Poet Richard Hugo says in his foreword to the volume:
Ullman is a poet of confinement and release, of restriction and freedom. She does not bother, thankfully, to separate exterior and interior reality. If one woman is too limited by quotidian existence to energize language, the other woman inside quietly takes over and locates the fresh paths that lead to the realization of the complete poem. If immediate reality is too limp for the poem’s design, Ullman’s long and patient gaze will find something beyond the limits of normal vision that will make the poem firm.
In her honest, quiet way, Ullman puts to poetic use the self-generating power that lies within her. No restraint is so permanent it cannot be cast off, no confinement so total release can’t be won. Her freedom is the ideal freedom of the poet: the mind going on, distilling, adding, converting, supplementing and complementing, certain of the real relationship of response to event no matter how remote or peripheral the events are or how ineffectual or unrelated the responses seem. Reading Natural Histories many times, I’ve come to feel her freedom is my freedom.
