Fast Speaking Woman

Poetry. This twentieth anniversary expanded edition adds twenty poems to this collection focusing a lifelong engagement with chant structures/forms as central to contemporary performative poetry. Waldman's poetry takes the form of spells, invocations, laments, and ritual rants, combining magic and ecstasy with the power of the spoken word. Waldman says of her work: "The poem is a textured energy field or modal structure. The poems for performance seem to manifest as psychological states of mind. They come together in a mental, physical, and emotional form, making their particular demands on my voice and body. I am the 'energumen.' The poem is the experience. The text also includes three essays on the importance of oral traditions within written and spoken poetry.