The Nightingale's BurdenIn this evocative exploration, Cheryl Walker shows that there is a distinct tradition of women's poetry in Americaone that the poets themselves have not always been fully aware ofand that individual poems can be read as manifestations of that tradition. Philomela, the nightingale of literary mythology, serves as a model for women poets, representing simultaneously both their particular forms of power and the frustrating powerlessness imposed on them