Mary J. Carruthers (Essay Date Summer 1983)

SOURCE: Carruthers, Mary J. "The Re-Vision of the Muse: Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Judy Grahn, Olga Broumas." Hudson Review 36, no. 2 (summer 1983): 293-322.

In the following essay, Carruthers examines four volumes of poetry in the context of what she defines as the "Lesbian poetry" movement.

The process of naming and defining is not an intellectual game, but a grasping of our experience and a key to action.

—Adrienne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence

This essay chiefly considers four volumes of poetry, three published in 1978 and one the previous year. They are Adrienne Rich's The Dream of a Common Language, Audre Lorde's The Black Unicorn (which includes poems published earlier in a chapbook called Between Our Selves), Judy Grahn's The Work of a Common Woman (a collection of poems previously published by the Feminist Press Collective of Oakland, California...