[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.

When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand--a center of gravity.

Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work.

I don't want to succumb to the idea that for the generation, or generations, raised on television, the text is irrelevant or so intimidating that they won't deal with it. If you teach, you see this is not true. It may be that newer generations do not worship the text as some of their elders do.

in the nineteenth year and the eleventh month speak your tattered Kaddish for all suicides: Praise to life though it crumbled in like a tunnel on ones we knew and loved Praise to life though its windows blew shut on the breathing-room of ones we knew and loved Praise to life though ones we knew and loved loved it badly, too well, and not enough Praise to life though it tightened like a knot on the hearts of ones we thought we knew loved us Praise to life giving room and reason to ones we knew and loved who felt unpraisable. Praise to them, how they loved it, when they could.

I am a feminist because I feel endangered, psychically and physically, by this society and because I believe that the women's movement is saying that we have come to an edge of history when men - insofar as they are embodiments of the patriarchal idea - have become dangerous to children and other living things, themselves included

Every poem breaks a silence that had to be overcome.