The publication of Tess Gallagher's early poems coincided with a ground swell of feminist awareness and the birth of a new feminist literature in the United States. In addition to chronicling the emergence of a feminine identity, Gallagher's poems also move beyond gender in their exploration of what it means to be human.

Tess Bond Gallagher was born in Port Angeles, Washington, on 21 July 1943, and was the oldest of the five children of Leslie O. and Georgia Marie Morris Bond. During her childhood, Tess's father worked first as a logger and then as a long-shoreman. As a child, she helped her father with logging and later did farm work on the small ranch her family owned. References to the natural beauty of Washington State and childhood memories, such as salmon fishing with her father in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, appear consistently throughout her poetic work. From...