Note, the reply will not be "I write," an act that I have, after all, been performing since I was nine.

"Stop Already" is a fairly new poem in a group that was just published by Feminist Studies, which is why I sent them to you.

It's as if I'm setting aside the husband and son, you know, the patriarchal world, for the world of the muse. This is the world of writing.

Agency over one's sexual self - and the articulation of that kind of agency - might seem transgressive to readers who don't expect it in a woman's text.

According to [Maxine Hong] Kingston, the prose writer is "a workhorse."

When you're a female poet, would you, therefore, invoke a male muse? When nuns get consecrated into their vocations, they become brides of Christ. Christ is the bridegroom. In these symbolic actions, rather than in physical actions, where a male reaches sexuality or participates in intimate exchanges, if one uses a different term - there's often a heterosexual figuring that takes place. The male poet invokes a beautiful female muse. The virginal nun consecrated invokes the male bridegroom, Christ.

It is true that my characters have sex.