The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.

W. H. Norton.

She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century" and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award; he went on to write the introduction to the publiAdrienne Richd volume. "
Her first collection of poetry A Change of World was selected by the senior poet W.