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STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Minnesota is home to a lot of good poets, and a lot of them are women. Three of Minnesota's best contemporary poets decided to compile an anthology. Duluth poet Connie Warnock says when she started on the project, the only early writer she knew about was Meridel Lesueur.

CORNIE WARNOCK: And I knew that couldn't be the full story. So who else was there? So I had no idea who they were, what they wrote, what they wrote about.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: They spent hours in the Minnesota Historical Society library. They were surprised at the quality of work that Minnesota women had published.

CORNIE WARNOCK: And thrilled really to think that we would be bringing back into publication people who had really not been read for 50 or 80 years and who had, had big reputations at the time, had several books from New York publishers and published in poetry and the Atlantic Monthly and had good careers, solid credentials, and were instantly forgotten when they died.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: To confront that oblivion, the book includes short biographies describing the lives of the contributors. They range from missionary Harriet Bishop, born in 1817 to Hmong writer Mae Lee, born in 1979.

These days, we tend to think of poems that rhyme or follow a strict meter as old-fashioned. But Connie Warnock says they can still be powerful, like this one by Louise Layton, who had three sons who fought in World War II. It's called Two American Mothers.

CORNIE WARNOCK: Now that the war is done,

Let us bury an unknown child at Arlington,

a child who died alone on a Chinese street.

His body, a pitiful cage of bone,

or a child who lived in greece, who cowered in caves and never knew the ways of peace

or take a Jewish child

whose delicate flesh was burned away at Buchenwald

or Let us bury here

a child without a name or a nation

kneel at the buyer,

Never again supine

But in bitter shame and grief

Whispering this child was mine.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: And not all the writers of the past felt compelled to make their poems rhyme. Here's one of Connie Warnock's favorite poems.

CORNIE WARNOCK: Hazel Hall. Born in 1886, died in 1924. Lingerie.

Today my hands have been flattered

with the cool finger touch of thin linen.

And I have unwound yards

of soft, folded nainsook from a stiff bolt.

Also I have held a piece of lawn

while it marbled with light

in a sudden quiver of sun.

So to night

I know of the delicate pleasure of white-handed women

Who like to touch smooth linen handkerchiefs,

And of the baby's tactual surprise

Enclosing its fist over a handful of nainsook.

And even something of the secret pride of the girl

As the folds of her fine lawn nightgown

breathe against her body.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Hazel Hall was a seamstress confined to a wheelchair. When her eyes began to fail, she turned to poetry to support her family.

ELLIE SHOENFELD: What an idea to turn to poetry to make some money.

SPEAKER 2: Yeah, isn't that funny.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: That's Ellie Schoenfeld. She's a Duluth writer whose poem, if I Were the Moon, is included in the anthology.

ELLIE SHOENFELD: I feel like a part of a historical record, so that, that what was it the instantly forgotten when I die.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: At least there'll be a poem.

SPEAKER 2: And a bio.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: A bio. Right. Why don't you read the poem that's been selected for this book?

ELLIE SHOENFELD: OK. I were the moon.

If I were the moon, I would turn your tide.

You would draw maps of me.

Would want to learn everything about my topography.

You would lick me to see if I am made of green cheese or not.

You would memorize the names of my mountains and seas.

If I were the moon, you would watch for me.

You would study my face and my curves

and the way my movements make shadow pictures on your walls.

If I were the moon, you would smile at me and I would climb in through your window.

I would fill your room with my own particular madness

inducing lunacy, producing light.

I would shine on you and make you howl

until I could taste my name on your lips and in your mouth.

STEPHANIE HEMPHILL: Ellie Schoenfeld's poem appears in the new book, To Sing Along The Way, published by New Rivers Press. She and other contributors will read their work at the College of St. Scholastica Saturday night. In Duluth. I'm Stephanie Hemphill, Minnesota Public Radio News.