Saturday, November 16, 2013

Cover essay on the work of Denise Duhamel in The Hollins Critic

Cover image of Denise Duhamel
by Susan Avishai, The Hollins Critic
The October 2013 issue of The Hollins Critic features a cover essay by Julie Marie Wade, "Survival of the Feminist: The Socially Lived Poetics of Denise Duhamel." In its 50th year, The Hollins Critic "features the first serious surveys of the whole bodies of contemporary writers' work, with complete checklists." An excerpt from the piece can be read on The Hollins Critic's website. In it, Wade writes, "Whether we view her as an avowed feminist whose feminism takes poetic form, or a widely published poet whose poetry embodies feminist ideals, Denise Duhamel is an underdog. She is working in literature's most marginalized genre to illuminate a worldview that three-fourths of Americans purport not to care about or understand. This would appear to be an impossible mission, both formally and ideologically. Fortunately, Duhamel is the perfect person for the job."

Duhamel, Professor of English at Florida International University, is the author of more than twenty books and chapbooks and guest-editor of the just-released Best American Poetry 2013.