"The personal, the poetic, the political, the historic, the mythic-they braid together in this saga of the growth of a woman's mind. Pat Falk's story is unique, and at the same time she is Everywoman. It Happens As We Speak is a book of birth, and life, and change, and wisdom." -Alicia Ostriker "Pat Falk's rare pastiche of memory and lively literary analysis gathers a momentum so persuasive that we catapult from page to page with the shifts and turns of her life as they affect her twin lives of scholar and poet. A riveting mix of candor and musing." -Molly Peacock "An intriguing account from the trenches of decades of coming to consciousness as a feminist reader, writer, and member of the literary community. A moving read for those who were there and those who want to know what it was like, and a lively resource for those aiming to understand feminist poetics." -Annie Finch "What's particularly important about Falk's book is that it is an ode to the art of writing and the art of reading from which it is born. It affirms the value of literary art to one's inner life, of poetry as a means of spiritual enlightenment." -Daniela Gioseffi