Male Poets and the Agon of the Mother

"A startling intervention in the discourse around "confessionalism" in American poetry, Hannah Baker Saltmarsh's study turns the critical conventions inside out. In a rich tapestry of nuanced and convincing readings, she shows, among a host of gripping insights, how a historical moment defined, in part, by the women's movement at mid-century, broke open possibilities for male poets to recapture their primary contact with the feminine, and thus with their first source of language. I found it riveting."—Joshua Weiner, University of Maryland

"Male Poets and the Agon of the Mother encourages us to look at confessional and postconfessional poetry in new ways. Focusing on countercultural gender identifications, the book positions the figure of the mother at the center of the male confessional project. It provides a sophisticated rethinking of Robert Lowell, John Berryman, and Allen Ginsberg and such successors as Frank Bidart, Thom Gunn, and Yusef Komunyakaa. This pivotal study changes the way we read some of the most indelible poems of the last sixty years."—Steven Gould Axelrod, University of California