... in a history of spiritual rupture, a social compact built on fantasy and collective secrets, poetry becomes more necessary than ever: it keeps the underground aquifers flowing; it is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.

One does not give birth in a void, but rather in a cultural and political context. Laws, professional codes, religious sanctions, and ethnic traditions all affect women's choices concerning childbirth.

The repossession by women of our bodies will bring far more essential change to human society than the seizing of the means of production by workers.

We have lived with violence far too long.

Increasingly I think of poetry as a theatre of voices, not as coming from a single "I" or from any one position. I want to imagine voices different from my own.

TV has created a kind of false collectivity.

Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.