A Voice Answering a Voice

A VOICE ANSWERING A VOICE

 

“Knock,” image by Dawn Banghart

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One must have been something of a firebrand to say to oneself, Oh, but they can’t buy literature too. Literature is open to everybody. I refuse to allow you, Beadle though you are, to turn me off the grass. Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

                                                                                                            —Virginia Woolf

 

The white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us—the poet—whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free. Poetry coins the language to express and charter this revolutionary demand, the implementation of that freedom.

                                                                                                            —Audre Lorde

 

I came to explore the wreck.

The words are purposes.

The words are maps.

I came to see the damage that was done

and the treasures that prevail.

                                                                                                            —Adrienne Rich

 

…I say: I will write the book myself.

                                                                                                            —Marya Hornbacher