Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of 17th-Century Women's Verse

by Germaine Greer (Editor)

Gathers poems by forty-five women poets and offers brief profiles of each writer

Genres: Poetry, Feminism

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Germaine Greer is an Australian born writer, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century.

Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her ground-breaking The Female Eunuch became an international best-seller in 1970, turning her overnight into a household name and bringing her both adulation and criticism. She is also the author of Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984), The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991), and most recently Shakespeare's Wife (2007).

Reviews

[Michael Stapleton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Greer has not recently endeared herself to women everywhere with her disdain for #metoo, but perhaps that is beside the point. This is an excellent anthology of poetry by women (or men pretending to write in women's voices) in the seventeenth century. Most of it will not seem terribly intimate or cuddly to those brought up on confessional verse and romantic notions of the self, but a bit of priming on Enlightenment sensibility and Augustan verse would probably smooth that right out. Almost all the material included is occasional, which was characteristic of the age, and _Rod_ was the first widely printed paperback book that made the work of Aphra Behn, Margaret Cavendish, Katherine Philips, and their peers available. When we write today, we don't necessarily have a set form or list of conventions that we follow, but no seventeenth-century poet of any stripe would have found this intelligible. That writing was considered very much a masculine province and privilege is important to know, and constantly served as obstacle to these wonderful poets, who overcame and achieved.

[Bob Cat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has a great, well researched and cited introduction which thoroughly explains the constraints under which women wrote poetry in the 17th century.

The types and subjects were far more restrictive for women; often only infant mortality, widowhood and their own impending deaths were acceptable topics from a lady in good standing. Credit and authorial control were hard to come by and making a living almost impossible.

Nonetheless the editors have compiled here, if not weighty and influential poetry in the line of their male peers, at least a broad range of competent works by women of this era. I found a lot of new-to-me poets and they are presented here almost as lost potential rather than good writers on their own.

That's the overall feeling I came away with - if they weren't so oppressed we could have had a different literary history entirely. This of course applies to many more ages and genres than 17c poetry. A good book, very well presented.

[Madame Arkadina]

What's that you say? Would I be interested in Seventeenth Century female poets, including playwrights? Don't mind if I do, thank you very much.

I may be dipping in and out of this one for time.