I don't know if there are topics that I unconsciously avoid, but as soon as they pop up in my writing, I try to take on those topics, whether or not I publish the poems.

My advice to my younger self would have been, "Chill. Concentrate on the poems. Everything else will work itself out."

Unlike Woody Allen, I would be happy to be part of any (poetry) club that would have me.

Over the years, I became more and more interested in the forms and techniques in which things could be said.

After my marriage ended, I had an urge to skip that part of my life completely in terms of poetry, not publish anything at all about it.

Writing is performative - and while, yes, the words in essence will be there "forever," poems are often about ecstatic moments rather than trying to pin down a particular truth of an event.

I love going to movie theaters, even in the era of movies on-demand and Netflix. When you are in a movie theater, no one can reach you by phone or other means.

If you are my friend and say to me, "Please don't write about this," I won't.

The spoken word community was significant in making me want to write accessible and urgent poems. Bob Holman, in particular, was an impressive figure.

Jean Valentine and Jane Cooper were my professors at Sarah Lawrence College - and they were uncompromised in their art. They gave me models of how to live one's life as a poet.

I had no idea, when I was writing early on, that my poems would be published or read by anyone, never mind people I knew or would meet. I just wrote urgently - naïvely, I suppose, looking back.

I believe that if children fall in love with wildlife they will grow up wanting to protect it.

And in this moment, like a swift intake of breath, the rain came.

When it's right it's never too late, when it's wrong it's always too soon

A just society will appear less spectacular, and less clearly defined, than a society with totalitarian leadership, theocratic goals.

Une danse est un poe' me. A dance is a poem.

The development of new instrumental and vocal idioms has been one of the remarkable phenomena of recent music.

Growing up in Memphis, I have always admired St. Jude's for the magnificent work they do.

What is done is done; and the cracked egg cannot be cured.

Be passionate. Generate the magnetic power of eros through sensual, mental, and spiritual delight.

This woman [Hillary Clinton] has been in public, has been a nationally known figure for over 30 years. Why does anybody have to tell us who she is? And why does she need to be "humanized"?