Poet Mary Szybist on that other Mary

"All you can do is fail," said Mary Szybist about the challenge of measuring herself against the ideal of the Virgin Mary. "There's something profoundly inhuman about her. She is valued because she is a mother and because she is a virgin. And I am not either. So how do you make your way in the world as a woman when you are not aspiring to and cannot be valued for either of those and do not want to be valued for either of those?"