Mary inspires

I've come across a cycle of poems illustrating various episodes in Mary Wollstonecraft's life. Nancy Means Wright has been writing about our heroine for 20 years now. These two dozen were originally published by New Spirit Press in 1992.

Here's a taste from "The Crossing":

I had sailed for Portugal:
thirteen extravagant days
at sea among puling
companions. Myself, I was
never better: I swallowed
sea air like the whale
engulfing Jonah; my brain
punched like a bellyful
of salty men. Then found my

Fanny already in labour,
mother and child
sinking
past my keel
like a pair
of bleeding fish.

It's vivid stuff, each poem prefaced by a few sentences placing the episode in the context of Mary's life and times. Many are from her point of view, but others see the world through unexpected eyes: those of her father as an apprentice boy, sleeping under a silk-weaver's loom, or publisher Johnson, opening his door in the cathedral close to find her standing there unannounced, returned from abroad, ready to begin her new life.