A collection of nearly 400 poems by more than 100 different writers, The Extraordinary Tide synthesizes and celebrates an entire era of poetry by women in America. Long overdue, the anthology includes America's most recognized poets as well as those emerging as exciting new artists of contemporary verse.

Featuring recent work by poets as aesthetically diverse as Ai, Jane Kenyon, Ann Lauterbach, Carolyn Forche, and Leslie Scalapino, the collection is the most complete map now available of a vastly underexplored landscape in American writing. Also included are poems by Julia Alvarez, Lucille Clifton, Alice Fulton, Tess Gallagher, Amy Gerstler, Jane Hirschfield, Heather McHugh, Alice Notley, Lucia Perillo, Marie Ponsot, Mary Jo Salter, Ellen Bryant Voigt, C. D. Wright, and many others.

"The delights of this anthology are in its plurality, its collection of such a rich and varied sampling of that tide flooding American shores."-from the Foreword by Eleanor Wilner, author of Otherwise and Sarah's Choice