When people say "the body," frequently they mean the literal body, the physical body.

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 people screamed novelty the first time around talking about an ugly video and stuff I was really insulted because, hold on a minute, everyone you see in the video are real life.

Make the people sovereign and the poor will use the machinery of government to dispossess the rich.

Scary in the idea it could be a little overwhelming to have 70 or 100 clowns in a public space. Intriguing in that it could be something interesting. I'm up for any kind of public art.

A book cover is a distillation. It is a haiku of the story.

I was lucky enough myself to have been in Dad's Army for an episode.

There are 190,000 privately-owned full-auto guns in the National Registry.

When I trade, I don't have an agency problem; I have my neck on the line. When a bank or banker trades, it's not his neck on the line.

I did not have a father. It was my mom who chose to be alone. She felt that she would be better off by herself with me after I was born.

It's just too bad we can't have an epidemic of botulism.

The hurt you embrace becomes joy.