Emily's Bread

by Sandra M. Gilbert

"Ms. Gilbert's wit, energy and intelligence are formidable. She is well on her way to becoming one of our pre-eminent women-of-letters." ―Carolyn Kizer What is the daily bread of women? In these splendid poems, Sandra Gilbert imagines spiritual regeneration through the tradition pioneered by the two Emilys--Emily Dickinson and Emily Brontë--who are her emblematic foremothers. At the same time, she sees the perils as well as the possibilities of change. The "loved walls" might fall, some "animal goddess in her skull" might destroy what is cherished along with what is oppressive. Tracing the anxieties of history, this book captures the female "daguerreotypes" that persist today and the "still lives" of many women. In so doing, the poet has created a wide variety of voices, including confessional accounts of her own experiences and visionary little vials of mother's blood in a bureau, a refrigerator that hums blessings like a "complicitous mother," a dressmaker's dummy sailing forward into a mirror--images that invoke vivid, revealing meditations on myth and domesticity. Yet these poems also celebrate the joys that should love and friendship, "haloes of desire," a piece of Emily Dickinson's black cake. Of this book, Frank Bidart has said, "These are poems of self-definition that heal rather than exacerbate the dramas of gender none of us can escape. They reflect Sandra Gilbert's characteristic subtlety, freshness of invention and insight, generosity of spirit. I enthusiastically recommend this book."

103 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1984

About the author

Sandra M. Gilbert was an American literary critic and poet who published in the fields of feminist literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic criticism. She was best known for her collaborative critical work with Susan Gubar, with whom she co-authored, among other works, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979). Madwoman in the Attic is widely recognized as a text central to second-wave feminism. She was Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Davis.
Gilbert lived in Berkeley, California, and lived, until 2008, in Paris, France. Her husband, Elliot L. Gilbert, was chair of the Department of English at University of California, Davis, until his death in 1991. She also had a long-term relationship with David Gale, mathematician at University of California, Berkeley, until his death in 2008.

Reviews

[Jacquelyn Fusco · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not sure how to write a review for poetry. I heard about Gilbert by reading Edvidge Giunta. I wanted to read more by Italian and Italian American women. I liked this book, but I don't read a lot of poetry so it's hard to say why.

[Don Hackett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Knowing of the author as a feminist critic and academic, I was pleasantly surprised at how poetic this collection is.