There Must Be Those Among Whom We

A Book Of Poems Doesn't Just Come Out By Chance, An Editor Has To Select It, A Publisher Has To Distribute It Or You Will Never See It.

Each Feminist Work Has Tended To Be Received As If It Emerged From Nowhere; As If Each One Of Us Had Lived, Thought, And Worked Without Any Historical Past Or Contextual Present. This Is One Of The Ways In Which Women's Work And Thinking Has Been Made To Seem Sporadic, Errant, Orphaned Of Any Tradition Of Its Own.

To Read As If Your Life Depended On It Would Mean To Let Into Your Reading Your Beliefs, The Swirl Of Your Dreamlife, The Physical Sensations Of Your Ordinary Carnal Life; And Simultaneously, To Allow What You're Reading To Pierce Routines, Safe And Impermeable, In Which Ordinary Carnal Life Is Tracked, Charted, Channeled. Then, What Of The Right Answers, The So-called Multiple-choice Examination Sheet With The Number 2 Pencil To Mark One Choice And One Choice Only?

It Is The Thirtieth Of May, The Thirtieth Of November, A Beginning Or An End, We Are Moving Into The Solstice And There Is So Much Here I Still Do Not Understand.

An Honorable Human Relationship- That Is, One In Which Two People Have The Right To Use The Word "love"- Is A Process, Delicate, Violent, Often Terrifying To Both Persons Involved, A Process Of Refining The Truths They Can Tell Each Other. It Is Important To Do This Because It Breaks Down Human Self-delusion And Isolation. It Is Important To Do This Because In Doing So We Do Justice To Our Own Complexity. It Is Important To Do This Because We Can Count On So Few People To Go That Hard Way With Us.