Ladies' Abecedary by Arden Levine

An abecedary, or alphabet book, teaches letters, the primary pieces of language and of story-making. In Ladies’ Abecedary, each letter is a woman, each woman is a poem, and each poem is a narrative of female identity. These micro-biographies-in-verse present a series of anonymous characters (historical and mythological, contemporary and composite, unique and universal) in a collection that reveals "the diverse and complex nature of women’s interior and external lives.” Letter by letter, Ladies’ Abecedary “exemplifies the importance of the project to reclaim voice, agency, and equality for women,” and raises a remark about how a woman’s story is told.

Arden Levine's poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Harvard Review, Indiana Review, Sycamore Review, and Sixth Finch, among others, and have been featured in AGNI Online, The Missouri Review’s Poem-of-the-Week, Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, and WNYC’s Radiolab. Arden is a Beloit Poetry Journal board member, a former editor at Epiphany Magazine, and a Best of the Net nominee. She lives in New York City, where her daily work focuses on housing affordability, homelessness prevention, and equitable community development.  Musings and more at www.ardenlevine.com.