I'll lie here and learn How, over their ground, Trees make a long shadow And a light sound.

No more pronouncements on lousy verse. No more hidden competition. No more struggling not to be a square.

But is there any reason to believe that a woman's spiritual fibre is less sturdy than a man's? Is it not possible for a woman to come to terms with herself if not with the world; to withdraw more and more, as time goes on, her own personality from her productions; to stop childish fears of death and eschew charming rebellions against facts?

Poetry is often generations in advance of the thought of its time.

But it's silly to suggest the writing of poetry is something ethereal, a sort of soul-crashing, devastating emotional experience that wrings you. I have no fancy ideas about poetry. ... It doesn't come to you on the wings of a dove. It's something you have to work hard at.

The poem is always the last resort. In it the poet makes a world in little, and finds peace, even though, under complete focused emotion, the evocation be far more bitter than reality, or far more lovely.

Women have no wilderness in them They are provident instead Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts To eat dusty bread.