Most of Bowles's poems were published anonymously, and even a poem as popular as "To a Dying Infant" didn't establish a long-lasting literary reputation for Bowles. Bowles also never claimed to embody a broad national identity the way that Poetess figures Hemans, Sigourney, or Frances Harper did. Instead of a Poetess/poet binary, might we benefit from a sliding Poetess scale or a view of the Poetess tradition as a porous category?.