Talking about these early poems, Sharon Marcus has said that the sound of darkness here, is at least in part, the sound of the poet searching for a voice, a language, wisdom, a structure in meaning to speak about the truth which lies buried deep within the heart.

The sounds pouring from the darkness of unknowing, from the engrafted limits called illusion, these sound reverberate in lyrical exclamations which are occasionally sounds of joy, but more often they are filled with sorrow, the longing of a heart begging for light.

This sometimes dark, sometimes ecstatic collection of poems from an earlier time is what the poet has chosen to keep from those years. There is one important thing to listen for in The Sound of Darkness, a certain deliberate resonance, a fine, still music pouring from the submerged mysticism so apparent in her later work.