Julia Alvarez is an American author. Born in New York in 1950 she spent her
childhood in the Dominican Republic until age 10. In this passage. Alvarez describes
some of her earliest writing experiences.
from Something to Declare
1 Away at school, I met American muses, who like my aunt Titi, were
handmaidens of the written word. Miss St. Pierre and Miss Stevenson, my
English teachers, were both single, both young, both passionately in love with
books.
2 They encouraged me, not just to receive the language passively, but to
actively engage it. In other words, not just to read, but to write. I wrote essays.
poems, stories. I kept a journal. For my senior project. I put together a
handwritten manuscript of poems and drawings, and with Miss St. Pierre's
blessing. I carried it to a New York publisher when I was home for vacation.The
editor, Gene Young, was actually a friend of my aunt Titi's who had been to
boarding school with her.Gene very nicely offered to read the manuscript and
then took me on a tour of the Harper & Row building introducing me to her
coworkers as "a talented young poet."I glowed with pride-though it did occur
to me that she had not, as yet-read any of my poems.Oh well, maybe editors
could tell ahead of time that someone was going to be a good writer? The
book, titled Thoughts dealt with important, well, thoughts: Death Loneliness.
the Meaning of Life Nowhere was there a trace of Belkis, Ada, Gladys.or any of
my Dominican tias--3 good sign. I thought, that I sounded "so American." A
few weeks after my visit to Harper 8 Row, my handwritten book was returned
in the mail with a nice note from Gene advising me to "keep writing, you'll find
your voice."
3 This discovery of a voice did not come easily. I was in school before
women's studies or multicultural studies or anything but the CANON became
the norm. We read the great writers. Yeats Milton, Shakespeare, Chaucer,
Whitman, with a sprinkling of female exceptions, I do not regret having had
these models. They taught me my craft: they forced me to go outside my own
experience and background. But it was difficult to find or trust my own voice
using only these male models.
4 I can still remember the first time I heard my own voice on paper, it
happened a few years after I graduated from a creative writing master's
had earned a short-term residencv at Yaddo. the writer's colonv
What is the most likely reason the author quotes the
work of other poets in paragraph 5 and her own work in
paragraph 7?
1. to emphasize her classical training in literature
2.to reveal how other poets have influenced her
voice
3. to suggest that all poets are inspired by deeply
personal events
4. to contrast the rhythm and style of her poetry
with that of other poets
