Can You Remember? When We Thought The

When Someone, Let's Say A Teacher, Speaks Of The World And You Are Not In It, It's Like Looking Into The Mirror And Seeing Nothing.

Re-vision – The Act Of Looking Back, Of Seeing With Fresh Eyes, Of Entering An Old Text From A New Critical Direction – Is For Woman More Than A Chapter In Cultural History: It Is An Act Of Survival. Until We Understand The Assumptions In Which We Are Drenched We Cannot Know Ourselves. And This Drive To Self-knowledge, For Women, Is More Than A Search For Identity: It Is Part Of Our Refusal Of The Self-destructiveness Of Male-dominated Society.

Poetry Has Always Mattered, Through Human History, Through All Kinds Of Cultures, All Kinds Of Violence And Human Desolation, As Well As Periods Of Great Human Affirmation. It's Been Associated With The Power Of The Word, With The Sacred, With Magic And Transformation, With The Oral Narratives That Help A People Cohere.

I Define "politics" As The On-going Collective Struggle For Liberation And For The Power To Create - Not Only Works Of Art, But Also Just And Nonviolent Social Institutions.

Art And Literature Have Given So Many People The Relief Of Feeling Connected - Pulled Us Out Of Isolation. It Has Let Us Know That Somebody Else Breathed And Dreamed And Had Sex And Loved And Raged And Knew Loneliness The Way We Do.