In the following essay, Corn examines the speaker of "To an Unknown Poet," finding similarities to Kizer herself, as well as a focus on inequities in life.

Among possible models for the poet's life, consider two. First, Dickinson's solitary existence spent at a writing desk in an upstairs bedroom in Amherst, the valves of her attention closed like stone; her unmarried state, her lack of interest in travel; her writerly anonymity, rejoiced in because, instead of croaking all day to an admiring bog, she could explore the inward universe of language. Second, Octavio Paz, leaving Mexico as a young man to travel in Spain and France, forming associations with progressive poets that he meets; wide and intense erotic experience, a first marriage and then a second lasting one; eventual appointment to serve as Mexico's ambassador to India; resignation from that post in response to violent government repression...