SOURCE: “The Poetic Knife: Poetry by Recent Southern Women Poets,” in The South Carolina Review, Vol. 11, No. 1, November, 1978, pp. 44-54.

In the following essay, Williams includes Walker in a discussion of women poets.

The emergence of strongly talented women poets is one of the reasons why Southern poetry is in a healthier condition than ever before. Moreover, the distance between old-fashioned “feminine” poetry, in the sense of sentimental verse, and the powerful, sometimes outspokenly “feminist” poetry of some recent writers is indeed great. But from another perspective the span between “feminine” and “feminist” is short, for both terms often carry derogatory implications. Women still face problems in assuming the role of poet; as Ann Deagon writes,

                                                                                We who hunt the word, who nurse at breast that sharp malignancy the muse, still slash our bodies into music. … 

Poetry for a woman may be a knife, sometimes used on others...