Alicia Ostriker

“The secret shape of this book is a parachuteall the lines leading to the person hanging theredrifting on the wind and always fallingwaiting for the mists to clear”

“The life spills over, some days.She cannot be at rest,Wishes she could explodeLike that red tree—The one that bursts into fireAll this week.Senses her infinite smallnessBut can’t seize it,Recognizes the folly of desire,The folly of withdrawal—Kicks at the curb, the pavement,If only she could, at this moment,When what she’s doing is ploddingTo the bus stop, to go to school,Passing that fiery tree—if only she couldBe making love,Be making a painting,Be exploding, be speeding through the universeLike a photon, like a showerOf yellow flames—She believes if she could only catch upWith the riding rhythm of things, of her own electrons,Then she would be at rest—If she could forget school,Climb the tree,Be the tree,burn like that.”

“Passing that fiery tree-if only she could; Be making love, Be making poetry, Be exploding, be speeding through the universe; Like a photon, like a shower; Of yellow blazes...”

“To Wallace Stevens' post-Nietzschean formula 'God and the imagination are one,' these women poets would add a crucial third element: God and the imagination and my body are one.”

“With women poets we look at or into, but not up at, sacred things; we unlearn submission.”

“The appropriation of the creativity-procreativity metaphor by women is a conscious challenge to traditional poetics and beyond that to traditional metaphysics, for the gynocentric vision is not that Logos condescends to incarnate itself, but that Flesh becomes Word.”