Reality, The Oppressor's Tongue.

Women's Studies Can Amount Simply To Compensatory History; Too Often They Fail To Challenge The Intellectual And Political Structures That Must Be Challenged If Women As A Group Are Ever To Come Into Collective, Nonexclusionary Freedom.

The Difficulty Of Saying I-a Phrase From The East German Novelist Christa Wolf. But Once Having Said It, As We Realize The Necessity To Go Further, Isn't There A Difficulty Of Saying 'we'? You Cannot Speak For Me. I Cannot Speak For You. Two Thoughts: There Is No Liberation That Only Knows How To Say 'i'; There Is No Collective Movement That Speaks For Each Of Us All The Way Through.

When Someone With The Authority Of A Teacher, Say, Describes The World And You Are Not In It, There Is A Moment Of Psychic Disequilibrium, As If You Looked Into A Mirror And Saw Nothing. Yet You Know You Exist And Others Like You, That This Is A Game With Mirrors. It Takes Some Strength Of Soul--and Not Just Individual Strength, But Collective Understanding--to Resist This Void, This Nonbeing, Into Which Are Thrust, And To Stand Up, Demanding To Be Seen And Heard.

You Have To Give Your Art Everything You Can - I Don't Mean Only Writing, But Studying Other Poets And Poetics, Thinking, Reading What Poets Have Written Other Than Their Poetry.

Sleeping. Turning In Turn Like Planets Rotating In Their Midnight Meadow: A Touch Is Enough To Let Us Know We're Not Alone In The Universe, Even In Sleep.