First Response - "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision" and "Sources"

There were only a couple of things that really caught my eye and made me question. One of which is on page 545 towards the bottom of the page. She says, "About the time my third child was born, I felt that I had either to consider myself a failed woman and a failed poet" That makes me questions because as far as her being a failed woman - she's married, has a career under way, and just had her 3rd children. And as far as her being a failed poet? She had just published her 2 book. How is any of that failing? People are like that. They are never happy with what they have. It upsets me because there are people out there that wish they could write like Adrienne Rich or Emily Dickenson or anyone else she mentions in her essay. There are people out there that want to get married, that want to have kids but can't, that want a career, but just can't seem to catch a break. She should be happy with what she has - not unhappy and wanting more. But then I realized, she wasn't necessarily unhappy with her family, career or poetry. As I read more of the story, I realized that she was unhappy with her poems - even though she was publishing books and everyone liked them, she was unhappy with the fact that they she was still, "writing for men".

I think that by the end of the essay, she accomplished what she set out to do - and that was to write for instead of for men. The other goal she had in mind that she accomplished was to release her "conflict as a failure of love in myself". I say this because if you read her poem "Sources" that poem doesn't seem like it's written for men, but merely explaining what she sees in different aspects of her life, which is exactly what she wanted women poets to do. She wanted them to. I can feel this from this passage: "Both the victimization and the anger experienced by women are real, and have real sources, everywhere int he environment, built into society, language, the structures of thought. They will go on being trapped and explored by poets, among others. We can neither deny them, nor will we rest there."