1991), a much-imitated radi- ...

and attitudes, the mindset encapsulated and embodied in the grand English tradition, was a serious inhibition in the development ...

Berge, and Diane Wakoski; to Black Mountain writers such as Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, and Charles Olson; a ...

‘‘to her,’’ and ‘‘to Barbara,’’ and the title of the collection itself can be read as a punning and coded resistance to another’ ...

By the late 1970s Fraser found herself increasingly reluctant to submit her work to male editors and no longer found it possible ...

set the pattern for her future books, each of which deliberately pursues a course of discovery implicit in her earlier work—and ...