Alicia Ostriker Criticism
Alicia Ostriker, born in 1937, is an influential American poet, critic, and editor renowned for her contributions to feminist literary discourse. Her work is deeply rooted in the examination of women's roles in society, influenced by the visionary poetics of William Blake. Ostriker's poetry and criticism often explore themes of self-identity, gender, and feminism, challenging traditional literary norms. Her critical work, Stealing the Language, argues for a distinct feminist literary aesthetic, highlighting differences between male and female poetic expression, which has sparked significant debate among critics. Rita Dove commends it as a landmark study, whereas Bonnie Costello identifies its theoretical limitations.
Ostriker's poetry is characterized by emotional restraint and syntactical clarity, as noted in One of Each—with Echoes. Her collections, such as The Crack in Everything, explore a wide array of themes from personal experiences, like her battle with breast cancer, to broader societal issues, as highlighted by Doris Earnshaw. Through her work, Ostriker has created a nuanced conversation around the intersections of gender, culture, and personal identity in literature, which has had a lasting impact on feminist literary criticism.
Ostriker's ability to weave personal narrative with universal themes has earned her a respected place in contemporary poetry. While some critics, like Bonnie Costello, challenge her approach, others appreciate her candid exploration of women's lives and the psychological depth of her verses. Critic Janet Ruth Heller emphasizes the power of Ostriker's work to encourage personal introspection and expression of one's own life experiences through poetry.
Contents
- Principal Works
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Essays
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Vision and Verse in William Blake
(summary)
In the following review, Nurmi assesses the success of Ostriker's metrical analysis in Vision and Verse in William Blake, revealing the limitations of her technique.
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One of Each—with Echoes
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Stout praises the syntactical clarity and emotional restraint of Ostriker's poetic vision in A Dream of Springtime.
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An Aesthetic of Pain
(summary)
In the following review, Broe highlights various thematic and formal concerns in A Woman Under the Surface which, according to Broe, revise the relation between contemporary feminist artistic principles and female life.
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Stealing the Language
(summary)
In the following review, Aldan disputes Ostriker's definitions of gynocentric poetics in Stealing the Language, highlighting the challenges faced by women poets and the misconceptions about their recognition and achievements in the literary world.
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Stealing the Language
(summary)
In the following review, Dove admires the contents and insights of Stealing the Language. An impeccable piece of scholarship that's as exciting as a detective novel—impossible? Not as far as Alicia Ostriker is concerned. Her book Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women's Poetry in America is much more than a portrait of this besieged literary landscape—hers is the clear-eyed commentary of an insider who nonetheless knows her trade. In the true mission of the literary mind, Ostriker offers not only analysis, but vision.
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Poetry and Gender
(summary)
In the following essay, Voigt addresses various implications of the female poetic aesthetic outlined in Stealing the Language, suggesting that differences in women's poetry, rather than similarities, would better illuminate female experience.
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Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women's Poetry in America
(summary)
In the following review, Martin discusses the main themes of Stealing the Language, commending its personal style and the inclusiveness of poets represented. The review highlights Alicia Ostriker's study of American women poets and their artistic self-assertion against a masculine cultural hegemony, as well as the feminist movement's role in fostering innovative poetry that addresses women's concerns.
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Writing Like a Woman
(summary)
In the following review, Costello exposes a number of pitfalls attending the theoretical orientation of Stealing the Language. Ostriker's book contributes significantly to the enterprise of defining poetry by women as generically distinct from the dominant male tradition, but it also shares many pitfalls, including a theme-bound reading of poetry and inadvertent reinforcement of female stereotypes.
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Response to Alicia Ostriker
(summary)
In the following essay, Costello defends her opinion of Stealing the Language, reiterating that Ostriker's reasoning is flawed. Costello articulates her disagreement with Ostriker about the meaning and value of the category 'women's poetry,' arguing that Ostriker's broad claims create a context that privileges certain poetic achievements by women while marginalizing others.
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Poets of Our Time
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Finch examines the “attitude” expressed in Green Age. These three books of poetry, written by three women coming from very different places as poets at the beginning of the end of our century, make a revealing cross-section.
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Profile: Alicia Suskin Ostriker
(summary)
In the following essay, Rosenberg sketches Ostriker's life and career, incorporating the writer's own comments on her work as both poet and mother.
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The Crack in Everything
(summary)
In the following review, Earnshaw applauds Ostriker's achievement in The Crack in Everything. In her eighth volume of poems, Alicia Suskin Ostriker puts no barriers of arcane language between herself and her reader. Her style combines acute observation in plain speech with halting rhythms of run-on lines as though she is thinking it out as she goes. Most poems begin with a setting: the beach, a bar, dance floor, classroom, hospital. The characters and story unwind, holding us charmed until the poem ends with a question, an ambiguity, an enlightenment. A mature American woman's voice speaks deliberately of her many concerns: her marriage, family relations, war horrors abroad, needy students, and, surprisingly, in a final series of poems, her mastectomy.
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No Pain, No Gain
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Townsend highlights thematic concerns of The Crack in Everything. Ostriker examines subjects as diverse as 'weightless / unstoppable neutrinos / leaving their silvery trace / in vacuum chambers,' a Times Square bag lady in her 'cape of rusty razor blades,' three million dead 'stacked … like sticks' in winter, or the 'nectar / in the bottom of a cup / This blissfulness in which I strip and dive.' This world is seen against the undercurrent of mortality that pulses beneath even the most optimistic poems.
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Tectonic Shifts
(summary)
In the following review, Hacker concentrates on the themes of The Crack in Everything, ranging from female artists, classroom experiences, and the physical and emotional scars of breast cancer.
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The Crack in Everything
(summary)
In the following review, Taylor considers the significance of and justification for widely mixed themes in The Crack in Everything. Alicia Suskin Ostriker's new collection may at first surprise the reader with its multifarious subject matter, but this impression of heterogeneity takes on a compelling significance and justification by 'The Mastectomy Poems,' the fourth and last section. The disparate 'cracks' observed in others and in various societal phenomena converge on the poet herself, as she reflects on her experience with a mammogram and her subsequent operation.
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How the Light Gets In
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Dolin delineates the themes and style of The Crack in Everything, Alicia Ostriker's eighth volume of poetry, which is a mature work, filled with wisdom about personal grief and the world. According to the Kabbala, upon the creation of the world, the vessels into which light was poured cracked, and now it is up to human beings to repair the world's brokenness. Ostriker uses her poems to teach us—and herself—that 'a crack in everything' is, in words she borrows from Leonard Cohen, 'how the light gets in.' Both volumes seem centrally concerned with grief—Ostriker having survived breast cancer, Solomon having lost her lover to a muscular degenerative disease.
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Repairing the World
(summary)
In the following review, George provides an overview of the principal themes of Ostriker's career within the context of the poetry in Stealing the Language and Writing Like a Woman and her two groundbreaking revisionist volumes on the Bible.
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Vision and Verse in William Blake
(summary)
- Further Reading