At a certain point, the struggles with teaching and mothering and so on and so forth, those decline, those lessen.

Writing a poem is unwriting a knot, like untying a shoelace that is clubbing your foot.

New formalism is writing with language as flow, like the flow from a dam, running through a desert that has had no rain for decades.

Poetry must speak of others, in order to speak for the poet's imagination, in order to speak of itself; it is slowed down by poetics after its flight is over.

As I grew older - and even when I was younger - it had puzzled me why I continued and continue to be heterosexual.

Poetry has roots, but they are sometimes cut off and still poetry is written.

I'm in my 60s, and a cancer scare just makes you more aware of mortality.

Working women went through a time when they believed that.

[My muse] she's impatient with me, because I don't do what I should do: sit down and write.

Agency over one's sexual self - and the articulation of that kind of agency - might seem transgressive to readers who don't expect it in a woman's text.

Free verse is chained in sentence-to-sentence links and breaks free in line breaks.

A society no more exists for the satisfaction of human needs, than a plant exists for its own health.

You don't need your eyes to love, Right?

Meddling is the evil, not indifference.

Who is that blond child laughing as he runs after his colored marbles? [my marbles]It's meAnd who is the poet writing this poem?That blond child who laughed as he ran after his colored marbles

Doesn't expecting the unexpected make the unexpected expected?

They run like deer, jump like deer and think like deer.

The responsibility of the great states is to serve, and not to dominate, the world.

...the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle for democracy.

I put in my list all the busy, useful independent spinsters I know, for liberty is a better husband than love to many of us.

Because I am a storyteller I live by words. Perhaps music is a purer art form. It may be that when we communicate with life on another planet, it will be through music, not through language or words.