SOURCE: "Lasting the Night," in Where We Stand: Women Poets on Literary Tradition, W.W. Norton & Company, 1993, pp. 28-30.

In this essay, Clampitt recalls her initial lack of self-assurance and reflects upon the development of her poetic voice.

By the time I graduated from high school I had discovered the poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay, then very much in fashion. The spring of 1937 is a long time ago, and it may be that I only imagine what I seem to recall—namely, aspiring to what the first of her Figs from Thistles called "burning at both ends." Oh yes, I was going to be a Writer, but that was no more than ancillary. To put it another way, it meant getting out—out of the rural scene where my own psychic halts and festinations, my lunges toward self-definition, were all egregiously out of sync.

Looking back, I'm...