Beat Down, but Still Singing: Laura Ulewicz, anti-Muse

For a movement that lauded shocking candor and licentious freedom, the Beat movement frequently sidelined and silenced the voices of women within it. Laura Ulewicz, a female poet who faced prejudice even in the time of the Beats, instead celebrated her privacy and enigma, rewriting herself into the male-dominated tradition of poetry and regaining authority in a field that saw her mostly as a muse (even in the “open” time of the Beats). In this manuscript, the speaker is a woman “speaking as herself,” in the allegory of a bird. This manuscript encapsulates the disillusioned woman writing in the time of the Beats—frustrated with the lack of space for her in a movement which fervently coopted the stories and sentiments of marginalized people “on the fringe of society”, feeling powerless and silenced. Ulewicz crafts a revisionist take on Greek myth, asserting her voice as an act of resilience.