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

It was a little harder when I first went to Egypt when I was 18 years old and being a white woman with a knapsack and in blue jeans. But again I was part of the rucksack revolution there was some grace there. You could put it that way. And confidence as well because I thought of myself as a poet. That was part of it. I was going for that, to have experiences to make the work.

As a younger person you can come in through many, many gateways. It's like some huge Mandela. You can enter into this and get refreshed.

As a woman I have felt encouraged and fed by and nurtured by the work of [Jack] Kerouac and others.

Connection to Buddhism is strand in my life.

Think of the road as a kind of zone and a site of incredible diversity.

The puzzle and conundrums of Emily Dickinson's poetry or The Cantos, by Ezra Pound, is infinitely pleasurable. Or Ronald Johnson's Ark. And the experience extends a whole lifetime. But the intensity of certain vocalized language affects our bodies in a particular way, and that further actualization propels me. The Greeks explored this; there were very particular meters used in making war, different ones for a love chant.