In this groundbreaking study of contemporary Greek poetry, Karen Van Dyck explores the poetic of modernism and postmodernism on the peripheries of Europe. She investigates the significant role of women writers in Greece, starting from the politics of censorship during the dictatorship.

Through the analysis of the consequences of censorship - in cartoons, novels, speeches of the dictator, in the poetry of George Seferis, and in the work of the younger generation of poets - she shows the ways in which women poets employ writing strategies that, although initially established as a reaction to the regime's press law, subsequently proved useful for articulating a feminist critique.

In the poetry of Rea Galanaki, Jenny Mastoraki, and Maria Laina, among others, Van Dyck analyzes the ways in which the tactics of censors aimed at stabilizing meaning are redeployed to disturb and deconstruct established meanings and gender roles.

Her book, both as literary analysis of culture and as cultural analysis of literature, investigates how censorship, consumerism, and feminism impact contemporary Greek women's poetry, as well as how the resistance to clarity in this poetry exercises the reader in reconsidering various cultural practices.

The comparative examination Van Dyck conducts on American Beat poetry, Christa Wolf's Cassandra, and Edgar Allan Poe's The Purloined Letter reveals the complexity of transnational exchanges. Only by directing our attention more towards the cultural and formal particularities of writing, asserts Van Dyck, can the lessons we learn from censorship and women's writing be theorized.