Product Description

For centuries women have written about love with passion, humour, frustration and despair; but never before have their voices come together as in this exhilarating and timeless compendium. Here are love poems in all their true, subversive drama, delicately arranged according to a balance of moods and modes: of argument and lyric, joke and passionate utterance, rejection, rage and ecstacy. Poets, well-known and obscure, ancient and modern - from Sappho to Akhamotova,Patti Smith to Selima Hill, Sylvia Plath to Alice Walker - all challenge the traditional perception of women as muse and object of desire, and magnificently transcend it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #125292 in Books
• Published on: 1998-02-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
'Feisty selection of anthems with attitude ... a noisy throng of impressively dissimilar voices ... A book to treasure' IRISH TIMES 'An exhilarating collection with women across the centuries writing about love, with wit, passion, frustration, rage and ecstacy.' WOMAN'S JOURNAL

About the Author
Wendy Mulford is the author of eight collections of poetry and several works of prose. She founded Street Editions Press in 1972, and has done many readings and taken part in Festivals in Britain and abroad for many years. She has taught, amongst other places, at Thames Polytechnic. She has one daughter.

Customer Reviews

An alternative love
If you're opening the book expecting to find a bunch of soppy love poems, then don't bother turning the first page. The Virago Book of Love Poetry deals with the ambiguous word 'love' in all its shapes and forms, in all its anger, happiness, frustration and confusion. The separation into sections does little to structure the poems, but as the introduction points out the whole point of the collection is to prevent predisposed expectations of love poetry being thrust upon the book. Although there are poems stretching from Sappho to Carol Ann Duffy, there is no date on the specific poems, only a slight biographical detailing at the back of the book.

All in all a new look at an old topic. Worth the read.