The Female Poet as Activist
ANDREEA COSMAABSTRACT. Space ownership is a key-concept in the writings of the Beat women. Anne Waldman, for example, portrays the complicated relationship she has with the city of New York through mappings and descriptions of various locations, which she experienced or marked her imagination. I have labeled these special locations ‘meta-manifest places’ by which I mean places that writers may use to raise awareness of social, political and/or environmental problems manifested through protests and riots, usually linked to a certain space. The space and the crisis attached to it will always remain in the reader’s mind as interconnected. How does Anne Waldman make use of ‘meta-manifest places’ to reflect the urban crises in the mid-twentieth century American metropolis?
Keywords: New York; post-war; meta-manifest places; the Beats; female poets; Anne Waldman