It's possible to take that as a personal metaphor and then multiply it to a people, a race, a sex, a time. If we can keep this thing going long enough, if we can survive and teach what we know, we'll make it.

I am a bleak heroism of words that refuse to be buried alive with the liars.

For women, the need and desire to nurture each other is not pathological but redemptive, and it is within that knowledge that our real power is rediscovered. It is this real connection, which is so feared by a patriarchal world.

Guilt and defensiveness are bricks in a wall against which we all flounder; they serve none of our futures.

For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.

It is axiomatic that if we do not define ourselves for ourselves, we will be defined by others-for their use and to our detriment.

But the question is a matter of the survival and the teaching. That's what our work comes down to. No matter where we key into it, it's the same work, just different pieces of ourselves doing it.