Wear scarlet! Tear the green lemons off the tree! I don't want to forget who I am, what has burned in me, and hang limp and clean, an empty dress -

We call it "Nature"; only reluctantly admitting ourselves to be "Nature" too.

But we have only begun to love the earth. We have only begun to imagine the fullness of life. How could we tire of hope?-so much is in bud.

There is no savor more sweet, more salt than to be glad to be what, woman, and who, myself, I am.

Insofar as poetry has a social function it is to awaken sleepers by other means than shock.

Very few people really see things unless they've had someone in early life who made them look at things. And name them too. But the looking is primary, the focus.

The poem has a social effect of some kind whether or not the poet wills it to have. It has a kenetic force, it sets in motion...elements in the reader that would otherwise remain stagnant.