These Are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

"Thronghout history women have been closer to words than to silence," writes Marjorie Agosin in her introduction to this powerful, beautifully executed collection. In spite of the Church's and society's efforts to muzzle them, "women have continued speaking their minds, often through the sacred language of poetry, where there is an abundance of intuition and the possibility of reclaiming power through language." Yet, until recently, poetry by women has been omitted from anthologies of Latin American verse. Agosin's collection is an attempt to remedy this lamentable situation and to expose the reading public to a wide variety of first-rate, yet often neglected, Latin American women poets.

The book takes its title from a poem by Colombian poet Anabel Torres entitled "These Are the Sweet Girls" a tongue-in-cheek description of the "good girls" who are content to play a conventional role in society. These are the women who dutifully take a back seat to men, who are "prepared to be the echo, / prepared to be the small round pebble in the center / stirring the concentric / circles / while the waves move further and further away." But the women who sing in Agosin's pages are definitely not "sweet girls," but women who take their destinies into their own hands, who protest, who rebel, who rejoice in their bodies and love deeply and passionately.

These Are Not Sweet Girls does not follow traditional schemes. Agosin has included established poets as well as those who are practically unknown, and she has organized her material not chronologically or geographically, but thematically, in seven sections. The first, "Like the Magic Glow of Paradise," deals with love and desire; the second, "These Are Not Sweet Girls," with rebellion against traditional roles; the third, "Close to Me," with relationships; the fourth, "From the Silence That Allows Itself To Be Heard," with...