To say “I am not a feminist poet” claims individualistic/individualized performance, beyond “group”. One sees the temptation—to be taken as a pure individual without allegiances (as if poetry were not a social world?). “I’m not a feminist poet; I’m just a poet.” Or perhaps—“I’m not a woman poet; I’m just a poet.” These remarks, however apparently resistant, are working exactly in the cultural terrain opened by gender-inflected thought—that is, by feminism. Some cultural ironies result. Poets who insisted fervently that they were just poets, not women, have benefited from the existence of a feminist criticism born out of the women’s movement; have had their work valorized as part of the group “women” even if they just wanted, desperately and even damagingly, to be poets, just ungendered poets.
— Rachel Blau duPlessis, Blue Studios: Poetry & its Cultural Work (2006:55)
