Sometimes we drug ourselves with dreams of new ideasl The head will save us. The brain alone will set us free. But there are no new ideas waiting in the wings to save us as women, as human. There are only old and forgotten ones, new combinations, extrapolations and recognitions from within ourselves--along with the renewed courage to try them out.

Wherever the bird with no feet flew, she found trees with no limbs.

Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.

Anger is an appropriate reaction to racist attitudes, as is fury when the actions arising from those attitudes do not change.

I am a reflection of my mother’s secret poetry as well as of her hidden angers

Sadomasochism is an institutionalized celebration of dominant/subordinate relationships. And, it prepares us either to accept subordination or to enforce dominance. Even in play, to affirm that the exertion of power over powerlessness is erotic, is empowering, is to set the emotional and social stage for the continuation of that relationship, politically, socially, and economically.

We're supposed to see "universal" love as heterosexual. What I insist upon in my work is that there is no such thing as universal love in literature.