The crows that are predatory are something you have to deal with. For me, they also become associated with cancer cells.

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.

We can reach our world, if we will. The greatest lack today is not people or funds. The greatest need is prayer.

There's always someone going to come around who can be better than the best. You want to be the first. No one can ever forget the first.

This overload is edging me further out to sea, I need to put some distances between overkill and me.

When youre a young English person who wants to be an actress and you have dreams, you dream of being Vanessa Redgrave or Judi Dench.

Apparently, a great deal of dark, unseen material exists, whose gravitational pull is responsible for the motions of the stars and galaxies that we see.

My father was a stone mason, and a talented amateur pianist and vocalist.

The tenacity of life is mind-boggling. We keep finding it where no one thought it could be.

Drinking: something to do while getting drunk.

I'm not someone who likes to go out very much.

Before we go to our knees to receive the Baptism of Fire, let me beg of you to see to it that your souls are in harmony with the will and purpose of the Holy Spirit whom you seek.