3 Review(s)

From the poems of Anne Bradstreet, Phillis Wheatley, and Emily Dickinson, The FemPoetiks of American Poetry and Americana Music presents a discourse of female empowerment, dubbed the FemPoetiks. Situating the work of these poets in their historical eras, Nicole Blair considers a sampling of their poems side by side with a number of song lyrics by singer-songwriters Brandi Carlile, Rhiannon Giddens, and Lucinda Williams, having found commonalities of theme, motif, and language between them. Blair argues that while FemPoetiks has continued to develop in various ways in American poetry by women, that fact that this discourse finds expression in songs by Americana female artists indicates a matrilineal line of influence from the 1630s to today. In order to show the omnipresence of this powerful feminist discourse, she closes the book with eleven interviews she conducted with female singer-songwriters from around the United States. The phenomenon of FemPoetiks is not limited to the arts but extends into all areas of American life, from the domestic to the political. FemPoetiks is a woman's truth.