Writing pushes me, not to answers, but to questions, criticisms, problems, and possible strategies. It intersects with my activism, makes me look eve… - Elly Bulkin

Lesbian Poetry must be seen as a the tip of an iceberg. The presence in it, for example, of Jean Mollison, a 63-year-old woman from rural New York who has many poems that have previously been seen only by close friends, serves as a crucial reminder of the existence of those lesbians whose work we have not seen, but who might very well have been writing poetry for four decades or more. They too, no less than Sappho and Angelina Weld Grimké and Elsa Gidlow, are a part of the tradition of lesbian poetry. In reading the lesbian poetry in this anthology, we cannot afford to forget the background of silence and denial and oppression out of which a vital, visible lesbian poetry has stubbornly emerged. While this background is important because it is at the same time not very far behind us and still present, the appearance of Lesbian Poetry-like the appearance of other publications by women who clearly identify themselves as lesbians-affirms our diversity, our creativity, our strength, our determination to continue to struggle and survive in a hostile world.

Whatever our differences, efforts to address them directly should always be seen as attempts to break down divisions which are encouraged by-and which benefit-the rich white Christian men who run this country. (II. EXTENSIONS)

Isolation. I had nobody to tell, and no language for it anyhow. (p28)