I Know That I Haven’t

Every Woman Who Writes Is A Survivor.

It Is A Long Baptism Into The Seas Of Humankind, My Daughter. Better Immersion Than To Live Untouched.

Women Have The Right To Say: This Is Surface, This Falsifies Reality, This Degrades.

That's What I Want To Be When I Grow Up, Just A Peaceful Wreck Holding Hands With Other Peaceful Wrecks.

Literary History And The Present Are Dark With Silences . . . I Have Had Special Need To Learn All I Could Of This Over The Years, Myself So Nearly Remaining Mute And Having To Let Writing Die Over And Over Again In Me. These Are Not Natural Silences--what Keats Called Agonie Ennuyeuse (the Tedious Agony)--that Necessary Time For Renewal, Lying Fallow, Gestation, In The Natural Cycle Of Creation. The Silences I Speak Of Here Are Unnatural: The Unnatural Thwarting Of What Struggles To Come Into Being, But Cannot.