Esas muchachas que escriben poemas

Passionate or timid, reserved or tormented, yearning or marginalized, courageous, vibrant, or brimming with impetuousness... The young poets who populate this book are united by a natural talent for stringing words together, by a selfless love for literature, and by a firm conviction in the necessity of change. And, all too often, unfortunately, by the harassment of men who fail to grasp their greatness and for whom they are nothing more than "those girls who write poems." Portrait after portrait, this almanac illuminates what Virginia Woolf—whose presence is felt throughout these pages—called "moments of life." Dickinson's herbals and the complicated family dynamics in the small paradise of Amherst; Akhmatova's genius for evading state censorship and her husbands' jealousy; Antonia Pozzi's restlessness between university lecture halls and her happiness in the mountains of her homeland; The strategies Szymborska used to combat social obligations after winning the Nobel Prize; the fashionable outfits a very young Sylvia Plath threw from a New York skyscraper as pure performance art… Different lives, separated by time, yet united by a worldview stronger than any chronology: poetry as life and life as poetry. Alba Donati transports us to the magnificent chaos of these existences dedicated entirely to words, and makes their unique voices resonate powerfully in this singular and unclassifiable book.