This is a quote from A Room of Own; the poem below was inspired by it

�Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time, the very walls are permeated by their creative force, which has, indeed so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics."

Seeking Godess
Women artists globally await the muse;
Anticipate her arrival in our alcoves,
tenements, and sitting rooms; wherever we find
one moment�s pause-
when children nap,
watching for the pizza boy
during our one, weekly night
exempt from making dinner,
at the day job from we�ll happily be parted from
when our genius is recognized.

Even though generations of men-
have discouraged us
and some women, too,
fearful that our creative gifts
will make strangers mock our upbringing.

Many sisters
give up the dream;
relegate prose, paints, politics
to the back burner, opting to pursue
the practical instead.

Yet,
in some of us,
the artist�s voice will not be silenced.

Decision made, we must muddle
through dead end employment;
spending every spare cent on supplies
necessary to practice chosen craft.
We harness the courage
of those who came before us.

Somehow knowing these difficulties
demarcate our destinies;
labeling us different from our more rational counterparts.

Sisters that we,
women of muse, sometimes envy
in spite of ourselves;
though, more often, we weep for them
and the visions we realize they needed to forsake
in order to follow the more systematic route.

Categories: poetry [t]

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