A new collection from one of our most distinguished poets, painting a portrait in verse of two iconic female figures poised between history and legend, and unravelling the millennia of myth men have woven around them to explore the notion of girlhood itself.

Do I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself. (I am large, I contain multitudes.)Abundant, ecstatic, generous, courageous - this is the first American epic poem, a celebration of selfhood and a catalogue of nineteenth-century American life of all ages and races.