Female writers

Marge Piercy (1936-) is an American novelist, essayist, and poet best known for fiction with a feminist slant. Her writing stems from a political commitment that began in the 1960s in the Vietnam anti-war movement.

Her early novels, such as "Small Changes"(1973), have been used as historical documents in women's studies'courses. Often her protagonists, like Connie in "Woman on the Edge of Time"(1976), are women trying to establish some control over worlds that are increasingly restrictive. Her latest novel, "He, She, and It", was published in 1991.

Like her novels, her poetry – such as "The Moon Is Always Female"(1980) – explores feminism and feminity.

Elizabeth Bishop (1911-1979) The life of poet Elizabeth Bishop has been filled with honors coveted by many writers--among them the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Although she was less prolific than many writers of her generation, each new work was a unique event; her work was never became monotonous or stereotypical. During 35 years of writing, Elizabeth Bishop published five slim volumes of poetry. Robert Lowell, in a a sonnet addressed to her, spoke of her working methods: ``Do/you still hang your words in air, ten years unfinished, glued to your notice board, with gaps/or empties for the unimaginable phrase...?'' A lover of geography and of detail, of the sly joke and unexpected image, Bishop somehow combines a very personal feel with one of distance, as if offering the poems while wishing herself not to be seen. She was born in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her father was a builder who died when she was one year old, and her mother shortly thereafter suffered a breakdown and spent the rest of her life in a sanitorium. Bishop was raised by relatives and during World War I lived in Nova Scotia. She went to Vassar, and in 1945 her first book, ``North and South'' won the Houghton Miffling Prize. An inheritance from her father enabled her to travel fairly widely; she lived for many years in Brazil, returning to this country in 1970 when the inheritance ran out, to take a teaching job at Harvard.

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THE SHAMPOO Elizabeth Bishop

The still explosions on the rocks,

the lichens, grow

by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.

They have arranged

to meet the rings around the moon, although

within our memories they have not changed.

And since the heavens will attend

as long on us,

you've been, dear friend,

precipitate and pragmatical;

and look what happens. For Time is

nothing if not amenable.

The shooting stars in your black hair

in bright formation

are flocking where,

so straight, so soon?

-- Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,

battered and shiny like the moon.

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