In the final pages of the introduction including the epilogue, Rita touches on black poets and female poets who didn’t receive as much publicity as white male writers received. With the civil rights movement at it’s peak, the pain and long for justice embedded in these young black poets’ souls was revealed. Feminists poets began to embrace their differences and discover their similarities. They had cracked the code to receive the recognition they deserved, essentially changing the game. Analyzing the excerpts from poems in this section will reveal such a subtle nod to the discrimination not only from the literary world but from reality as well. For the first time so far in the anthology, Dove gives some insight about how she felt while writing and choosing the outline this project and the difficult decisions that barred her from allowing every poet she longed for into this book.

            The civil rights movement and the Vietnam war were the two historical effects associated with the uprising of black, hippy, female, and gay poets. The feminists and the blacks had much in common in terms of disobedience. Black people were marching on Washington and infiltrating places where they were not wanted all in the name of equal rights. Feminists on the other hand, were doing that on their pages. They wrote unapologetically areas they strayed away from in the past. The Black Arts movement empowered anybody who had a soul during the 1970’s. Mainstream approval was no longer necessary. It wasn’t unusual to see white students wearing dashiki’s and blacks were claiming their uniqueness by proclaiming the mantra “Black is beautiful”.

            Rainer Maria Rilke encouraged other poets to “go into yourself” and not to shy away from images that the rational mind may not be able to comprehend. Nikki Giovanni wrote a self-empowering poem called ‘Ego Trippin’, in which she compares herself to the seven wonders of the world and truly embodies the beauty and greatness that she possesses. It was not common for black women to be so openly confident about the things they have been ridiculed for in the past. I loved how she utilized the style that the white poets were being praised for and winning awards for and spun it in her favor. Adrienne Rich lead the growing women’s movement with the paper she delivered to the Modern Language Association Commission on the Status of Women in the Profession. She stated, “until we can understand the assumptions in which we are drenched we cannot know ourselves”. This was the beginning of the women getting their seat at the table, even if that meant they had to pull one up themselves.

            Toward the end of the century, is was encouraged that these writers explore universities, creative writing workshops, and technical training to enhance their writing styles and expose them to different forms of poetry and expression. This movement that was intended to educate and strengthen writers resulted in writers conforming to a standard way of poetry and made it hard for readers to decipher which poets were which. When all of them were taught the same, they lost their unique creativity and began to morph into one person.

Rita inserted an excerpt from a poem by Leslie Marmon Silko entitled Indian Song: Survival. “It is only a matter of time, Indian. You can’t sleep with the river forever.” This poem was at the header, yet the paragraph flowing it had nothing to do with Silko nor native Americans. I began to question why Dove would put an irrelevant poem in to the introduction that she wasn’t going to address. It dawned on me that she was indirectly exposing the prejudice we have against people of color and indigenous when it comes to telling their story. When educating those on the history of native Americans it is only in connection to white people’s history. Our stories are only mentioned, only considered, but they are not the main topic. Hence why the poetry is the header and there is no other acknowledgement of it after that.