Ten Greatest Women Poets

TEN GREATEST WOMEN POETS

In celebration of World Poetry Day on March 21, 2019:

1. Sappho (630-580 BCE)

2. Saint Mary, Mother of Jesus (c. 1st century)

3. Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179)

4. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (1648-1695)

5. Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)

6. Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

7. Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)

8. Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941)

9. Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

10. Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

We apply the same evaluative criteria as the first two indicated for the ten greatest poets, namely:

1. Influence on world culture

2. Critical legacy

See: https://poetryofgonzalinhodacosta.blogspot.com/2018/06/ten-greatest-poets.html

Conspicuously, our selection is based on the Western canon, the principal reason being the dearth of influence of non-Western women poets beyond their original culture.

This absence or deficiency we attribute principally to two factors. First is the lack of popular dissemination of their work, a deficit that is being rapidly made up today. Second, women poets as a rule have not been visible or prominent because of historical patriarchy. Their eminence presently may be ascribed to the rise of widespread women’s literacy starting in the late nineteenth century in the West.

Some remarks.

Saint Mary, Mother of Jesus

The Blessed Virgin Mary, who is the subject of veneration in the Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and related churches, is not often regarded as a poet. On the other hand, the Magnificat, a famous canticle in the gospel of Saint Luke, is directly ascribed to her, although we acknowledge the mythic character of this attribution.

Regularly celebrated in Christian liturgy today, the Magnificat is expounded by postmodern theologians the likes of Gustavo Gutiérrez or Elizabeth Johnson, who see contemporary and especially political relevance in the verses. Because of the undiminished influence and importance of this prayer until the present day, we are persuaded to include in our top ten women poets, Saint Mary, Mother of Jesus.

Saint Hildegard of Bingen

The medieval period in Europe witnessed a unique event in history: the emergence of Christendom, defined as the complementary rule of the Church and the State, the sacerdotium and imperium, respectively.

Our understanding of Christendom, however, is broader and deeper, because it is not limited to the political or religious spheres. “Christendom” describes the interpenetration of entire societies by social mores founded on Christianity and prolific cultural advancement based on the same. By “Christendom,” we mean a unity among geographically proximate peoples that was not simply political, religious, or more accurately, politico-religious, extending from the rulers to the population at large, but rather a wholesale cultural ethos, giving rise to efflorescence in the intellectual and creative arts, and to some extent in related science and technology.

A conscious effort was made to select for the list a representative from this unique and defining period in history, and fortunately, we found one in Saint Hildegard of Bingen, a polymath of sorts who left her enduring mark as a writer, composer, philosopher, theologian, scientist, physician, and mystic.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Is there a female Shakespeare?

More than one Anglophone candidate can be said to claim this status among women. None are from the English Renaissance.

We ruled out most writers from the modern and postmodern periods—late nineteenth century onwards—because we limited our selection to someone who, like Shakespeare, wrote traditional poetry.

Christina Rossetti, who, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, received critical acclaim during her lifetime, is a major contender for the title. Rossetti epitomizes Victorian zeitgeist. Barrett Browning, on the other hand, exemplifies English Romanticism, which, notably, is still popular today.

Ongoing feminist criticism discovers contemporary value in both poets’ work. Significantly, Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese continues to be loved, admired, and read by a wide audience, and it is the tipping point in her favor.

Edna St. Vincent Millay is an early modern poet gifted in the traditional lyric. Although she dealt with traditional themes like love, death, and nature, they are colored by her attitudes and sensibilities, which are unmistakably modern, for example, she resorts to sexually explicit language. In the end it is her ambiguity—she is neither here nor there, fully traditional or entirely modern—that works against her selection.

Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva

Of the six members of the list from the modern period of Western history, i.e. beginning from the Renaissance, two, Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva, are not Anglophones. They were selected because their influence extends significantly beyond Russia and the Russian language.

We don’t believe we can say the same for the influence of other non-English speaking and writing poets, a situation that should change over time as they become better known.

Poetry magazine observes that Akhmatova “is regarded as one of the greatest Russian poets” and describes Tsvetaeva as “one of the most renowned poets of 20th-century Russia.”

Ruth Padel, for example, of The Guardian includes Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva among her top ten women poets.

Sylvia Plath

Confessional poetry has always been around if by “confessional” we mean involving personal, intimate, or private disclosure. Sappho’s erotic songs or Shakespeare’s love sonnets, for example, readily qualify as “confessional.”

The confessional poetry of twentieth-century America is distinguished because it deals with extreme and sometimes taboo subject matter, such as psychological trauma, abuse, sex, mental illness, or suicide.

It is existentialist angst in literary cast, one bleak endpoint of a trajectory in philosophy that begins in radical skepticism.

I was of two minds about whether to include a representative of American confessional poetry in our top ten. This kind of poetry is powerful and compelling, but it could also be described as degenerate, the sort that encourages voyeurism, the subject of which is the misery of the human psyche.

Confessional poetry is symptomatic, indeed, representative of twentieth-century torment. Because it extends beyond the individual to encompass the culture, we decided to feature it.

La Pensadora (c. 1968-1976) by José Luis Fernández