Who Is Sylvia? What Is She?nby R.S. GwynnnUnlike the situation of only a few decades ago, thenposition occupied today by women poets in Americannliterary culture is so prominent, the range of their subjectsnand styles so wide, that it has become virtually impossible tonmake any generalizations about them or their work except tonnote that in diversity must lie strength. Indeed, the womennpoets who win the major awards and garner the most seriousncritical attention are, like their male counterparts, graduatesnof university writing programs and employees of the samenand are thus subject to the same career pressures — thenurgent need to publish in quantity to satisfy departmentnheads, promotion committees, and deans — that currentlynafflict most contemporary poets. It is absurd for anynAmerican poet, male or female, to complain that opportunitiesnfor publication, receipt of grants, or employment mightnbe limited by such matters as gender, sexual preference,nethnic background, or even the subject matter about whichnhe or she chooses to write. There are over three hundrednuniversity creative writing programs in this country andnsomething like ten times that number of magazines publishingnpoetry. When the year’s output of new poetry booksncomes rolling in, as they have each December since 1987nwhen I began to write “The Year in Poetry” for thenDictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook, it is a sure betnthat at least half of them will be written by women.nIf, however, we go back into the not-so-distant past, wenfind that this fecundity is relatively new, for it is easy tonpigeonhole the select few women poets who were appearingnin the poetry anthologies of the 1940’s and 1950’s, most ofnwhich seem to have been edited by the same hand, that ofnthe ubiquitous Oscar Williams. Of course, Emily DickinsonnR.S. Gwynn is a professor of English at LamarnUniversity in Beaumont, Texas.nSome Thoughts on American Women Poetsnis represented, usually the sole representative of women ofnthe 19th century, but there is a gap of about thirty yearsnbetween her birth and that of the next small cluster ofnwomen. These poets fall into two classes. The first, whichnincludes Marianne Moore, H.D., and Amy Lowell, comprisesna small number of poets of major status who eithernwere present at the birth of modernism or grew up during itsnfirst two decades. H.D. was a college friend of Ezra Poundnand William Carios Williams, and Lowell became such angreat popularizer of Pound’s imagist strictures that hernepigones were often referred to as “Amygists.” Moore,nunquestionably the greatest of these and a major stylist bynalmost anyone’s reckoning, was the influential poetry editornof The Dial and, in her twilight years, became something ofna media celebrity, sought out by the Ford Motor Companynto assist in naming a new car (which, alas, ended up as thenEdsel!) and, on another occasion, trading rhymes over lunchnwith Cassius Clay. All three of these poets were born in then19th century; despite their influence, the next generation,nthose born roughly between the turn of the century andn1930, did not come close to reaching the same heights. If wenare to take the eleven poets of this century treated in thenPBS Voices & Visions series as representing the acceptedncanon, then only Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) measuresnup.nBut these were by no means all of the women poets onnthe scene. A second group, predominanfly lyrical in theirnmode of expression, had even higher visibility, fulfilling innmore traditional manner the public expectations of the role.nEdna St. Vincent Millay, the quintessential GreenwichnVillage Bohemian, soared to-the best-seller lists with slimnvolumes of sonnets marrying conservative technique to thenethos of what used to be called the New Woman. ElinornWylie, Sara Teasdale, Leonie Adams, and Gene DerwoodnnnMARCH 1992/21n