A Typewriter in Flames

“A typewriter in flames is the metaphor here. To work in a medium which can be, has been, used as an instrument of trivialization and deceit, not to mention colonization…is different from working in a medium like stone, clay, paint, charcoal, even iron or steel. A poet cannot refuse language, but the poet can re-fuse the language given to him or her, bend and torque it into an instrument for connection instead of dominance and apartheid.” –Adrienne Rich, Foreword, The Fact of a Doorframe: Selected Poems 1950-2001 (2002)