For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language then into idea, then into more tangible action.

From Power, Oppression and the Politics of Culture a speech delivered at the The Fourth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Mt. Holyoke College/August 23-25, 1978