at the time I started writing, that was already set up as a problem. If you were going to be writing a truly new poetry, could you use the old forms? - Adrienne Rich

Essentially poetry, if it is poetry, does not lend itself to simple readings, to oversimplifications — though people may try to read it that way. It seems to me that the essential nature of a poem is that there is ambivalence and ambiguity quivering underneath.

I think that passion for survival is the great theme of women's poetry. (from "Power and Danger: Works of a Common Woman" 1977)

language is this medium that we hand back and forth between us in all human relationships all the time, it doesn't really have a privileged place. It's this coinage in which we keep trying to get a hold of each other or make ourselves clear. So, the fact that poetry was available to me for that is very important.