Ismene at the Crossroads

This essay departs from Harold Bloom's male‐oriented theorisation of poetic influence as the ‘battle between strong equals, [...] Laius and Oedipus at the crossroads’ ( The Anxiety of Influence , 1973) to proceed both to a generalised consideration of the position of the woman poet vis‐à‐vis the male‐authored poetic tradition and, further, to more specific observations of relations of poetic influence in evidence in the work of contemporary women poets in German. I first propose a theory of the historical woman poet via an interpretation of the figure of Antigone, then, turning to her sister Ismene as the figuration of the contemporary woman poet, analyse traces of poetic influence in works by Anne Duden, Barbara Köhler, Elke Erb, and Ulrike Draesner

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