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Andrew: It's not that she 'assigned Dickinson with a masculine voice.' Here's Page 171 (From the Norton Critical Edition - Adrienne Rich's Poetry and Prose- When we Dead Awaken (1971). The actual quote on the female poet: 'but precisely what she does not find is that absorbed, drudging, puzzled, sometimes inspired creature, herself, who sits at a desk trying to put words together. So, what does she do? What did I do? I read the older women poets with their peculiar keenness and ambivalence: Sappho, Christiana Rosetti, Emily Dickinson, Elinor Wylie, Edna Millay, H.D. I discovered that the woman poet most admired at the time (by men) was Marianne Moore, who was maidenly, elegant, intellectual, discreet. But even in reading these women I was looking in them for the same things I had found in the poetry of men, because I wanted women poets to be the equals of men, and to be equal was still confused with sounding the same.' >I'm still no wiser as to why Rich assigned Dickinson a >'masculine voice', particularly since Dickinson's voice was >so uniquely unlike any other poetries of that time. Basically >I'm wondering what Rich decided was *missing* in Dickinson's >work, or insufficiently delineated, in order to disqualify it. Better still you can go to the source. With compliments from Ashley Alquine a list member - 'Adrienne Rich posts on this ring it's [log in to unmask] Women Poets - it's a discussion group about women poets. She's pretty active there.' HH ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%