Theme

Freedom

Love’s oldest argument with belonging: whether a person can be both given and unpossessed.

• Taifa-period al-Andalus

  I Go My Way with Pride

  An Umayyad princess-poet in Córdoba took lovers in public and wrote in her own name. The affair with Ibn Zaydūn burned, then tore. She is not his muse. She is the other poet.

• New Spain

  To Her Vicereine, and to Learning

  Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz wrote love sonnets, some toward the Countess of Paredes, and the letter Respuesta a Sor Filotea. Friendship, desire, convent, colonial gender. Not a sticker. Not a denial.

• Amherst, mid-nineteenth century

  A Hedge Away

  Emily Dickinson and Susan Huntington Gilbert lived a hedge apart. The letters and poems are intimate, queer-readable, and tangled in family. A modern book-title is not the name she gave her life.

• Lyon, French Renaissance

  Kiss Me Again

  Œuvres de Louïze Labé Lionnoize: sonnets, including “Baise m’encor.” The mouth on the page is certain. Whether one woman of Lyon wrote it is a living scholarly question. The poems survive either way.

• Joseon Korea

  Myongwol

  Hwang Jini, the gisaeng-poet called Bright Moon, wrote sijo with independence, wit, and desire. She was not waiting to be saved, and she is not a tragic courtesan cliché.