'Who's Who in Twentieth-Century Poetry is excellent value.' - Bob Duckett, Bradford Libraries

The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse is an entertaining journey through six centuries of poets writing in the voice of the opposite sex. Whether concerned with the playful or the tragic, the mundane or the mystical, each poem reveals a new depth in this unique and engaging anthology.
Poems both canonical and less traditional, from early modern England to present-day Africa, are in this remarkable collection. In a lively introduction and conclusion the editors explore the historical, cultural and theoretical context of the poems and of cross-gendered writing. They also provide an extensive bibliography of further reading.
Poetry lovers will delight in The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse. It will also be a valuable contribution to issues of gender, masks and voices in fields such as literary, gender and performance studies and creative writing.
Over eighty poets are represented here, including: Geoffrey Chaucer, John Donne, Mary Sidney Wroth, Aphra Behn, Alexander Pope, William Blake, Robert Burns, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning, Emily Bronte, Thomas Hardy, Rudyard Kipling, W.B. Yeats, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, W.H. Auden, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, Ted Hughes, Seamus Heaney, Suniti Namjoshi Ai, Yusef Kumunyakaa, Heather McHugh, Rita Dove.

Both male and female poets cross the gender line: men assume a female voice and women a male voice.
The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse is a fascinating collection of such poems, beginning in the age of Chaucer and working its way through to the present day. Together these poems offer a unique collection of masks, personae and voices, rife with issues of class, gender and race.
Alan Parker and Mark Willhardt, in bringing together these poems for the first time, assert an entirely new paradigm; a theoretical and practical reading of a heretofore undefined genre. They also provide a critical introduction which synthesizes traditional literary debates with current gender theory and, through the lens of historical, literary, social and theoretical issues, present a new way to interpret these 'ventriloquized' poems.
The Routledge Anthology of Cross-Gendered Verse provides a wealth of material for students and teachers of literature and gender studies. It is a compelling collection which will also appeal to poetry lovers.