w of all human behavior -- especially to romantic love.
Smith, from an earlier generation, did not write as openly of sexuality as Sexton and Rich. But she preceded them in examining the place that a woman occupied in a world in which she was primarily the sought-after object of men's desire and was generally regarded as having few important desires of her own. Smith's frequent irony and her humor are the stance of a woman who has discovered that the accepted view of human relations does not reflect her own experience at all. Though in many respects she is undaunted by life, the poet remains deeply surprised by the world's assumptions as they are presumed to apply to her or to the people she writes about in her poems.
Smith frequently locates the source of received wisdom about life in mothers. In poems such as "The White Thought", "The Queen and the Young Princess" or "My Hat" Smith's speakers express great skepticism about the things that their mothers have told them about life. In "My Hat", which is a very funny poem, a young woman has bee
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