SOURCE: A review of Stealing the Language, in World Literature Today, Vol. 61, No. 2, Spring, 1987, pp. 291-92.

In the following review, Aldan disputes Ostriker's definitions of gynocentric poetics in Stealing the Language.

I was among those who believed that if a woman poet's work was outstanding, it would achieve its deserved recognition in spite of man's traditional attitude toward it. In [Stealing the Language,] her survey of American women's poetry from the time of Anne Bradstreet to the present, Alicia Ostriker presents ample convincing evidence to show that I was laboring under a delusion. Despite the fact that not too many of the women poets mentioned who wrote before and during the Victorian era (with a few exceptions) equaled the achievements of the best of the male poets during that time (for whatever reasons), denigration by male critics, even until recently, exceeded justification. The author maintains that the poets...