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

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

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.

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.

My head’s swimming. Sorry, sis. I’m a useless brother. You’re best off shot of me. - Burt

I have been very happy very rich very beautiful much adulated very famous and very unhappy.

Sometimes leadership is planting trees under whose shade you'll never sit. It may not happen fully till after I'm gone. But I know that the steps we're taking are the right steps.

The space and light up there in Norfolk is wonderfully peaceful. I find myself doing funny things like gardening, and cooking, which I rarely do in London.

I love voting day. I love the sight of my fellow citizens lining up to make their voices heard.

There is nothing to regret, either for those who go, or for those who stay behind — only an inheritance of good accomplishment to be lived up to by those who carry a loving memory in their hearts.

I loathe all this blind rushing pell-mell into a struggle arranged by the mighty minority and paid for with the lives of young men who are drugged on trumped-up ideals.

The world is changing and so is fashion.

The atmosphere of officialdom would kill anything that breathes the air of human endeavour, would extinguish hope and fear alike in the supremacy of paper and ink.

Mother had to support herself at age 18 because it was during the depression and when my grandfather lost the farm and there was no place for her; she worked as an assistant to a maid.