Growing up, I remember learning of the accomplishments of many people in US and world history and more often than not, those people were men. Women received much less coverage. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that the accomplishments of women have long been minimized, dismissed, or ignored. This is another way that sexism has played out in society. Denying the accomplishments of women is an insult. It treats them as if they’re unimportant…as if they haven’t contributed significantly to events throughout human history. In this ongoing series, I’ll be highlighting notable women, historically important women, and those women who ought to be acknowledged. My intent is to show that women have contributed to the course of human history and ought to be recognized, rather than ignored or overlooked. Today’s woman of the day is poet and Professor Emerita of the English Department, Rutgers University, Alicia Ostriker.
Born in Brooklyn, New York in 1937, Ostriker began writing poetry at a young age. She holds a BA from Brandeis University and an MD and a PhD in literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1965, she began her teaching career at Rutgers University and has been a professor of English there since 1972. Her 1965 book, Vision and Verse in William Blake (which also served as her doctoral dissertation), was the first of many writings including Writing Like A Woman (1983), Stealing the Language: The Emergence of Women’s Poetry in America (1986), Feminist Revision and the Bible (1993), The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions (1994), Dancing at the Devil’s Party (2000), and For the Love of God (2007). Ostriker is also the author of more than 10 collections of poetry including The Imaginary Lover (1986), The Crack in Everything (1996), The Volcano Sequence (2002), and At the Revelation Restaurant and Other Poems (2010). She has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Judah Magnes Museum, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Several of her poems can be found online, including:
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Ostriker
http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/alicia-suskin-ostriker
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~ostriker/home.htm
http://howapoemhappens.blogspot.com/2010/03/alicia-ostriker.html
