My writing is always a gamble. I take the risk of going deep into myself, trusting that if I can go deeply enough, and translate the complex of feeli… - Alicia Ostriker

To tell all the truth and tell it straight has become the program of most women poets. The truth is mysterious enough, and we are ignorant enough of it, so that lives may be well spent in its quest.

Anger has always played a role in poetry. Without anger there would be no Dante, no John Milton, no Jonathan Swift, no Ezra Pound or William Carlos Williams]]—to name a few large examples. All satire derives from anger. Most of the poetry written in Eastern Europe in the postwar period is charged with anger...What is relatively new for poetry is women expressing anger, which horrifies many readers because it is such an unfeminine thing for women to do. Women are supposed to be nice and courteous, and leave the violence to men...The anger in twentieth-century women’s poetry, beginning with Plath and continuing with Adrienne Rich and many others, especially Black women, has been thrillingly salutary, cleansing the air.

you never know just how unfree you are until you take that next step.