... Passion For Survival Is The Great

Poetry Is The Liquid Voice That Can Wear Through Stone.

In A World Where Language And Naming Are Power, Silence Is Oppression, Is Violence.

There Is The Falsely Mystical View Of Art That Assumes A Kind Of Supernatural Inspiration, A Possession By Universal Forces Unrelated To Questions Of Power And Privilege Or The Artist's Relation To Bread And Blood. In This View, The Channel Of Art Can Only Become Clogged And Misdirected By The Artist's Concern With Merely Temporary And Local Disturbances. The Song Is Higher Than The Struggle.

But Before We Were Mothers, We Have Been, First Of All, Women, With Actual Bodies And Actual Minds.

No One Ever Told Us We Had To Study Our Lives,make Of Our Lives A Study, As If Learning Natural Historyor Music, That We Should Beginwith The Simple Exercises Firstand Slowly Go On Tryingthe Hard Ones, Practicing Till Strengthand Accuracy Became One With The Daringto Leap Into Transcendence, Take The Chance Of Breaking Down In The Wild Arpeggioor Faulting The Full Sentence Of The Fugue.