More on Mirabai

Link

As promised, here is the link to the entry on Mirabai and her work!  Her poems are also song lyrics, and she was a devotee of the Hindu god Krishna.

Indian Music

Link

The picture above is from a bhajan (a type of Indian poetry) session at a festival in Mysore, India.  Here's a little more information about this festival:  http://www.dattapeetham.com/india/festivals/ganapati2004/ganapati2004.html

The link above is to a blog entry on Indian music that goes along with the entry on poet & lyricist Mirabai that I will post soon.  However, if you're not familiar with Indian music, you will need this background information before I post the entry on Mirabai and her poems. 

Poetry, Poets, & Poetesses

After Lauren's wonderful presentation on women poets in world literature, I thought that I would post a few links.

Here are some sites that show how literary scholars are reviving the term poetess. A number of these sites are fairly specialized, but this is a "hot" topic, and I think that you'll benefit from seeing how literary studies is changing as I type! (See these sites for more conventional definitions of the term poetess: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetess

http://www.bartleby.com/68/59/4659.html

http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=7&cont=show.php&item=569).

The first article, "The Poetess in America," is long but begins with a good definition of the term poetess as it is being revived. The author, Annie Finch, is a poet, translator, and literary scholar.

http://www.ablemuse.com/critique/a-finch_poetess.htm

Here is her website at the University of Southern Maine. She also keeps a blog at this site:

http://www.usm.maine.edu/~afinch/

Here is another academic site, The Poetess Archive, that is edited by literary scholar Laura Mandell. It focuses on English-language poets and the scholars who write about them, but it is not limited to 19th century poets. One poet included here is Sylvia Plath, a confessional poet from the 1950s and 1960s.
http://unixgen.muohio.edu/~poetess/index.html

Prof. Mandell defines the poetess tradition in a detailed essay here. As part of her definition, she considers the extent to which this tradition does or does not include political poetry. She also talks about the distinction between "major" and "minor" poetry.

http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2003/v/n29/007712ar.html


But has the term poetess ever really gone away? See these sites.
http://www.etsu.edu/writing/studentsamlit/plath.htm
http://www.utep.edu/rgr/poetry6.html

And here are some sites on one of the poetesses that Lauren mentioned (Ono no Komachi):
http://www.museum.cornell.edu/HFJ/handbook/hb74.html

http://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Komachi.html

http://www.classical-japanese.net/Poetry/komachi.html

Here the poetess appears on stage:
http://www.callmekomachi.com/
http://www.sonic.net/~tabine/SAApoem_nikki_noh_fall_2005/saa2005aki_noh_sekiderakomachi.html

For more information about the Indian poetess Mirabai and her work:

http://www.biographyonline.net/spiritual/mirabai.html

http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/mirabai/poems/

http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/mirabai/2/
http://www.poetseers.org/the_poetseers/mirabai/poems3/


http://www.vistarfoundation.org/repertoire.html#mirabai