I really felt neurotic - it was a neurotic reason - but I had to teach very, very well. That sucked up a lot of oxygen from my time and my creative thinking.

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.

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

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.

When we are able to realize that life is endless and not ephemeral and that life is transformational and not static—then all fears will vanish from our hearts.

She could have risen from the ashes. Instead, she smoldered in the embers.

My dad believes that bad disguises itself - that danger hides. I think it's the opposite. The truly horrible things about the world are always reaching out for you.

Hope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know so much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore.

A mechanic is just an engineer in blue jeans.

Politics ain't beanbag: 'tis a man's game, and women, children 'n' pro-hy-bitionists had best stay out of it.

Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?

Never be afraid to dream.

The authors of book reviews would consider themselves dishonored were they to mention, as they should, the subject of the book.

The corpse of friendship is not worth embalming.