Modern Women Poetry

In her first published work, A Modern Day Black Woman's Book of Poetry, Volume 1: Two Decades of Growth and Change, Shamar Starks-Ward shares heart, soul, experiences, and changing points of view with her cherished listeners. These poems are an unapologetic collection from the ink pin of a Black woman that range from the immature perspective of an 18-year-old with an old soul to a mature 42-year-old that has weathered many storms, joys, pains, loss, and gains.

Published nine years after her 1933 novelization of the trial and death of Socrates, Rogue’s Legacy is Babette Deutsch imagining François Villon, the notorious French poet known as much for his verse as for his criminality. As Herbert Gorman wrote in the New York Times: “The extant documentation concerning Villon in Rogue’s Legacy is brought to such a sharp and living fictional focus that the result for the reader is very much like draining a huge beaker of ruddy Beaune that the poet loved so well. . . . She has created a character who lives and who might very well be the François ...

Catherine Cohen, the one-woman stand-up chanteuse who has electrified the downtown NYC comedy scene in her white go-go boots, has been posting poignant, unfiltered poems on social media since before Instagram was a thing. A self-proclaimed self-obsessed millennial on the prowl with her beaded bag, she ponders guys who call you "dude" after sex, English-major dreams, true love during the pandemic, and other weighty matters in these captivating short lyrics.