Eighty-five short poems by women, many of them British but including such American luminaries as Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Nikki Giovanni, mostly on facets of women's experiences as daughters, students, lovers, workers, wives, and mothers (relationships are absent from very few of these poems). Many of the entries are extremely personal, even confessional (60+ are in the first person); they tend to be politically correct and to probe negative experiences (the whine of victimization is audible in several), and are mostly quotidian and vernacular. Still, there are a few gems: ``The Way We Live'' by Kathleen Jamie is a Whitmanesque celebration of the world's random splendor and squalor; Maura Dooley's ``The Women of Mumbles Head'' is hypnotically musical; ``Anno Wreck Sick'' by Magi Gibson offers a stunning description of anorexia as a defense against unwanted sex. Duffy's clever, angular little line drawings match the dominant aesthetic exactly. (Poetry. 14+)
