Jed Rasula's review of ten books by or about the women writers of the modernist generation seems to be generally well-informed (though he perhaps doesn't know--at least he doesn't mention--that H.D.'s The Gift, as issued by New Directions, is drastically cut) and is a useful contribution. The review begins with a fantasy that the work of the major male writers of that period is out-of-print and inaccessible by way of illustrating what has been, in fact, the case with the women writers. His statement that "feminists have ignored the modernist women writers as blissfully as the men have" is, however, simply not true. The only evidence that Rasula offers for this judgment is the comment of an English professor's "female colleague on the appearance of the two recent books on H.D. She seemed uninterested, and pressed for a response, dismissingly said 'H.D., oh, she's a man's poet.'" This woman's lack of interest in H.D. is fortunately not typical of literary feminists generally. If there is a renaissance of women writers, feminist scholars, poets, novelists and serious readers have helped to create it. A glance at the publishing record of feminist scholars will confirm this.

As for the unnamed "female colleague" Rasula cites, I would propose this: on a certain page in Love's Body, Norman O. Brown asks, "Who is my real mother? It is a political question." It is a man's question, and perhaps now also a woman's.

-Beverly Dahlen

Looking at the bookshelf above my typewriter, I find a number of works on modernists written by women scholars over the past decade: Susan Stanford Friedman's ground-breaking essay "Who Buried H.D.?", College English, 1975; Marjorie Perloff's chapter on Gertrude Stein in The Poetics of lndeterminacy, Princeton U. Press, 1981 (originally printed in APR, 1979); Susan Gubar's H.D. essay, included in the modernist section of Shakespeare's Sisters, Indiana U. Press, 1979; Marianne DeKoven's book on Stein, A Different Language, U. of Wisconsin Press, 1983 ; Alicia Ostriker's chapter on "Learning to read H.D." in her recent book, Writing Like a Woman, U. of Michigan Press, 1983; Carolyn Burke's essay on Stein, originally published in Critical Inquiry, 1981, and now available in the re-printed collection of essays, Writing and Sexual Difference, edited by Elizabeth Abel for U. of Chicago Press; Rachel Blau DuPlessis' many essays on H.D., two appearing in Montemora 6, 1979, and Contemporary Literature, 1979 (MLA presentation, 1977), and three more, coauthored with Susan Stanford Friedman, in Montemora 8, 1981, Feminist Studies 7, 1981, and Ms., Feb., 1982, most of which will be re-printed in her collection, Writing Beyond the Ending;.Narrative Strategies of Twentieth Century Women Writers , Indiana U. Press, in September, 1984; Suzanne Juhasz's essay on Marianne Moore, in her book of criticism, Naked and Fiery Forms, Harper and Row, 1979; Helen Vendler's essay on Moore, originally published by The New Yorker, 1978, later in her book Part of Nature, Part of Us, Harvard U. Press, 1980; Gloria G. Fromm's biography, Dorothy Richardson, U. of Illinois, 1977; Virginia Kouidis' Mina Loy: American-Modernist Poet, Louisiana State U. Press, 1980; Bonnie Costello's Marianne Moore, Imaginary Possessions, Harvard U. Press, 1981; and Marianne Moore, Poet of Affection, by Pamela Hadas, Syracuse U. Press, 1977.

This is only a sampling. Some other magazines featuring work on women modernists by women scholars include: Signs, Massachusetts Review, Truck and Sagetrieb. Over the last decade of Modern Language Association meetings, one has had the privilege of hearing an increasing variety of papers on the modernist women by women scholars--many feminist-identified, some not. Long in-the-works is Barbara Guest' s forthcoming biography, Herself Defined: H.D., the Poet and her Work, due from Doubleday, spring 1984. Carolyn Burke has been working for several years on a critical biography of Mina Loy. Poetics Journal 4, winter 1984, will focus on "Women and Modernism," with articles on individual authors as well as related esthetic questions, by Lyn Hejinian, Susan Howe, Carla Harryman, Leslie Scalapino, Abigail Childs, Susan Laufer, Francoise Larocque, Johanna Drucker, Sally Silver, Ellen Zweig, Beverly Dahlen, Kathleen Fraser and Carolyn Burke.

All in all, this adds up to a rather solid indication of scholarly interest and labor. The question remains: will the works cited above be incorporated into traditional institutional reading lists, where new readers and writers are initiated into what is important? We know that some of this new scholarship is being taught in Women's Studies programs throughout the country, as an alternative to the status quo. At best, that leaves the situation a segregated one.

Rasula has pointed out that these "great modernist women writers" were prominent in their own day, publishing "on the order of 150 books"-making it remarkable and suspect that until the last few years these works have been unavailable to be taken seriously. If he is truly interested in encouraging further critical study of women modernists, it seems a rather shop-worn and ultimately diversionary tack for him to trot out the traditional "j'accuse," chiding feminists for ignoring their own--especially given his limited research. From whom does he think the sudden demand for reprints and critical studies of modernist women has come? Isn't it more to the point to examine the power structures underpinning the making of a canon? Would Pound's The Cantos or Eliot's Four Quartets still be read, if they hadn't been seriously and thoroughly taught? Or, turning it around, could they have been taught, if the editors of American literature textbooks and poetry anthologies--predominately male, during the '30s, '40s and '50s--hadn't chosen their work as "major"? Would younger scholars have been adding to the growing body of criticism without these texts to alert their attention? It seems easy to forget that particular individuals with concrete esthetic criteria decide what work is significant enough to sustain in print. These far-reaching judgments include personal responses of recognition and pleasure, as well as ideas of relevance and excellence. Between 1925 and 1965, who were the individual editors, publishers and critics exe rcising these literary choices? How many women were there, among the ranks of the powerful?

-- Katbleen Fraser