The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet: H.D., Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bishop, and Louise Glück
In "The Veiled Mirror and the Woman Poet" Elizabeth Dodd explores the lives and work of four women poets of the 20th century - H.D., Louise Bogan, Elizabeth Bishop, and Louise Glueck. Dodd argues that sexist and male-dominated cultural forces in their personal and professional lives challenged these women to find a unique mode of expression in their poetry, a practice Dodd defines as "personal classicism". Dodd uses the term "personal classicism" to interpret modern and contemporary poetry that appears torn between two major modes of poetic sensibility, the Romantic and the Classical. While the four poets she addresses exhibit a poetic sensibility that is primarily Romantic, they have nonetheless employed masking and controlling strategies that are more nearly Classical. Combining feminist theory and biographial studies with close readings of individual poems, Dodd moves historically from H.D., one of the best-known Imagists, through the Confessional movement, to the major contemporary poet Louise Glueck. In the final chapter, Dodd brings us to the present, where she finds women writers still struggling with the recent confessional legacy of such highly anthologized poets as Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath. "The Veiled Mirror" is intended to be of significant interest to students of modern and contemporary poetry, as well as to those concerned with women's studies.