There's a numbness in our culture to the continuing horrors of genocide.

I think of the amazing things that were going on. So it's so rich. The doors keep opening.

If I smashed the traditions it was because I knew no traditions. I'm the girl with the unquenchable thirst.

I'm drawn to the magical efficacies of language as a political act.

Literal thousands of Americans taking to the road and getting into that green automobile and just going. At the same time there is real incredible work [of art] that comes out of it. Never forget that.

When I got back to NY had the opportunity to work with the beginning years of the poetry project which was founded with money from the OEO under Lyndon Johnson to work with alienated youth on the lower East side. This was extraordinary, to be able to help then to create a culture that would capture the energy that I felt at Berkley.

Refined, intense, wise, stiring, immediate, subtile, all the charmed qualities gather in Dropping the Bow. These translations are precious jewels. Like the erotic moods they investigate, these versions shimmer and startle with a palpable desire to be heard, and a mystical sense of impermanence. This is a transmission of a vital, extraordinary tradition.