SOURCE: A review of Stealing the Language, in Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Vol. 67, No. 3, pp. 45-6.

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.

After a concise and comprehensive survey of American women's poetry from 1650–1960 (illustrated by a brilliant exegesis of Emily Dickinson's “I'm Nobody! Who Are You?”), Ostriker investigates the schizophrenic heritage of the woman artist who, possessed of creative energy but forbidden to use it lest she be...