Underneath It All, You Longed To Be

There Is Simply No Dignified Way For A Woman To Live Alone. Oh, She Can Get Along Financially Perhaps (though Not Nearly As Well As A Man), But Emotionally She Is Never Left In Peace. Her Friends, Her Family, Her Fellow Workers Never Let Her Forget That Her Husbandlessness, Her Childlessness - Her Selfishness, In Short - Is A Reproach To The American Way Of Life.

There Is Still The Feeling That Women's Writing Is A Lesser Class Of Writing, That What Goes On In The Nursery Or The Bedroom Is Not As Important As What Goes On In The Battlefield, That What Women Know About Is A Less Category Of Knowledge.

It Is The City Of Mirrors, The City Of Mirages, At Once Solid And Liquid, At Once Air And Stone.

You Must Have A Certain Amount Of Maturity To Be A Poet. Seldom Do Sixteen-year-olds Know Themselves Well Enough.

Poetry Is The Inner Life Of A Culture, Its Nervous System, Its Deepest Way Of Imagining The World. A Culture That Ignores Its Poets, Chokes Off Its Nervous System And Becomes Mortally Ill.