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by Fabrizio Frosini (Author)
'Fifty-six Female Voices: Contemporary Poetry from Poets Unite Worldwide' has only three things in common. As the title suggests, all these are female artists and all are contemporaries; plus, they belong in the free association 'Poets Unite Worldwide'. Other than that, their countries, their age group, their writing style and their background is as varied as the topics of their poems. These voices represent social and cultural diversity and rich experiences of habitants of more than thirty countries. There was a time when for many of us this kind of collection was out of reach. But thanks to Internet, today with one click of a download we can enjoy here an excellent selection of poems. This contribution to avant-garde movement of international online poetry anthology is significant and enormous. Here in this selection reader will find poems of experienced as well as budding poetesses. [Savita Tyagi] * * * In writing my poem "Stars and Stilettos [it is in 'The Sounds of America - Contemporary American Poetry']," I found a voice emerging from inside of me: How dare an American woman complain she isn't receiving equal rights? Even worse, a middle class white American woman who lives a fairly comfortable existence on a daily basis? But I realized, first of all, that my experience 'as a woman' is different from any man's experience. And this difference, in itself, is a rich story that needs to be shared and understood. I then thought about my own experience as a married woman and the multitude of messages I had received over the course of my life, that once one gets married, the husband is the head of the household, often even when both the man and woman work... Much of poetry discusses this clash and loss of self when a woman is cloaked in her traditional role of wife or mother. But what does it mean, today, even in the US, to be a woman of color or a homosexual or transgender? There are so many ways to categorize 'just a woman' so that others can understand our patchwork of experiences that together form a quilt of contemporary women's poetry. And I can't wait to read them all. [Pamela Sinicrope]
