Book Description
In a clear and concise style, Berke offers readers a theoretical framework, historical overview, and careful reading of the poetry of Lola Ridge, Genevieve Taggard, and Margaret Walker. She describes the rich social, historical, and political context of their work, making the book an in-depth study of the gender issues, radical politics, and poetry of the modern period, 1915-1945.
With Walker, the best known of the three poets, Berke focuses on the writer's contributions to African American modernism during the depression and World War II. With Ridge and Taggard, she explores how the neglect of these poets, particularly by feminist literary criticism, has seriously altered awareness of the social and political concerns of feminist modernists. The work of these politically committed leftist poets, accompanied by Berke's discussion of their influential writing, advances the ongoing conversation of modernism as a highly contested literary and cultural movement.
Paying particular attention to the issue of class, she stresses the need for modern American poetry to move beyond aesthetic biases and place greater importance on social categories such as race, class, and gender. Though written primarily for literary scholars, the book will appeal to general readers interested in gender issues, politics, poetry, or the history of the left or of feminism.
