Sexton ’ s ‘ Her Kind ’ and Elizabeth Willis ’ s ‘ The Witch ’ are lessons in variety . Sexton ’ s refrain ‘ I have been her kind ’ embraces the witch ’ s contradictoriness , from the damaged , ‘ lonely thing , twelve-fingered , out of mind ’, to a more sexualised aspect that ‘ wave [ s her ] nude arms at villages ’. Adrienne Rich , Sexton ’ s contemporary , wrote that she was ‘ taught that poetry should be “ universal ”, which meant , of course , non-female ’, thus enlightening the speaker ’ s alignment with the witch as an outcast , living in the ‘ warm caves in the woods ’, away from society . As the witch appears through an alternating rhyme scheme , the poem is the most formally traditional piece in the anthology , and as Sexton subverts the ‘ non-female ’ conventions of poetry , she centralises not only the female voice , but the monstrously wicked one . ‘ Her Kind ’ employs the term ‘ witch ’ to allow the modern woman poet to take ownership