This essay explores the work of three neglected American women
poets as well as suggests the importance of women’s social poetry as a
neglected genre within modern American literary studies. It examines
the continuum of a radical literary practice in the United States from
the first through the second world wars as produced by the representative
examples of Lola Ridge (1873-1941), Genevieve Taggard (1894-
1948), and Margaret Walker (1915-) whilst also maintaining how the
social concerns expressed in these poets’ work can tell us much about
national and international history as they witnessed it.
