Nothing could have prepared me for the realization that I was a mother ... when I knew I was still in a state of uncreation myself.

The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival.

We might possess every technological resource... but if our language is inadequate, our vision remains formless, our thinking and feeling are still running in the old cycles, our process may be 'revolutionary' but not transformative.

Any woman's death diminishes me.

I think poets should work in the non-literary, non-academic world, get to know more than a workshop or a university.

My heart is moved by all I cannot save: so much has been destroyed I have to cast my lot with those who age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.

Every poem breaks a silence that had to be overcome.