I don't like this poem.
            It is not an organizational poem.
            It won't play ball.   It doesn't collate.
                                    -- I Don't Like This Poem

Anne Babson's poetry is luminous and transgressive.   In the chorus of angry female poets, Anne's voice soars above the rest.   She is an anomaly -- an apple blossom on the oak.   Because she is not only a feminist, but an optimist.   She does not simply describe the oppression, list the abuses, and let out an ear-piercing wail like so many of the others.   Although such forms of poetry are certainly important and serve a purpose, Anne's is very different.   With each poem, each problem she poses, she offers a solution.

This solution is a form of transcendence -- to her, the very act of writing and being a woman is a de facto rebellion against the status quo.   She suggests that simply "being" is enough:

            I was the only chick in the room not anorexic.
            I wore my curves like the ocean wears waves.
            None of the other women dared touch the bar chips.
            The men turned my way. I seemed like I was all there [...]
                                    --- The Light

The answer was here all along, her poems seem to be saying, you just had to pull the veil out of your eyes and look.   The truth is that the female body is inherently powerful when unfettered.

            I am the Coca-Cola glaze on your greasy ribs,
            the pink snowballs offered up under cellophane
            in coconut angora fleshiness.
                                    ---Monica

The infamous intern's voluptuousness, which was ridiculed non-stop during the scandal, is presented as what ultimately drove the president over the edge.   "Monica" is a stand-in for what the unashamed, unbowed woman can do to the system.

And in "The Goddess Takes Midtown," the poet shows what happens once a model's body on the billboard is overcome with the image of a real body:

            The goddess will enter through the photo's air-brushed lips
            And add meat, and cellulite,
            and bosom to her bag of bones [...]

            The goddess will take midtown,
            Stomping to dust all nine floors of Macy's,
            Tearing the red door off
            Elizabeth Arden with her pinkie nail,
            Smashing her iron nipple through the executive offices of
            Playboy like a wrecking ball...

Anne celebrates the female in her poetry, and not in the time-worn manner of Mary Daly, re-spelling and re-introducing words historically linked to women, but with an understanding of the complications and absurdities facing women of the new millennium.   Her poetry is not just celebratory, it's juicy, excessive and beautiful.   She invents new moments and images, as she invents new possibilities.

It is a poetry of this time and this place, but with hope for a better future.   To any woman or man who enjoys language and likes to think about how society treats the cogs of its machine, I highly recommend it.