"Self-preservation is a full-time occupation. I am determined to survive on these shores. I no longer look away in a man's world. I am a woman by birth." This quote, from the song "Talk to Me Now" by Ani DiFranco, expresses the feminist perspective on a woman's determination to live her life in a world often dominated by men. The theme of the life cycle and its many manifestations is frequently found in feminist poetry. It seems that women writers are particularly intrigued by the subject of life and death, perhaps because they are the ones who have the unique role of giving birth to the next generation. In the works of Sylvia Plath, Stevie Smith and Ani DiFranco, the symbols of blood and water are used to represent different aspects of the life cycle. Plath's poem "Cut", Smith's poem "The Boat", and DiFranco's song "Blood in the Boardroom" all refer to blood. Although the meaning of blood in these poems varies from suicide, in Plath's poem, to menstruation, in DiFranco's song, to death, in Smith's poem the subject of blood remains the central symbol of all these works. Water is also a symbol illustrated by each of these artists. In Plath's "Full Fathom Five," Smith's "Not Waving but Drowning," and DiFranco's "Circle of Light," water symbolizes such divergent subjects as death in Plath's poem, life in DiFranco's song and fear in Smith's poem. These three 20th-century feminist artists express their opinions through their works, while the themes of their poetry are replete with similar, but symbolically different, references to blood and water. Blood can symbolize death, but also life. One can die from excessive blood loss, conversely, our life is created based on blood as the main bodily component. The poem "Cut" by Sylvia Plath uses blood as a symbol of a woman's power over her life to create death by suicide by losing too much blood. Just days before writing this poem, Plath had accidentally cut herself while cooking, severing almost the entire fatty end of her thumb (Alexander 301). This kitchen accident acts like a Freudian stab that opens up a whole world of unconscious motivations in a woman's imagination and leads to an outpouring of Plath's feelings of castration as a woman (Bundtzen 141). Plath uses images and metaphors in a rapid format, which flash by as her imagination struggles to name the changes in feelings she endures. (248).