I cannot shut you out the way I shut the others out, so maybe I can destroy you. Must destroy you?

Battling racism and battling heterosexism and battling apartheid share the same urgency inside me as battling cancer.

. . . it is through poetry that we give name to those ideas which are-until the poem-nameless and formless, about to be birthed, but already felt.

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

It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work. To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence. But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.

I remember how being young and black and gay and lonely felt. A lot of it was fine, feeling I had the truth and the light and the key, but a lot of it was purely hell.

Anger, used, does not destroy. Hatred does.