I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow, and somehow, each of us will help the other live, and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.

The necessity of poetry has to be stated over and over, but only to those who have reason to fear its power, or those who still believe that language is 'only words' and that an old language is good enough for our descriptions of the world we are trying to transform.

and I ask myself and you, which of our visions will claim us which will we claim how will we go on living how will we touch, what will we know what will we say to each other.

We see daily that our lives are terrible and little, without continuity, buyable and salable at any moment, mere blips on a screen, that this is the way we live now. Memory marketed as nostalgia; terror reduced to mere suspense, to melodrama.

[The poet] is endowed to speak for those who do not have the gift of language, or to see for those who - for whatever reasons - are less conscious of what they are living through. It is as though the risks of the poet's existence can be put to some use beyond her own survival.

The connections between and among women are the most feared, the most problematic, and the most potentially transforming force on the planet.

In America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger.