There had been times during the earlier years of my enslavement, when I literally felt as though the suffocating atmosphere of prison life would smother me to death....Lying in the soul breaker, feeling as if God had forsaken the good of me, the part of me that wanted to do right and live just...Therein the darkness of my grief, visions of things that had life would pull me away just like that! Something as trivial as visualizing a beautiful flower swaying in a summer breeze could hold me prisoner within my mind for hours at a time. Could this act of captivation be the powers of a muse at work?
—From the Introduction, Poem of Poems
