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Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections collects both personal essays and representative poems by women born after 1960 whose careers were influenced-directly or indirectly-by the women who preceded them. The poets in this collection describe a new kind of influence, one less hierarchical, less patriarchal, and less anxious than forms of mentorship in the past. Vivid and intelligent, these twenty-four essays explore the complicated nature of the mentoring relationship, with all its joys and difficulties, and show how this new sense of writing out of female experience and within a community of writers has fundamentally changed women's poetry.

Contributors: Jenny Factor on Marilyn Hacker // Beth Ann Fennelly on Denise Duhamel // Miranda Field on Fanny Howe // Katie Ford on Jorie Graham // Daphne Gottlieb on the Circle of Mentorship // Matthea Harvey on Anna Rabinowitz // Kirsten Kaschock on Being Nonmentored // Joy Katz on Sharon Olds // Katy Lederer on Lyn Hejinian // Valerie Martinez on Joy Harjo // Erika Meitner on Rita Dove // Jennifer Moxley on Susan Howe // Aimee Nezhukumatathil on Naomi Shihab Nye // Mendi Lewis Obadike on Toi Derricotte // Danielle Pafunda on Susan Wheeler // Kristin Prevallet on Anne Waldman // Cin Salach on Maureen Seaton // Robyn Schiff on Gjertrud Schnackenberg // Kathy Lou Schultz on Myung Mi Kim // Eleni Sikelianos on Alice Notley // Tracy K. Smith on Lucie Brock-Broido // Elizabeth Treadwell on Paula Gunn Allen // Crystal Williams on Lucille Clifton // Rebecca Wolff on Molly Peacock

LETTERS TO THE WORLD is the first anthology of its kind—a feminist collaboration born from The Discussion of Women's Poetry Listserv (Wom-po), a vibrant, inclusive electronic community founded in 1997 by Annie Finch. With an introduction by D'Arcy Randall and brief essays by the poets themselves reflecting on the history and spirit of the listserv, the book presents a rich array of viewpoints and poems. LETTERS TO THE WORLD is a remarkable example of how the Internet has radically rearranged associations among poets, editors, and readers.

There are approximately 300 contributors from across the world, including Meena Alexander, Marilyn Hacker, Susan Wheeler, Katha Pollitt, Annie Finch, Aimee Nezukumatathil, Alica Ostriker, Farideh Hassanzadeh-Mostavi, and Margo Berdeshevsky