Marxism for Single Mothers: Anne Boyer’s Garments Against Women

Abstract

In this reading of Anne Boyer’s Garments Against Women I argue that the poet’s 2015 collection of prose poetry positions literary and intellectual labor as both historically and currently oppressive to women through its figurative engagement with early capitalist textile production. I further demonstrate that despite Boyer’s overt engagement with a narrative of modern labor rooted in eighteenth-century industrialization, her writing is indebted to the work of a contemporary American Avant-garde. I show that the poets Alice Notley and Bernadette Mayer, whose works have culled material from spheres of life traditionally understood as both feminine and anti-poetic, have served as precursors for Boyer’s overtly Marxist and feminist works.